Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

Several years ago, St. George’s organized its vestry around several key areas of parish life. It was a good idea, rooted in the biblical priesthood of all believers and acknowledging that the rector can’t do everything her/himself.

They tried to do too much, however. For one, they created as many commissions or committees or boards as there were vestry members; nine vestry-members meant nine boards. Buildings was one, grounds was another. Finance got as much air-time, then, as fellowship and – my personal favorite, since no one ever really knew what it did – parish life. And then there was the problem of vestry turnover and people who don’t live for generations in the same community. Jobs change, families shift, people move. They tried to do way too much.

Early in my ministry, then, as I’ve written about earlier, we revised our by-laws to create standards and expectations for members of the congregation, not just vestry-members. In order to stabilize the programmatic work and ensure continuity of programs from year to year, we moved committees away from the vestry and to the congregation. And we cut down the number of established committees from nine to five.

I thought that freeing the vestry from these myopic managerial responsibilities would enable them to see the whole and respond in broader, bolder strokes to those areas in which God is growing this congregation and community. A good idea on paper, right? That was my thinking and my hope, at least, but that hasn’t worked as well as I would’ve liked. I don’t get the sense that St. George’s vestry is really leading, together with me, into God’s creative future.

I’ll own some of the issue, here. Perhaps I need to form and teach and direct more clearly, and I’ll certainly continue to focus on doing so, moving forward. But I also suspect that having a vestry which is not really interested in looking with eager expectation at the bigger shifts in the parish, in the wider community, in culture is part of the very nature of the vestry system, as such: they exist to manage the parish and keep the books and ensure good order. They really like getting involved in programs, by which I mean activities and events and functions, but not all persons who discern a call to vestry leadership are interested in those adaptive changes and creative re-thinking of the whole.

And I’m not so sure that I’m interested in this “creative re-thinking,” myself, if it means doing it without a vestry and/or wider support circle and community. I recognize that the danger of writing this is that the comments might be rectors blaming congregations, vestry-members blaming clergy … and everyone blaming the bishop! So even though there’s not a question mark at the end of these sentences, this really is an open-ended blog post. More like a question than a series of statements.

So let me be even more open, here, and ask a bigger question: what if we haven’t actually begun to really pay attention to the actual corporate structure, the business of the congregation? What if we step back and assume, for a moment, that good programmatic work will indeed go on – such is the nature of the People of God; they’ll organize and pull off good ministries – and instead focus our energies, as vestry and clergy, on the duties of running an efficient, streamlined, functional and strong congregation, with all of the expectations of the 21st century.

For instance, our parish administrator the other day pointed me to a job description for a “parish records administrator” at All Saints Church in Chevy Chase, Maryland – one of the congregations in our Diocese of Washington. According to the job description, “The parish records administrator provides daily oversight of the church’s database, maintains sacramental records, processes membership records, maintains a volunteer database, and assists the accountant as needed.” Sounds like a ‘registrar’, right? That very job description is what used to be in most parish by-laws as ‘registrar’ or ‘secretary of the vestry.’ But hats off to All Saints, Chevy Chase, for they’ve figured out that just because you have such a job in the By-Laws doesn’t actually mean it’ll get done, and it doesn’t mean it’ll get done according to the interconnected, cloud-based platforms of knowledge sharing in this 21st century. Hence, they’re going to hire someone to perform that function. Our parish administrator shared this because this is one of the most demanding aspects of her job, and she would gladly share it with someone, either a hired professional or a parishioner/volunteer.

But before we start hiring more and more outside staff people – which some congregations can afford, and most cannot – and before we start top-loading our congregations with staff professionals, can we dust off those old jobs of Treasurer and Registrar, Sacristan and Verger, Senior and Junior Warden and breathe new life into these old forms? Can that new breath fit the demands and creative energy of this 21st century?

See, there’s a question mark.

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