Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

How or what is your congregation known for in your community? In my town, the two Episcopal Churches may be best known for their fundraisers.

Both St. Michael’s and St. Andrew’s Episcopal churches in Marblehead, Mass have long established fundraisers that have become part of the fabric of the community.

St. Michael’s annual lobster luncheon is on many people’s ‘must do’ list for the July 4th weekend, including mine. Beginning on Saturday and continuing through July 4th, the lobster luncheon fundraiser coincides with the Marblehead Festival of Arts, taking advantage of St. Michael’s location in the midst of the festivities. My friends Joe and Jill became engaged while eating lobster rolls on the St. Michael’s lawn and return each year to celebrate this milestone.

All proceeds support the Church’s community and world ministries and information about these ministries is visible to people purchasing lobster rolls, clam chowder, hot dogs, and watermelon. Tours of St. Michael’s historic building and an organ concert are typically offered during this event.

St. Michaels also provides space to the Festival for their printmaking and sculpture displays, ensuring a steady stream of visitors to the building and past their food tent.

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Editor’s note: With the 4 of July celebration. 

We have found that when we take “us” out to meet folks where they are at—the result is usually a warm reception.

Last year, after seeing good responses to offering Ashes on Ash Wednesday at the college campus, and offering Pet Blessings near St. Francis Day at a local Animal Shelter day in the park—we began to look for other opportunities to go out and meet people “where they are at.”

So for the Fourth of July we did two things.

For July 3rd--we “bought” a spot for a booth at the downtown festivities known as “Light up Arlington.” We were there right alongside the other vendors of jewelry and back massages, restaurants and theaters. We had a display of various interesting “Episcopal things” like a thurible, a chasuble, a wooden labyrinth, a chalice and paten, prayer books etc. We also had a colorful tri-fold flyer that we had printed, there to distribute. And we had some little kids trinkets to give away. For July 4th—we set up two canopies along the parade route and invited our church folks to come before the parade and join us for a short morning prayer service focused on prayers for our Nation.

Results?

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Editor’s note: Years ago, I worked for the Girl Scouts. Each summer one day was dedicated to cleaning the old mansion that housed our offices. Mornings were spent clearing common and storage areas, afternoons, individual offices. For today’s summer rerun, we’re sharing Richelle Thompson’s July 14, 2014 post about a different type of cleaning…

Spring cleaning is a pipe dream for most congregations. It’s too busy, with Easter and end-of-the-year celebrations.

Summers tend to be a little slower and thus a better time for “spring cleaning.” Here’s one place that almost always needs the dust knocked off: the mailing lists. All too often, the mailing lists are a one-way destination; once you’re on the list, you never get off. You may still be receiving the newsletter from the church you visited with a high school chum four decades ago. Like official church rosters, mailing lists are more helpful when they’re (mostly) accurate.

Most congregations have a variety of mailing lists: leadership, acolytes, commission members. There are also the list of people who receive the annual stewardship appeal and those who receive the newsletter and parish Christmas card.

It makes sense to cull through the lists on an annual basis. This isn’t about saving stamps, although you might save a few shekels. It’s really about making sure the messages reach the intended audiences. People move, change positions, switch churches. They divorce. And die.

I’ve received more than one call from a grieving widow, asking to please take her spouse’s name off the mailing list. It’s too painful to receive mail for her beloved deceased.

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Editor's note: Our summer 'reruns' continue... For today's offering we're bringing back a post by Jeremy Sierra inviting us to find the time to practice telling our own difficult stories. Summer, with longer days and more relaxed schedules, might be just the time to try this. First published January 11, 2016.

It’s easier to avoid the difficult stories. We know this in our personal lives, of course: no one really likes to talk about their divorce, or the time they got fired. It’s also true in communities: we don’t talk about the families who left because of theological disagreement, the split in the vestry a few years ago. Telling these stories feels like gossip or dwelling on the bad moments, but perhaps there is a time and a place to tell them.

As my wife and I prepare for our baby, I’ve begun reading books about raising children. In the book I’ve been reading recently called The Whole Brain Child, the authors explain that children need to tell stories. It helps them make sense of their experiences.

It’s tempting to simply distract children from their difficult moments with ice cream or to insist that they are now fine so they shouldn’t worry. But recounting again and again the time they fell off their bike or got sick at school helps them move forward. The story doesn’t stop at the painful experience, but continues on to how mom or dad took care of them, how the painful moment was resolved.

This is relevant to adults, too, and communities. Just as we sometimes need to talk about things with a friend or partner or therapist, sometimes a community needs to talk things out. While we don’t want to recount stories that are none of our business, neither do want to simply distract ourselves from the difficult times or pretend that they no longer matter. This never gives us a chance to come to terms with the painful things that happened and why, and also how they were resolved. If we never have a resolution, then they still feel threatening. We need to tell the story because the story is how we make them into a meaningful narrative.

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Editor’s Note: Summer, with its longer days and relaxed schedule, can be a time of exploration or trying new things. In today’s summer ‘rerun,’ first posted July 31, 2014, Anna Olson uses a childhood memory as a springboard for action…

I have been doing something recently that I had not done in a ridiculously long time. I am making friends without the help of a fluent common language. Given that I live in one of the most immigrant-dominated cities in the world, it's really nothing short of embarrassing. But some combination of laziness, sin, and over-reliance on my fluency in LA's two most-spoken languages had convinced me that without easy language, there was no point in trying.

I once knew the skills and rewards of friendship beyond language. Some of the most important people in my adolescence were students at the ESL school for refugees where my mother taught and I volunteered. As a shy teenager unsure of my place in the world, I found welcome and understanding in relationship with newly-arrived beginning English speakers from Laos, Ethiopia, Cambodia, and Viet Nam.

As a kid, I learned that shared food and shared laughter and small gifts could make up for many deficits in communication. I learned that speaking a little slowly and very clearly (but not extra LOUDLY) is a big help. I learned that distilling complicated thoughts and feelings into very simple words is possible, even powerful. I learned that beginnings are awkward, but that the very act of hanging in there together forges trust, and eventually mutual comfort.

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Richelle Thompson is vacationing with her family. While she’s away, ECF Vital Practices is offering ‘reruns’ of some of her more popular posts, this one from May 31, 2011.

Campers could share a lot with parishioners when it comes to building community.

We travel frequently with our children – my son was seven weeks old when I flew to New York City for a business trip. I wasn’t ready to leave him yet, so we packed the Baby Bjorn and gave him an early taste of Times Square. The kids have been to Disney (World and Land), San Francisco, Niagara Falls, and lots of places in between.

But invariably, when we ask their favorite vacation, the reply is instant and unanimous: camping.

I thought about this over the Memorial Day weekend, as we rented our small slice of the outdoors for a three-day retreat.

Campers build community quickly. After all, they’re only around for a couple of nights – there’s no time to put out tentative feelers. It’s jump-in and take-a-risk community-building. The folks at the next campsite run out of dishwashing soap and instead of making a run to Wal-Mart, they cross five feet into the next site and ask if they can borrow some. When another driver is struggling to back into a site, fellow campers hop up and start guiding him. During the outdoor movie, people sit together and laugh; they share popcorn and mosquito spray.

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The first acts of Christian evangelism occurred while Jesus was still with us in human form. For example, consider the centurion in Capernaum, as told in Luke 7. He was a representative of an oppressive force that often terrorized people. Yet he was kind to those who lived under his control, building them a synagogue. Perhaps he was simply shrewd, showing calculated mercy to keep the peace.   

Can you imagine approaching someone who has the authority to kill you to talk about your faith? Yet someone did tell the centurion about Jesus. I wonder how that conversation went…   

“Centurion, I was at a synagogue in another town last Sabbath, and I saw Jesus heal a man with a shriveled hand! Maybe Jesus can heal your servant.”   

“Why would this Jesus do that for me?”   

“Well, I heard Jesus preaching too. He said we should love our enemies, do good to them, without expecting to get anything back. He said if people do this, our reward will be great, because we are children of God who is kind even to the ungrateful and wicked. He said we should be merciful, just as our Father God is merciful.”   

What stirred in the centurion’s heart that made him understand the power and mercy of Jesus? I don’t know. But I do know that his faith came after someone told him about Jesus.   

Today we have grown complacent about evangelism. Sure, if someone comes into our church, we’ll welcome her.   

But what if that person lives next door and has a foreign sounding name and different color skin? Should we be politically correct and not risk offending him by sharing our faith story?   

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A title like this should go with a longer, more comprehensive and sufficiently nuanced piece, or perhaps a book. Be forewarned: this is not that contribution. It isn’t even close.

Here’s what I want to share: St. George’s in Valley Lee, Maryland just adopted a Collaborative Ministry Covenant with our neighbor congregation, Church of the Ascension in Lexington Park, Maryland. Both are congregations of approximately the same size, only a few miles away from each other in St. Mary’s County, a growing, fascinating and rapidly changing place to do ministry. St. George’s and I have been talking for a long, long time about serious, significant and intentional institutional collaboration with neighbor Episcopal congregations. The trends aren’t pleasant, the long-term challenges even less so, but the opportunities for ministry could be pretty abundant. Seven years ago, together with our Diocese of Washington, congregations in our region started talking about “The Episcopal Church in Southern Maryland, 10 Years Out,” even as the official timer on that ‘10 Year’ clock never began. We didn’t pull off a grand collaborative vision on a regional scale, but it is growing in pockets – the four-year long process between St. George’s and Ascension which has gotten us to this point being one such sign.

The Covenant is a broad statement which, now, enables two separate congregations to figure out the details, together: how to work together, call one shared rector, empower greater degrees of lay ministry, and more fully serve our immediate community, let alone God’s Kingdom. The Covenant isn’t a ‘contract’, and all the business-stuff is yet to come.

Which brings me to the point where I should end this post, or at least this part of this post.

For we should discuss the best ways to set up a functioning, operational, reasonably healthy and well-endowed congregation. The opportunity for Ascension and St. George’s, I think, is that everything, for the first time in a long time, is on the table.

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In the June Vital Practices Digest, we offer 5 resources for re-thinking the purpose and use of your church buildings, with the 5th a resource to help in developing year-round stewardship in your congregation.

It’s easy and free to connect with more great resources for your congregation. Subscribe to ECF Vital Practices to receive Vestry Papers and this Vital Practices Digest in your inbox each month.

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Will this time be different? Will this be the moment when the pressure for change will grow instead of subside, the straw that finally breaks the veil of complacency that settles over many of us once the reporting of this latest tragedy fades….

With two of ECF Vital Practices’ bloggers on hiatus, the plan was to schedule ‘reruns’ of some of their more popular posts. Instead, yesterday and again today, what seems appropriate are reflections related to past tragedies. In today’s offering, Richelle Thompson shares her struggle to reconcile “what should be and what has become too hard to see together” and invites each of us to consider the contrast between our faith proclaimed and faith lived out. How big is that gap?

In her April 17, 2013 blog post, Richelle writes:

"I keep circling back to the image of a toothy, twinkling 8-year-old Martin, one of the three fatalities of the bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. I think of other pictures that haunt me: men and women jumping from the top floors of the World Trade Center, the slumped, broken shoulders of a father learning his 7-year-old was shot to death in a second-grade classroom, police tape around the neon of a movie theater.

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“When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?”

Peter, Paul, and Mary sang these words in protest against the war in Vietnam. Today, in the aftermath of the terrible hate crime in Orlando, leaving too many dead and tragically affecting so many more, I find myself again asking, “what can I do?”

My answer: “More.”

To start, I’ll share this Vital Post Jeremiah Sierra published in December 2012. He reminds us of the importance of facing our failures and asking ourselves what might we do differently going forward:

The church has failed.

A few weeks ago I listened to Joan Chittister give the keynote address at Trinity Institute. Evolution, she said, teaches us that we are all participants in an ongoing creation. It shows us both that we have tremendous responsibility as participants in creation, and that failure is a natural part of growth.

In a time when we are reeling from tragedy, when we are facing problems as large as climate change and increasing economic inequality, and as our communities are shrinking, it’s time to embrace and face our failures. They are staring us in the face from the pages of the newspaper and the empty pews.

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Sometimes four generations of family sit together in my church. Even after nearly five years, I’m still learning who is related. New priests for this congregation should get a family-tree chart as part of their welcome package!

Honoring those who came before us is an important tradition for this congregation. And soon, we will have another way to incorporate this value.

Our church building was built in 1910, and there is no churchyard cemetery. Given its location in the heart of town, there’s no practical way to start one. But we will soon install a columbarium in the chapel, providing a way for the ashes of loved ones to be placed in holy space.

The first (and second and third and ongoing) step was education. While some people appreciated the concept of a columbarium, others were completely wigged out about it. The idea of sitting next to cremated remains on Sunday morning didn’t seem all that appealing. But it’s not such a strange idea. After all, we believe that when we come together for worship and gather around the altar, we’re all there together, the church past, present, and future. And it’s not like the ashes are sitting out, waiting for a brisk wind to dust folks’ Sunday best. The ashes are placed in individual niches, which are then locked.

After some time spent in educating the congregation, a committee chosen by the vestry and rector moved forward with research. Would it be inside or outside? How many would we need? Would people buy into it?

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One of the blessings of working with different congregations on their capital campaigns is the opportunity to hear the amazing stories of the commitment and generosity of the saints whose passion for the Gospel brought these communities into being, built the buildings they now meet in, provided the pews they now sit in, and birthed the ministries that still continue.

St Peter's Episcopal Church in Honolulu traces its roots to a group of Christians of Hakka Chinese ancestry who immigrated to Hawai`i in the 1870’s. In 1914, the congregation built the church in which they now worship. In 1908 the Sunday school of the Church of the Holy Apostles in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania sent a generous donation to Hilo to build an Episcopal church and construction was complete in time for Christmas services that year. Out of gratitude the congregation renamed itself Church of the Holy Apostles.    St. Francis began in 1927 as the Willow Glen Mission of Trinity Church in San Jose. The Mission’s founders remodeled a former butcher shop and established a Sunday School. In 1941, celebration of the Eucharist began after creation of a chapel inside the building. 

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So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built upuntil we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. –
Ephesians 4: 11-13 (NIV)

This message is a reminder to vestry members, altar guild members, deacons, Sunday school teachers, members of all committees and commissions – property, capital campaign, stewardship, outreach, etc. – and to the head of the food pantry, Stephen’s ministry or the ushers: YOU are a gift to the church.

If you are like me, you might not think of your volunteering as a “call.” It might have been your idea, you thought, to use your financial expertise on the endowment board. Or perhaps you just couldn’t say no when asked to serve on the annual school backpack project.

But let’s give God some credit and the glory for positioning His people for service. Christ himself has equipped you and GIVEN you to His church! You’ve been called.

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This Easter Day, once again, I explained the change to the congregation. “We’re using real bread today, and we’ll do so throughout this fifty-day-long season. For those of you more accustomed to wafers, you’ll see what we mean in this place when we talk about Jesus, the Risen Lord, as the ‘bread of life.’ I’ll be honest; frankly, these dry wafers don’t really communicate this spiritual truth, so join us for this seven week season, and thank you!” I said the same thing the following Sunday, too, taking a guess that those Easter Egg Hunts and candy might’ve clouded their hearing the week before.

Some years ago, I baked the bread. The recipe was good, but not great. The last three years, however, a member of our congregation has volunteered to be our Easter-tide baker. She has an awesome recipe for dinner rolls – multiply it a few times and, voila!, out of her oven emerges some big, delicious loaves, one loaf pretty much taking care of each Sunday morning service. I used to give smaller, wafer-sized pieces, but having so much extra bread leftover afterward seemed to unravel the symbol. I started giving larger chunks. Kids and bread-lovers adore the symbolism and, indeed, the actual experience of receiving communion. Even those few leftover bits hardly stick around, not even seconds after the worship is ended; such is the throng of children sticking around to help the altar guild clean the credence table, clamoring for ‘more bread!’ Those more accustomed to wafers put up with the season. Nowadays, wafers are back.

I have a lot of memories growing up in my home church, but one of them rises above the others, reminding me that church, for me, really was a special place, a place where the living God was made known to me, not through any particularly churchy or adult traditions but through an open space in which I could, and did, grow. A stay-at-home dad in our congregation loved to bake bread. His two daughters were around my age, and he and his wife were active leaders in our youth group. Every now and then he’d pull the kids together and we’d spend a Saturday morning baking bread. I’m sure it was a great break for my parents: “Go to church,” they’d say, “Mel’s baking bread today.” I don’t think there was any particular schedule or plan; he’d just get the idea and call the parents and, soon enough, there’d be a gaggle of kids in our church’s industrial kitchen, kneading dough, setting loaves to rise, mixing batter, cooling the baked bread, putting the rest in bags. The next day, of course, the church building was filled with that unmistakable aroma of freshly baked bread, and we’d set out a table and sell the loaves. (Turns out, it was also an amazing fundraiser for our Sunday school and youth group!)

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We should talk about the 400-pound gorilla in the room. That and a four-year-old boy.

In case you’ve been in silent retreat on a desert island without wifi, newspapers, or a message in a bottle, here’s the recap: Last weekend, a four-year-old boy climbed into an enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo and came face-to-face with a 400-pound gorilla. Zoo officials decided they had no choice but to shoot and kill the gorilla to save the life of the child.

Protestors took to the streets, and frenzy descended in social media. Horrible, vicious memes have been posted. I’ve read eviscerating criticism of the mother, the child, the zoo, and gorillas. I heard today that the mother has received death threats. Seriously. Death threats.

The whole situation is sad. I mourn the death of Harambe, the endangered gorilla. I feel badly for the zoo employees who faced an untenable decision. I pray that the boy recovers completely. And I empathize with the mother. (I know how easily children can escape a watchful eye. I’ve lost a toddler in a discount store and watched in slow-motion horror as my son pulled a bookcase on top of him. Thankfully, they were safe.)

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Change can be difficult. For church leaders – and others in the congregation – change may be particularly difficult when we say goodbye to a beloved rector or parts of our church life we have grown accustomed to.

What relationship does our approach to change have with our experience of it? Is it a threat? An invitation? Our articles this month suggest the latter.

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