Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

Lacy Broemel’s post, Church Participation in the Political Process, outlined the guidelines for engaging the electoral process in a nonpartisan way. Now it’s time to start thinking about the opportunities you have for local engagement ahead of the November 8 election. Here are some ideas:

Register Voters

Host a nonpartisan voter registration drive at your church. It can be as simple as setting up a table during coffee hour or a stand-alone event to which you invite the wider community. An ideal date to hold this event is Sunday, September 25, which is the Sunday just before National Voter Registration Day, Tuesday, September 27. To prepare, you will need voter registration forms or, if your state allows it, a computer for people to register online. Rock The Vote has a step-by-step guide to assist you in your voter registration drive. You will also want to check the voter registration deadline for your state. In many states, voter registration closes up to 30 days before the election.

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Fall and back-to-school season often signals an uptick in visitors – or, as we often call them, “church shoppers.”

For an experiment on how we might welcome visitors to our congregations, I wonder if we might think of them as dinner guests. To extend the concept, perhaps we cast ourselves in various roles of restaurant hospitality.

Consider these two roles:

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I never knew when it was going to happen. We could be standing in a check-out line at the grocery, or visiting a doctor, or ordering food at a restaurant, and my mom would look right at the clerk/doctor/waitress and say,

“A few years ago I learned a new ending to that old prayer, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep…’”

“Oh, yeah, sure.”

“Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Thy LOVE be with me through the night, and bless me with the morning light. Isn’t that lovely? Isn’t that better than the other way?”

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This fall, Episcopalians have a unique opportunity to do the holy work of building the Kingdom of God here on earth by engaging in the electoral process. Engaging in the election is an opportunity to be with and speak out with people who are oppressed, hungry, and/or an outcast, and to insert compassion and justice into our country’s guiding systems and structures. Presiding Bishop Michael Curry reminds us,

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For the past several weeks, I’ve snuck a hour or half-hour, here or there, on as many days as I can to clear rocks from the rectory’s front yard in Valley Lee. My late predecessor, his wife tells me, got a call one day from a friend who offered him stones – a whole assortment of large, extra-large and not-so-small rocks. He gladly accepted the gift and turned them into edges for flower beds – lovely, I imagine, in his time. Ever since his departure and throughout the decade after he left and before I arrived, the rock edges did little more than keep the weeds in and the trimming out. I thought clearing the beds and cleaning up the front yard would be an easy summer job, achievable in a just few days since, after all, the stones didn’t appear very large. Regrettably, I’ve been reminded that heavy objects sink rather well in this porous southern Maryland soil, such that I was only looking at the tip of what are, in retrospect, hundreds and hundreds of extra large boulders!

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Sometimes, when life hands you lemons, you have a chance to show love.

Between Friday night and Saturday morning, someone (or a group of someones) tagged St. Michael the Archangel Episcopal Church with graffiti. It wasn’t pretty. The doors were covered, as well as part of the sidewalk and entrance. Some of the messages were pretty raunchy.

No sooner had the rector, the Rev. Laurie Brock, sent out a message about the vandalism than parishioners showed up, rolled their sleeves, and began scrubbing. Had the cleanup stopped there, it would have been a story about the congregation responding quickly to an unfortunate situation.

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Last night’s Olympic closing ceremony was a fitting end to two weeks where that saw outstanding performances, unflinching determination, and constant innovation.

One of the brightest stars of this Olympiad was Houston’s own Simone Biles, who amazed audiences as much as she challenged history. And as this NBC Sports story notes, Biles’ feat highlights just how much gymnastics has innovated since doing away with the idea of the “Perfect 10.”

The governing body of gymnastics decided that it was more interested in innovation than it was in perfection, so it changed the scoring system. The new system encourages athletes to try new things, attempt increasingly more difficult moves, and to be creative. In this world, Simone Biles is pushing the envelope and leading the way.

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In the August Vital Practices Digest, we offer 5 resources to help jumpstart your fall annual giving efforts, 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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Amid the various back-to-school traditions of churches, one congregation has struck gold. They tap into the community’s strong support for the schools – and particularly for its athletics – by offering yard signs: Pray for a Pirate. Pray for a Titan. Pray for a Panther.

In the week before the special school kick-off Sunday service, the church’s front lawn is full of these signs – a powerful testament for passersby of the church’s connection to the community. Who doesn’t want to pray for young people as they return to school?

The church also invites a few student-athletes to speak during worship about the role that faith plays in their lives.

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Back to school time! Pencils, pencil boxes, notebooks, markers, glue sticks, tissues, hand sanitizer... Lists of required school supplies are long and diverse for each grade, each school. Many churches engage their members to “shop the list” and bring items to be given to families in need, often supplying backpacks too – sometimes several hundred at a time.

Today, we highlight the extraordinary backpack ministry of Trinity Episcopal Church in Logansport, Indiana (Diocese of Northern Indiana). Trinity’s average Sunday attendance is 65. On August 6, many of those folks distributed more than 750 backpacks and all the supplies students needed.
In 2006, when Trinity first realized the community need, the church gave away 40 filled backpacks. School Supply Giveaway project chairperson Deb Miller says the effort grew because of the “generosity of spirit” living in the people of Trinity.   

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Since deadlines don't respect vacations, I've filed the August edition of my In Good Faith column from an undisclosed coffee shop somewhere in the world. I write about that thing that's on many of our minds this week -- the Olympics in Rio. Enjoy. If you can pull yourself away from the TV long enough to read it...

Let the Games Begin

As I write this, the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio are in full swing. Like much of the world, I have tuned in to a few events so far — some biking and swimming and a touch of women’s soccer. Also, like much of the world, I lounged on the couch and stuffed my face with food as I watched these world-class athletes put their bodies to the test.

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I`ve been thinking a lot about authority lately. With an upcoming presidential election and a new presiding bishop, I am growing aware of my own response to those in power. I wondered, how does the concept of Authority impact how we engage in fundraising.

For fun, I googled “songs about authority”. Not surprisingly, most results detailed songs about resisting authority including Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”, Bob Dylan’s “The Times, They are a “Chang-in”, and perhaps most fitting for this blog, Aretha Franklin’s “Respect:”

Franklin describes a desire for mutual respect when asked to give her resources.

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Justin Martyr, First Apology

She’s been going through a particularly difficult time – “rough,” I’m sure any of us would say. A significant death in her family, struggles with her job and making ends meet, and add to that internal strife within the remaining members of her family have left her nearly broken. “I’m not nearly as bad as where I was some time ago,” she said, referring to an even darker period, “but I’m not well, either.”

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I have always loved looking through the church directories. As a kid, I would flip through them between commercials or get distracted by the photos whenever I was looking up a phone number. Seeing each picture both as an individual unit (whether family or single) and as part of the larger whole of the church was oddly compelling.

When we received our new church directory on Sunday, I found myself drawn again to the pictures. And I wasn’t the only one. During the coffee hour, several folks were thumbing through it.

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I was well on the way to pursuing my idea. I had completed some interviews, bought a few plane tickets, and was researching innovative ministries across The Episcopal Church to interview. I was going to write a seminary thesis on mission and innovation.

You never read that thesis, because the early building blocks are gathering cobwebs in the deep recesses of my computer.

As we discussed last week, we all have ideas. My idea was all I could see. It took someone else, and their idea, and mixing the two together, to help produce the final product. A better idea, formed from the two.

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Maybe it comes with the job. I couldn’t help but notice the ways people prayed at both political conventions. There was a good deal of what I call horizontal praying going on. What do I mean by horizontal praying? Though the message is bracketed with a “Dear God” and an “Amen,” it’s really meant to make a point with those hearing the prayer, for example, the prayer at the dinner table: “Dear God, help my sibling, spouse, parent, child to stop being such a jerk. Amen.”

In the past two weeks at the conventions, I heard some beautiful prayers. I also heard some prayers I thought were really political speeches. Some seemed manipulative. A few seemed heretical. After a long time of trying to sort through the nexus of faith and politics, I am finding this election cycle distinctively vexing and perplexing. How about you?

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As our hearts continue to break with news of continued violence and division, our churches, like the 12 who served Jesus, find when they share all they have with their neighbors in need, there is more than enough.

Here are their stories:

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The insults are fast and furious, quick as fingers can type. Disdain drips from comments. There’s unfriending and dismissal, with malcontents and earnest disagreement getting mixed into a giant slurry of an uncivil war.

This political season feels uglier than any I’ve witnessed in four decades. Maybe I’m naïve – or forgetful – but the mudslinging seems to feed and thrive like a parasite on the ease and reach of social media.

As people of faith, what can we do?

First and last, we pray. The Book of Common Prayer is a wonderful resource for powerful prayers, including an offering for the nation on page. 258.

“Lord God Almighty, you have made all the peoples of the earth for your glory, to serve you in freedom and in peace. Give to the people of our country a zeal for justice and the strength of forbearance, that we may use our liberty in accordance with your gracious will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

But we must also act. I witnessed last week a public falling out between a family that I cherished as a child. One person supports Hillary Clinton; other family members are dedicated fans of Donald Trump. Their pain was palpable. At one point, the mom said she would deactivate her Facebook account because she didn’t want it to hurt those she loved.

I urged her not to leave. The only way forward that I can see is to move through this election season together, in fragile tension, in purposeful community. (Of course, Facebook is only one way to be in community but in this modern age, it’s a potent tool). This will require restraint. Believe me, as the liberal daughter of a conservative family, I feel the pain of restraint. But love wins, so I (mostly) refrain from commenting and scroll past memes and posts that make me shudder. And I refrain from posting on my own feed ones that will make my family shudder. I love them more than I dislike some politician, and I refuse to insert Hillary or Donald into my relationship with my family.

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The ol’ Dog Star, Sirius, is now rising before the dawn, and the “dog days of summer” are upon us. Summer stops and pants. High heat and humidity drive us inside to fans and air conditioning. What to do, what to do…   

I know! How about recruiting your stewardship team? While sitting there sipping your iced tea, pick up the phone and your church directory, and start dialing. Here’s a sample script:   

A congregational consultant with the Episcopal Church Foundation tells the story about how the stewardship chair in a rather large parish came up with this idea and single handedly called every person/family in the directory. His phone call recruitment was successful on many levels. First, he got to chat with many people he didn’t really know. This personal reward also formed a nice foundation for the annual campaign, as people felt a connection to someone at the church around this topic. 

Most importantly, it worked! A fresh batch of people said yes to being involved.   

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