Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

Once a month, generally on the first Wednesday of each month, September through June, I get together with seven or eight or, sometimes, fifteen or more Episcopal clergyfolk. (Numbers tend to swell when the bishop shows up!) We gather for mid-day prayer, sometimes bible study, always lunch, and, I’d say, fairly good conversation.

Sometimes we invite a guest as our conversation partner. Other times it’s just us. We meet in the side room of a local restaurant, a neutral space that becomes, for us, a safe place to have open and honest conversations for a few hours and a way we can help drive some business to a local establishment. Early in my ministry in southern Maryland, about five years ago, I spoke up and offered to take the role of Clericus Convener. That means I’m the one who calls the restaurant and sends the emails and works with my colleagues to plan interesting programs and invite guest speakers. In all, it’s a pretty easy job. And a rewarding one.

I know this isn’t particularly novel or, for some, all that interesting.  Clergy have a good knack for coming together.  Some gather in colleague groups, others in book studies, still more in bible studies, and some participate in neighborhood ecumenical gatherings.  Bishops, too, gather in their ‘House’, as the Episcopal episkopoi just did down in Texas.  All of these gatherings are opportunities to be together with those who know what you face, for the most part, and the realities and contours of your life.

If you are a clergyperson, are you meeting regularly with colleagues? If not, or if not often and regularly, why not? Your Episcopal and, yes, your nonEpiscopal neighbor clergy people have the same relational needs and vocational demands and joys as you do. Set up a lunch date before Easter and see where that conversation leads you. That’d be a wonderful Easter gift to yourself.

If you are a lay person, ask your clergy leader if s/he has sufficient time away from the parish system and, especially, together with other clergy. If you are a warden or an especially active lay leader, help your clergy leader take this time; best yet, offer to take something off her/his plate. That, too, would be a very nice Easter gift for your priest or deacon.

Also, there is some new news here. For those clergy who regularly gather together, I’d say it most often happens in affinity groups: book clubs or colleague groups or gatherings defined around a particular charism or speciality in ministry. This is all well and good.

Equally so, I’ve found that clergy gatherings determined by institutional structures such as deaneries or dioceses or regions are increasingly moribund, defined more often by a strict adherence to the letter of the law (the Canons or traditions of a diocese, for instance) and occurring so infrequently that they become profoundly meaningless.  (This is not to say that certain diocesan and regional and deanery boundaries are not, in fact, completely outdated, utterly useless and need significant revisioning.)  But this is to say that there is real value in coming together with one’s neighbor clergy, Episcopal or nonEpiscopal, and simply practicing the value of being and striving to become brother and sister clergy with one another.  If we want to become a much broader, more expansive and vastly more missional church, I’d say it starts, in part, with clergy behavior and practices.  It’s high time for resident clergy folk to practice a new way of being church, and there’s nothing more revolutionary than a common, monthly lunch and prayer date.