Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

Growing up, July and August meant a change of routine: lazy days to bike, swim, and read, and summer camp. In my neighborhood all the kids played outside after dinner; at dusk Mrs. Manghis would ring the bell hanging by her back door and we’d all head home.

As an adult I try to keep a sense of summer, spending as much time outdoors as possible, even during the work week: Taking advantage of longer days to get outside after dinner. Eating lunch on the patio. Sitting on my porch to read, think, or daydream.

Summer can also be a time for evaluation, planning, and reflection. At the Episcopal Church Foundation’s annual staff convocation, Sally Skardon, ECF board chair, challenged us to think about these questions:

Why am I proud to be an Episcopalian? How am I hopeful? What can I do to help the church grow?

These questions are essential to the vision of ECF Vital Practices and the Episcopal Church Foundation. Across our church, congregations wrestle with questions of viability and struggle to break old patterns, recognizing the need for change.

• “I need to learn more about [how] to lead my congregation in the process of envisioning our future and making plans to have the future we believe God wants for/from us.”
• “We are not forward thinking, just dealing with current problems.”
• “It has been difficult to make the time to envision where we need to be heading due to short term financial concerns. We must break out of this and focus forward.”
• “Relative to vision and planning (harder) we spent too much time organizing and doing (easier.)

These comments reflect the growing awareness that often our current organizational and financial structures presume social norms that no longer exist, harkening back to a time when for many church membership and attendance were central to family life.

So, how might we help congregational leaders “break out of this and focus forward?”

This month and next we’ll share stories from congregations or dioceses who have asked themselves some variation of Sally’s three questions. Some came to the visioning process out of necessity, others through the efforts of leaders willing to take on the challenge of meaningful change. Here are their stories:

Grace Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts rose from two congregations that started their visioning and planning process in two very different places. For one, a wall fell down in the church; for the other, the recognition that ‘business of usual’ would be the death of their parish. Deborah Johansen Harris and Frances Hills share details of this story in “Becoming Grace.”

In “[Accepting] God’s Gift of Chaos,” Demi Prentiss shares how embracing the messiness of the unknown can help a congregation become unstuck from the things that prevent meaningful change from occurring.


For many churches, the one church one priest model is no longer possible, creating opportunities for different models of leadership. In “Equal Partners,” Donald Romanik shares a story of a congregation – and a diocese – committed to the development of healthy and effective lay clergy partnerships to build up the Body of Christ in our changing world.

Following each article is a list of resources offering additional information and/or practical tools. Interested in what else might be on the ECF Vital Practices’ website? Use the Topics index on each page of the site to find other resources related to leadership including past Vestry Papers articles, blog posts, and the many resources found in our Your Turn and Tools sections.

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Editor's Note: To make it easier for congregational leaders to find the resources offered through ECF Vital Practices, please consider adding a link to ECF Vital Practices to your website. Here’s how: Using your websites ‘add a link’ tool, insert our full URL – http://www.ecfvp.org/.