Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

We were standing and talking in the entryway of his church as the afternoon light on this early spring day flooded the well-designed and beautiful, inviting space. His is a large church, a new church building and a congregation that just keeps growing. It’s not a mega-church, he was quick to add, and I agreed; it felt warm and welcoming and I, for my part, felt downright connected to those with whom I was worshipping.

“What are your other services like?” I asked, noting that as a working pastor I don’t have the opportunity to worship at other churches as much as I’d like.

“The 8 o’clock is kind of the ‘original’ church,” he said; “traditional and simple. The 9:15 is a blended service, and the 11 o’clock has organ and choir and probably more hymns than at this evening service or the 9:15.” He said all this as the praise team was breaking down their instruments and wrapping up their chords. “It takes a lot of coordination of volunteers, but each service also takes on its own style and shape and meaning.”

At these words, as if on cue, a vast wall behind the altar table slid open and a few volunteers slid the drum kit back into its resting space. At the same time, two others were rolling the altar table to the center of the raised platform while another rolled the piano back to the left-hand side. “There it is,” he said, “now it’s all set for next Sunday’s 8 o’clock.”

I remarked that it seemed like they’d struck on the best of both worlds: the gift of having their own space but also the gift, by way of a need, to raise up whole hosts of volunteers to, quite literally, ‘own’ – that was the word I used – own that particular service and that particular gathering. Church, as in the worshipping community, was not at all fixed in precisely the same way that church, as in building, was not fixed.

He struck on the word ‘own.’ “You’re right,” he said, “but that’s also the beauty of this place: no one group, no one person owns anything.” Instantly, I got it. At that church, everyone has to share. They designed it that way. They created it that way. They built the building that way. And he and they are building that growing community, day after day, that same way.

The church I serve is not a mega-church, either. We’re far from it. We don’t have multiple music directors nor do we have screens on the wall and we’re lacking a production value that’ll knock your socks off. We certainly don’t own a drum kit. But we’re also working on that singularly important gift: we’re working on growing a church, building and people, that is, in which no one person, no one group owns anything.

In fact, every one of our struggles and issues to date has revolved around a sense of ownership and a profound inability to, well, share. (One of my mentors did warn me, years ago, that the work of ministry, at least a lot of the time, requires all the skills of a kindergarten teacher: teaching how to share; spending a lot of time cutting things out of paper and with glue sticks; and occasionally taking solace when the kiddos take a nap!) It used to happen, a whole lot, in our parish hall kitchen, but early in my ministry we made sure that relationships and sharing spaces became the norm. Ever since, my ministry here has gone from early success to even greater happiness. It still happens from time to time in the run-up to any big parish dinner. It still happens when, say, the altar guild needs to set up for worship and the music director and cantors are practicing. It happens when three meetings are scheduled simultaneously, even though all three have plenty of room to do their work in their designated spaces. It happens, and of course it happens, because people have a hard time learning to share.

In The Episcopal Church, even more to the point, and I’d say especially in the predominance of our local, lived expressions, we’ve created a system, we’ve literally built a church that does not have as one of its norms sharing. We can do this, however, and I’d argue that sharing might very well be the first rule of growth. It’s time, then, for the church to set up a system, norm it in the community, train and reinforce the behaviors among key lay leaders and, in time, build (or expand or renovate) our buildings so that sharing spaces and needs and ministries and gifts is nothing more than our most basic way of life. Let’s not talk about growth until we do this basic, relational work first.

Don't miss a blog post! Subscribe via email or RSS, using the grey box on the upper right.