Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

If you were asked to start a new Episcopal Mission from scratch, how would you go about it? What principles or values would you put in place from day one? What first steps would you take in the those first days as you began?

Our church may have such an opportunity if our bishop asks us to launch a new mission in a nearby neighborhood. We would be doing it on a shoestring with only minimal diocesan funding and the rest coming out of our own resources and those of the new community as it gathered.

This would be the second church start for me in my 30 years of priesthood. The other was the founding of the Third Ave. Community Church in Columbus, Ohio, in 1988. Like the present opportunity, then we were beginning with an empty building and starting from square one. If we get the call from the bishop, I would use some of the same principles and procedures that went into that church’s launch.

The first thing we did was start saying our prayers. We set an alternative worship time (Sunday evenings) so that the traditional morning slot was not filled with a prescribed style of worship and instead could evolve with the needs of the community. We only used a small space for this worship leaving the rest of the building as fallow ground for new plantings.

Second, we knocked on doors. I trained 20 people in old fashioned shoe-leather evangelism and sent them out two by two to talk to people within a small radius of the church. They were armed with just three questions: What are your dreams for your neighborhood? What are your fears for your neighborhood? How could a new church and community center help your dreams come true and allay your fears?

Over the course of six weeks this group met weekly and teased out the themes that they had begun to hear. Then, we interviewed existing agencies, programs, and ministries who were already addressing those themes and invited them into a partnership to reopen the building. Many accepted our offer. A “barn-raising” followed. And from the first day a vital partnership of ministries took off and the corner of Third Ave. and High Street came back to life.

The worshipping congregation never grew beyond about 100 members. But because of the partnership of many groups using the space, the building was an asset rather than a burden, with partners’ support providing enough to keep the lights and heat on, a roof over our heads, plus a little extra for seasonal partnership celebrations.

Who knows if this model could work again? Who knows if we will get the opportunity? But if we do, I am willing to trust the Holy Spirit and the resources in the local community to start a ministry from scratch.