Episcopal congregations in Indiana continue to find new ways to thrive through the Church Buildings for Collaborative Partnerships (CBCP) initiative, as we first shared with Vital Practices in 2022.
CBCP provides a model that any church can follow to increase vitality and serve mission by making the most of their buildings as assets and by developing new and stronger community partnerships. Here are two examples:
In Fall 2024, small and rural Episcopal congregations in the Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas were offered the opportunity to participate in Pivot, a hybrid program offered by ECF to have us reflect on our faith community identities, learn about our neighborhood composition, and develop a mission that meets the needs of our respective contexts. This gave St. Andrew’s Church in Mountain Home, Arkansas, the chance to learn something new about how to develop a more outward-facing posture. Through an online curriculum, in-person gatherings, and Zoom sessions, we were encouraged to draft new Gospel-rooted, neighbor-focused mission and vision statements. This was all very exciting to us, and as a parish going on four years without a paid priest, we had come to realize that we laity are, in fact, the church.
The Chapel at the Seminary of the Southwest has a wall of glass. It looks out over a lawn, some beautiful native live oak trees, and a large, three-dimensional, weathered metal cross. It stands over 8 feet tall. The cross is placed outside the chapel. Whether pausing between classes or worshipping in a community Eucharist, you can’t miss it. It beckons. The life and work of the faithful is calling from beyond the chapel walls.
My home church recently held its annual Steak Fry. I remember hearing about this event as a child, but it was never an option for us. It wasn’t really for my parents, either. Back then, it was an event for older, more mature (read: no small children at home) kind of adults.
That was the culture of my home church, my home neighborhood’s Old First Church. They excelled at all things social. There was the fall Harvest Home Dinner which, in previous generations, was a multiple day event. A bazaar in the fall featured an elegant luncheon in the room children were never allowed. My mother, in fact, is still a member of the ‘circle’ she joined in the 1970s. Evidently, there were lots of women’s circles – and they all had strange-sounding names (there was even a circle called “octagon”). One time, I asked her what they were, these ‘circles’. “Our group of women,” she replied. I tried to dig a bit more into what, precisely, their purpose and mission and objective were. Those weren’t exactly fruitful questions.
"Drawing from the Pulse campaign's insights, we're reminded to be bold in conveying our identity and rooted in our baptismal covenant and the Way of Love."
--Canon Mike Orr, The Episcopal Church in Colorado and Caffeinated Church
If you’re Episcopalian and on any kind of social media, you probably saw the responses to the “He Gets Us” Foot Washing and Who is My Neighbor ads shown during the Super Bowl. Some people praised the ads for putting Christianity on such a wide-reaching platform. Others panned the advertisements as an improper use of money or a ‘bait and switch’ where the content of the ads didn’t necessarily match the beliefs of those who paid for it. One thing is for sure though... the ads got noticed.
Long, long ago, my grandfather told me a long-winded joke about the “sins” that various denominations believed would send them to hell. For Episcopalians, it was “using the wrong fork.” Turns out, at least as far as evangelism is concerned, our thinking still seems to run along the same lines.
Creating a contact card for your congregation is a simple way to raise awareness among your community. Fr. Dexter Lesieur, Rector at St. Matthias’ Episcopal Church in Devine, TX, shares of his congregation’s engagement with individuals online. His first step? Making a simple contact card with a QR code to take individuals right to St. Matthias’ site!
As church leaders we are continuously thinking about communication, whether it’s the clergy pondering their sermon’s effectiveness, the wardens wondering how best to share financial news with the congregation, or the ad-hoc communication team wrestling with the complexities of a hybrid service. We have all said with some variation that The Episcopal Church is a well-kept secret. Many in our wider communities are unclear who and where we are, many life-changing programs offered from the Church Center (815 Second Ave, New York City) and other Episcopal organizations go unheard, and some dioceses are constantly struggling with proving relevance with congregations unaware of the myriad of benefits that the staff provides.
I remember, before we had digital clocks, when our kids had to learn how to tell time. It was challenging at first, but soon they began to catch on. Then we could give them a watch and say, “Come home for dinner when the big hand is at the 12 and the little hand is at the 6.”
Those days are gone for good. Now we all have phones which display the time whenever we touch the screen. Wrist watches talk to us and preview our text messages and display video clips. But even with all this technology, do we really know what time it is?
I don’t mean confirming the exact hour and minute, but recognizing a turning point that really matters, in God’s time. When the Apostle Paul told us, “It is now the moment for you to wake from sleep,” he wasn’t foretelling what alarm clocks would do someday. “The night is far gone,” he wrote, “the day is near.” He meant that a new era is dawning, and we need to meet it with our eyes open. (Romans 13:11)
Much of what we see in the Gospels happens around a meal or in general food. Whether it was Simon Peter’s home, the wedding at Cana, the feeding of 5,000, Zacchaeus’ house and many others; sharing of food was a common means of sharing the good news of the Kingdom. There is food involved in every resurrection account and Jesus founded the church in a sacramental, covenantal meal. If Jesus had a Day-Timer recording his activities, we would see that he prayed, taught, performed miracles and healings, and he ate.
Somewhere along the way the church lost the centrality of the meal as ministry. Since the Reformation, church became a place you went on Sunday to primarily be taught and sufficiently catechized.
I am formed by the liturgy of camp; by singing to music led by amateur guitarists, pianists, and bongo drummers. We sat on a worn hardwood floor and listened to chaplains tell the stories of their lives and of God’s action in the world, all the while whispering to one another about what came next, telling secrets and laughing under our breath into a space made holy by our half attention and full presence. Each week, we gathered, still seated on that hardwood floor to share a cup of wine and a plate of bread, passing it from one set of dirty, sweaty hands to another. We would laugh and whisper, having no idea what we were doing, but knowing, somewhere, somehow, that this was set aside time. But also, perhaps, that it was time connected to all the rest- to the games, friendship bracelets, canoe trips and picnics where we would sit under shade trees and imagine a different kind of world, to the old table in the back of the main gathering room where generations of us would secretly carve our names into the soft wood with ballpoint pens knowing without knowing that we were a part of something bigger than ourselves. My understanding of church is still rooted under those shade trees, still carved into that old table, still sitting criss-cross on that worn hardwood floor, laughing and learning what it means to be the body of Christ together.
“In today’s world, if your church needs to choose between a youth minister and a communications minister, you should probably choose the communications minister.” I wish I could remember who said this at a conference I attended long before the COVID-19 pandemic, because I would like to thank him.
This provocative statement shook me loose from an outdated assumption I had made about church staffing. In a culture with an insatiable appetite for the quick exchange of information, we need to consider church communication to be a ministry in itself, not just the infrastructure that supports other ministries. And, we need to prioritize it.
This month we offer five reflections on the upcoming Easter holiday. Please share this digest with new members of your vestry and extend an invitation to subscribe to ECF Vital Practices to receive Vestry Papers, blogs, and the monthly digest.
A few years back a speaker at our clergy conference was discussing the church’s experience after 9/11. He showed diagrams documenting that attendance jumped immediately after that disaster, and then drifted back down within three months.
It is too early to be sure, and much harder to measure, but there are many reports of on-line participation being much higher than historical in-person attendance when COVID first began, and now is drifting back down.
Our conference speaker concluded that people were not actually interested. I went up during a break and offered the alternative explanation that people entered church looking for something, but did not find it, so left. (He never responded or discussed that possibility.)
As we prepare to close the books on this second year of the pandemic, we invite you to take the time to celebrate Advent. Advent can be a wonderful time to pause and reflect not just on what has happened, but what is to come. To help you celebrate this season, we’ve gathered ten resources below. From all of us at ECF, we pray that your Advent is filled with health and hopeful anticipation.
1. 5 Ways to Prepare Ye is a short and practical article to help Episcopalians recognize and observe the differences between Advent and Christmas.
2. Journeying the Way of Love Advent Curriculum: The Episcopal Church has produced this four-week curriculum that moves through the first two chapters of the Gospel of Luke. It’s perfect for use during your Christian Formation hour before or after church and can be used by small or large groups.
A regionally famous billboard along I-65 near Prattville, Alabama reads: “Go to church or the Devil will get you.”
Did a shudder just run down your spine? Mine too.
The billboard makes no mention of God or faith, of selflessness or devotion. Salvation is sold for the price of attendance. It calls to mind the famous words of Johan Tetzel that so troubled Martin Luther in the days before the Reformation: “As soon as a coin in the [church’s] coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.” While this billboard’s message feels too transactional for my taste, there are transactional elements to the relationship of the church and its people. People come to church looking for something and the leaders of sustainable churches need to know what that is.
In the gospel of Mark 2 1:12, the story is recounted of a paralyzed man who is healed and forgiven by Jesus. The account begins with Jesus preaching to an extremely large overflowing crowd in Capernaum. Four friends of a paralyzed man, determined that their friend would see Jesus, dug a hole in the roof and lowered the man on his mat. Jesus impressed by the faith and tenacity of the paralyzed man and his friends said “Son, your sins are forgiven”. The teachers of the law took issue with the words of forgiveness Jesus used believing that they were blasphemous. Jesus expressed to them that as the Son of Man he had the authority on earth to forgive as well as heal. He then told the paralyzed man “…take your mat and go home” and the paralyzed man walked out in full view of all and everyone was amazed and praised God.
“Save the church from extinction!” cry the books, consultants, webinars, and sermons. Like Old Testament prophets they plead with us to love unconditionally, befriend the poor, and acknowledge our corporate racism in order to bring about reconciliation. In short, we are to examine ourselves, acknowledge our sins, and change.
It’s difficult work, this guilt identifying and change. That’s why there are so many books, consultants, webinars, and sermons about it. As much as I pray for their success (full disclosure, I am a consultant), I have seen a brighter source of light for the future. It is the Holy Spirit’s calling of new people to ordained ministry as deacons and priests.
As we head into election week, ECF has gathered five resources from around the church to help make this election week holy.
1. Holding on to Hope: A National Service for Healing and Wellness
Presiding Bishop Michael Curry will lead a live-streamed prayer service from Washington National Cathedral, Holding on to Hope: A National Service for Healing and Wholeness, on All Saints Sunday, November 1, at 4:00-5:30 p.m. EST. In the midst of a pandemic, racial reckoning, and a historic election, the live-streamed service will gather Americans for prayer, song, lament, hope, and a call to love God and neighbor. The event will be simulcast in English and Spanish. Learn how to participate here.
Community college campus ministry is likely the Church’s biggest blind spot, greatest overlooked missional opportunity, and even worse, a prime example of inadvertent systemic racism and classism. Which means it’s time we started asking ourselves, “Who are we missing?”
Over my 25+ years of ordained ministry, I have observed that as a general rule congregations and judicatories seem to put much more resources into campus ministry at 4-year colleges and universities than they do into 2-year community colleges. Not that campus ministries at 4-year institutions get all that much attention compared to typical congregation-based ministries, mind you. Most clergy seem to view campus ministry as a “junior varsity sport” when it comes to vocations, and those who start there quickly come to see congregation-based ministry as a better career move.
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