Every endowment and finance committee reaches a point where the question of succession comes up. A longtime treasurer steps down. A trusted committee chair rotates off. A key voice retires from the congregation. These transitions are a natural part of committee life, but they do not have to catch your church off guard.
When I was ordained twenty years ago, I was told to publish my information on the Church Deployment Office (CDO). Shortly thereafter, it became OTM – the Office of Transition Ministry. Same basic concept, and hardly a half-step improvement to the website.
Around that time, say, twenty years ago, The Episcopal Church and its dioceses tried to think in terms of clergy deployment. I think my diocese still called its staff officer the ‘canon for deployment’ back then. But even then, our de facto congregationalism had already turned the question into a matter of clergy / congregational transitions, not resource deployment. The individual clergyperson and local congregation had all the cards. Dioceses helped with the transition, blessing the work, supporting the local congregation to the extent that they could, and doing the necessary background checks.
Many years ago, a couple I knew from the church where I served as curate came to visit me at my new church. My previous church was large, the largest in terms of Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) in that urban deanery, and this church – the congregation I still serve as rector – was small, quaint, historic.
At lunch that day, the couple asked me how it was going. Even though it was early in my ministry, and I was dealing with all the issues that go along with moving to a new state and and learning a new community, I shared that I got the sense that I would likely be just as busy as I was at that larger church. “But it’s hard to imagine,” I shared, “given that this church is less than a third in terms of membership of that previous church.” Maybe it was because, previously, I was one of three clergypersons on staff? Maybe because I came from a system in which there was greater staff support overall – a full-time parish administrator and part-time bookkeeper, not to mention a sexton and a youth ministry director?
All congregations are required, by canons or by-laws, to have annual meetings to discuss the current state of the church.
These meetings can be very tedious, with the leaders and members of the church going through the motions. Some overperform on the legalistic aspect, rush to complete the agenda, or use it as a platform to air all grievances. Whether the annual meeting occurs in January or November, it presents an opportunity for gratitude, reflection, and recommitment.
Within these annual meetings, we can be truly thankful and demonstrably celebrate the ministries that have thrived and produced positive results. In addition, we can reflect on those ministries that need to end and acknowledge their past contributions. We can especially explore diverse ministries and, with joy, consider launching something new.
Arrest the church’s numerical decline. Raise up more lay leaders. Simplify governance structures. Create multiple fresh expressions of church. More effectively utilize technology. Turn the clergyperson’s role from primary do-er to supporter of ministries led by others. These are a few of the desired outcomes of the (UK) Diocese of Winchester’s “Growing Rural Parishes” project. Initially called ‘The Benefice of the Future,’ this pilot-project recognizes that team ministry – groupings of multiple parishes into collective benefices – have become the standard operating system for most congregations in the Church of England. For example, 80% of the population in the Diocese of Winchester lives in urban areas, but 60% of the diocese’s nearly 400 churches are in the countryside.
L to R: Jo Ann Roberts, Toni Daniels, The Rev. Tim Murray, Devorah Crable, The Rev. Cynthia Rigali-Lund, Tom Lund, Yvonne Lembo, Donald V. Romanik, Ann Ryan, Margaret Romanik, Cecelia Mowatt, The Rev. Matthew Hanisian and Sr. Warden, Gary Martin in Chicago, IL.
I announced my retirement as president of the Episcopal Church Foundation (ECF) in November 2023, effective at the end of 2024. Yvonne Lembo, our Director of Development, and I considered how to commemorate this transition year, especially since 2024 also marked the 75th Anniversary of ECF. We decided on a five-city farewell tour nicknamed “Faithfully Yours.” We selected venues in Austin, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Washington D.C. and Chicago and decided that the main purpose of these events would be to thank donors, clients, constituents, and friends for their loyal support of both ECF and me over the last 19 years.
“The way we’re trying to change the world is not going to work,” says Deborah Frieze, “and it’s never going to work.” That’s how she begins her 2015 TEDTalk, “How I became a localist”.
“You can’t fundamentally change big systems,” Frieze claims. “You can’t undo, fix, reverse engineer, redirect or reassign these systems. That’s because they’re not machines: they’re living systems.”
I am one of those clergy who live in a rectory, which might be a small number of us but not so tiny that it’s statistically uncommon. “Church-provided housing,” the official terminology for rectories or vicarages or deaneries or parsonages, can be a great blessing and can in some cases be an incentive for calling a pastor.
I’ve greatly enjoyed living in our rectory. Plus, I have a great Vestry and excellent Buildings & Grounds Committee (and wardens and B&G chairpersons) who work closely with me and my family to make sure the house is in tip-top shape. It’s both their house and our house at the same time, after all.
Every so often, I get an inquiry from a senior leader or search committee chair of a small congregation asking for tips on how to call a part-time rector. The reason given is often financial: the church is growing smaller and income is shrinking, part-time seems like the only possibility, and they want to know how to make it work. So I thought it might be helpful to consolidate the various ideas I’ve shared with them.
Don’t short-cut the process. Even if it seems obvious that you can’t afford a full-time rector, do not allow that to become the focal point of your search, leading you to decide what you will “settle for” before you explore the qualities your congregation needs in a rector. It may also hold you back from exploring creative options. Decide not to decide this until later in the process.
This year, the Episcopal Church Foundation (ECF) is celebrating its 75th Anniversary. We were founded by the Rt. Rev. Henry Knox Sherrill in 1949 as an independent, lay-led organization charged with “having great convictions about great things.” Bishop Sherrill served as Presiding Bishop during the post-war boom in The Episcopal Church and American society in general. Sherrill was clearly ahead of his time in creating an organization with a board of directors that was entirely lay, and we have continued that tradition and practice to this very day. A lay-led board is more than optics or window dressing, however. Lay empowerment has been part of ECF’s DNA since our inception.
In March of 2020, as businesses, churches, and schools began to close, and we started to grasp the gravity of the COVID-19 pandemic, our former Rector answered the call to become a Bishop in another diocese.
The grand celebration that we had planned to thank him for his 11 years of service to our parish was scrapped. On his final Sunday, after the 11 AM Mass, there were elbow bumps instead of hugs, tears of sorrow and fear instead of joy, and a sense that something ominous was descending on us.
It was lunchtime on Wednesday, May 18, 2016, when I sat in cool red-brick nave of Trinity Episcopal Church in Baytown, Texas. It wasn’t my church, but I found myself desperately in need of a sanctuary—someplace quiet to grieve the United Methodist Church I loved and to pray for its leaders. At the time, I served on the board for Reconciling Ministries in the Texas Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, and we were facing an uphill battle. Again. It was General Conference—the every-four-year meeting to set the governance of the global Church, and we were in trouble. Conservative factions had managed to pass bills that took the Church back 70+ years to a time before women’s rights. It wasn’t just about the gays this time; the Church was after women. Only a few months into the discernment process, I felt something inside me break that day. I still felt called to ministry, but I knew it could no longer be in the UMC. I remember saying that, even if the Church did want me, I no longer wanted it back.
We have all encountered peculiar churches. In fact, we have been seeing a lot of them lately and we need to see more.
The two churches that were featured in the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, Westminster Abbey in London and St. George’s Chapel at Windsor, are literally peculiar - royal peculiars. They have been carved out of the jurisdiction of their local diocesan bishops and placed under the direct authority of the sovereign, who oversees them in her or his capacity as the supreme governor of the Church of England.
How delightfully British. Or is it?
You may be surprised to learn that we have at least one peculiar here in the United States, albeit not a royal one. On the first floor of the Episcopal Church Center in New York City, our Presiding Bishop’s headquarters, you will find the Chapel of Christ the Lord. In its sacristy hangs two certificates from 1963 that serve to carve that little chapel out of the Diocese of New York and transfer it to the direct authority of the Presiding Bishop.
I attended law school in the 70’s and, at least during that period, the entire culture was permeated with a sense of competition and individual success. Other than your moot court partner and maybe your study group, there were few opportunities for collaboration or teamwork. There were winners and losers, students who got the top law firm jobs from recruiters who came to campus and those who had to pound the payment with their hard-copy resumes. Once you became a lawyer, the competition continued even more fiercely for plum assignments, bonuses and, the ultimate goal in a private firm - becoming a partner. While I never made partner, thank God, and decided to work for a nonprofit organization before coming to ECF, it did take me quite a while to embrace a style of leadership that emphasized collaboration, collegiality, and working together for the common good.
“Fourteen parishes,” she told me that afternoon, noting that my jaw just about dropped. “Yes, I’m the Team Vicar of fourteen parishes.”
“Wow, that makes the two churches I serve as part of one parish, and the third as priest-in-charge kind of pale in comparison,” I responded.
My new colleague and I were enjoying lunchtime conversation in the refectory at Sarum College, just across the lawn from Salisbury Cathedral. The site of the former Salisbury & Wells Theological College, Sarum College is very much a working, albeit non-residential seminary. In fact, it’s a remarkable, vibrant center for theological formation and renewal for all orders of ministry! It’s a great place for anyone, including Episcopal priests on sabbatical like me, to spend any time, really. Simple accommodations, great staff, nice meals, a stone’s throw from one of the world’s great Cathedrals, and a dynamic, buzzing place where one can really get a sense of what life is like on the ground in the Church of England.
My seminary was a huge brick building circa 1960 or so. It was originally a seminary for Jesuit priests, and now houses a retirement community and nursing home for Catholic clergy, and functions as a large retreat center for many different groups.
One weekend a month for three years I would ride along as my friend Jan drove down the long, tree-lined drive. We’d park and lug a weekend’s worth of luggage inside, and before we were even in the doors our community would begin to form via shouted greetings in the parking lot and warm hugs in the lobby.
The Academy for Vocational Leadership is an Iona Collaborative school and is made up of many bi-vocational students and staff. On these long weekends we learned Church History, Systematic Theology, the Bible and literally dozens and dozens of practical courses, everything from music in small churches to Asset-Based Community Development.
The other day, my family and I went downtown. There’s only one incorporated town, really village center in the community in which we live. We missed the Taste of St. Mary’s by one hour – all the vendors were packing their tents – so we walked down the block, off the town square to the local pizza place for a late lunch. It’s great pizza; plus it’s fun to run into all sorts of neighbors. Following lunch, which turned out to be dinner, we walked another block over to the new ice cream place that opened last year – a storefront on an old warehouse building; the rest of the building itself now turned into a collection of real-time Etsy shops with an always-full beer garden in the back.
Years ago, none of those options were there. The buildings were there. The pizza place was a run-down seafood joint, and I have no idea what was in that warehouse. Back then, there was a diner, a coffee shop and a French restaurant and that was about it, save for a few funeral homes and florist shops. Now, the town is filled with yoga studios, art galleries, yarn shops, wonderful restaurants, a health food store, cooking studio, and so many more pop-up-shops-turned-creative-businesses.
As we recommit to Stewardship each season with a focus on time and talent, let us reflect on our individual level of participation in the church’s organizations/committees/guilds or ministries. A church colleague highly recommends that we use the word ministries more often in order to 1) distinguish it from the secular organizations’ processes and mindset we adhere to and 2) to continually remind ourselves that any work we do in the church should be in service to Jesus Christ and his teachings. I agree.
On one end of the participation range, there are some in the church that can be described as oversubscribed. They belong to every organization and are either burned-out with too many meetings and commitments or they are participating in name only and do not contribute in any meaningful way. Oftentimes in smaller congregations, oversubscribing can occur with few members that need to wear multiple hats. This situation is increasingly common and challenging.
When is the right time to hand over responsibilities in our congregations and ministries and how to do so effectively are important questions to consider? Whether it is the Vestry, Altar Guild, Diocesan Council or ECW, we need a plan.
In determining when to handoff, for some, term limits are the necessary guardrails to ensure that we do not keep the same responsibilities indefinitely. For others, the term “over my dead body” was created, with a staunch refusal to handoff, threatening instead to leave the ministry or withhold their tithes.
The obvious advantage for letting go is that it allows new ideas and perspectives to be introduced and it makes room for the gifts of others to be exercised. This is especially important as we strive to allow young adults to have meaningful responsibilities and also welcome those who are newcomers to the church or to our faith or existing members who feel left out of church life.
Congregations within the Episcopal Church tend to be loners. We seldom interface with our neighboring Episcopal churches and are often detached from our diocese. While we celebrate similar milestones and struggle with the same challenges, it is rare for congregations to collaborate continuously for ministry.
In 2015, a collaborative ministry was formed within the Diocese of New Jersey to address the challenges and the unique needs of the ten historically Black congregations. The members of this ministry include clergy and lay leaders from these congregations and a Diocesan staff liaison. This ministry was named the Commission on Black Ministry (COBM).
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