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.
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On January 25, 2025, the Episcopal Church Foundation (ECF) faced an attempted cyberattack on our networks. Fortunately, the attack was unsuccessful. We want to raise awareness about this potential threat and provide preventive measures that may be implemented within the church. As part of our commitment to support and strengthen Episcopal faith communities and to serve the Episcopal Church with transparency, we are sharing this experience.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Communities are fluid. Think of the place where you grew up. Is it the same today as it was when you were a kid? Likely not. Neighborhoods and towns are always changing. So, too, are churches and faith communities.
Like anything fluid, then, the challenge – and opportunity – is to ride the wave. Growing communities will not always grow. Diminished congregations are not destined to remain so. Trends will shift. Sometimes we can be part of those changes; most of the time, the changes are so deep and seismic that we, even for our best intentions, just roll with ‘em.
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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.
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What is a church if it’s not also a center for its community? Earlier in this series, I shared how Resurrection Parish (Church of the Ascension and St. George’s Church in St. Mary’s County, MD) started putting together the sometimes disparate concepts of community + church + center. And I followed up with an example of conceptual clarity around dilemma flipping – taking what some might see as a problem and flipping the script to find opportunities. Turns out that the leadership of Resurrection Parish was highly intrigued by Community + Center + Church, and so we’ve been on a journey in the last several years to create in downtown Lexington Park, MD the Park Community Foundation, which will reconfigure the entire mission focus of the Episcopal Church of the Ascension in that same town. What follows is a deeper dive into where we’re heading in St. Mary’s County, MD.
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Most people dislike change. It can be hard work, stopping an old habit and starting another. It’s especially hard for an institution or a system to change – a group of people all have to go through the process together.
Church leaders often see a need for a change, whether it's moving the time of a worship service, ending a beloved but no longer needed ministry, or something as big as moving to a new leadership model, but the congregational system doesn't always allow the change to take place.
The best changes happen because we’re watching to discover what God is up to, and partnering in the work God is already doing.
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At first glance, parishes and banks look as different as apples and oranges. Upon a closer look, however, the differences run far deeper than superficial appearances. One institution is a collective — a cooperative—in which individuals pool their treasure, time, and talents to create a social and spiritual community that serves its members and their communities in their search for a deeper relationship with God. The other is a bank. A bank lends money for the purpose of making profit for profit’s sake. The very mission of the bank is to concentrate community wealth in its investors’ hands. Its corporate vision is to grow larger so it can lend more and concentrate more wealth. This is not to say all banks are bad, or that none of them maintain a deep commitment to their communities. But make no mistake, the bank serves the dollar above all else and worships profit.
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“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.
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As you may know, FaithX is working with TryTank in a "proof-of-concept" experiment called Episcopal Pulse, the purpose of which is to keep a finger on the pulse of The Episcopal Church through weekly, rapid-response micro-surveys.
Our most recent micro-survey (#16), completed last Friday, asked this question:
In what areas of congregational life have you found hidden opportunities in the disruption caused by the pandemic?
Results:
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The Episcopal Church needs to ask bigger questions.
Pastoral training has long taught us to look for the bigger questions: Is this person really upset about the color of the new carpet or does this person feel that too much is changing too quickly? Is this person really angry about last week’s sermon or is there something going on at home?
We are more effective pastors when we identify underlying issues and address them directly. The same principle applies when we take our place in the councils of the church: If we ask the bigger questions, we will get better results.
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My first challenge as a new rector was a common one: How do I make this team into my team?
I would have plenty of opportunities to recruit new staff in subsequent years, but I had to begin my ministry with a team that had been assembled by someone else. My first step was to establish core values: teamwork, dedication, and excellence.
I wish I could say that my new colleagues and I discerned these principles together, but we didn’t. This was my way of letting the existing staff know the new rector’s style, of establishing baseline expectations that would apply equally to all of us, and of reshaping an existing system to achieve new outcomes.
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I try to keep our parish as far away from politics as possible. But, what happens when politics choose to visit us as they did with the question of COVID-19 vaccination mandates?
As our mayor and our governor battled each other in court about what could and could not be required of churches, we had to figure it out for ourselves. Surely, we were going to encourage vaccination, but would we require it? And, if so, of whom?
A recent article in The Atlantic argues that it is harder to run a church in 2021 than it was in 2020. I couldn’t agree more. Our choices were relatively straightforward at the height of the pandemic, but they are far more complicated now. Our approach to vaccination requirements worked for us, and I offer it as a starting place for others facing similar questions.
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Recently, the Rt. Reverend Shannon MacVean-Brown, Bishop of Vermont, reported that the diocese was heading toward a “financial cliff” and that budget cuts alone would not prevent the fall. In her July 21 message, MacVean-Brown also announced a new task force that will consider long-term strategies for sustaining congregations and ministries, including the possibility of greater collaboration and resource sharing with the dioceses of New Hampshire and Maine.
The Diocese of Vermont is one of the smallest in the Episcopal Church with 5,700 baptized members in 2019, 10 full-time clergy, and 45 congregations with all but three reporting an Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) of less than 100. Like the rest of the Church, Vermont has experienced membership and ASA declines from 2014 to 2019, but unlike the other New England dioceses, also had a pledge and plate income drop of 3 to 7% in those five years. And Vermont is not alone. I would wager that there are dozens of other Episcopal dioceses facing the same fate but are unable or unwilling to admit it.
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The invitation was simple: “No agenda, just conversation. No pressure, just invitation.”
With these words, the rector and newcomers coordinator at Church of the Holy Communion in Memphis invited the members of St. Elisabeth’s Episcopal Church in nearby Bartlett, Tennessee to a service of Evening Prayer followed by a time of conversation. St. Elisabeth’s was about to close, and Holy Communion was not sure how best to help.
There is plenty of literature about how two congregations can start journeying together, but our story is not grounded in any particular theory. We just listened to each other, and we built a model that worked for us. Other churches in other places could easily do the same.
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La mayoría de las organizaciones episcopales dependen de donantes generosos en apoyo de su misión y ministerio. La mayordomía puede ser profundamente espiritual, enraizada en el deseo de reorientar nuestras vidas hacia Dios, pero también tiene su lado práctico. La Ley Asistencia y Alivio del Coronavirus y de Seguridad Económica (Coronavirus Relief and Economic Security Act, abreviada como CARES), promulgada el 27 de marzo de 2020, contiene varias disposiciones que afectan las donaciones caritativas de este año. Estimulamos a las iglesias a que hablen sobre estas oportunidades con sus feligresías.
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The Episcopal News Service recently reported that the “2018 parochial reports show a 17.5 percent decline in baptized members and a 24.9 percent decline in average Sunday attendance across the church between 2008 and 2018….If the rate of decline experienced over that decade continues, The Episcopal Church will have no Sunday attendance in 30 years and no baptized members in 47 years.”
“It depicts a church that appears to be dying,” said Kristine Stache, interim president of Wartburg Seminary.[1]
Here’s a very simple question: Why can’t a good group of great people grow their church and get awesome stuff done? The Episcopal Church has many excellent clergy and lay leaders. Plus, we have deep resources. Why is our church dying?
[1] Egan Millar, “Executive Council approves readmission of Cuba, selects Louisville for 2024 General Convention” The Episcopal News Service, 17 February 2020 https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2020/02/17/executive-council-approves-readmission-of-cuba-selects-louisville-for-2024-general-convention/
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