Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

This is the second post in a three part series, read Part 1: Unburdening the Vestry and Part 3: Entrusting and Empowering Parish Staff.

Shared ministry and dispersed authority are components of healthy leadership practices. And healthy practices make for healthy Christians who are also, to be honest, a whole lot better at welcoming newcomers, not picking fights over little things, and celebrating rather than grumbling.

As I wrote previously, I started talking about this with my vestry. If, as was my experience, the Vestry is the sole and central powerbroker and ministry is not shared nor is authority dispersed, like it or not, you’ve got to get Vestry on board. Patience, listening, understanding, and clarity are really critical, not to mention taking the long view, if necessary, and perhaps being the one to do nothing more than cast seeds for a while.

We framed our conversation by way of eight principles: the “why” has a greater capacity to bring consensus than the “what.” Principles two through four focused on vestry and health. We said we understand the history behind making vestry all powerful, but we didn’t think that’s healthy (Number 2). And we’re going to focus on spiritual and relational health, even as that means certain business practices will likely change (Number 3). Still, vestry will no longer be responsible for everything (Number 4).

Given that, we were able to do two more healthy things. First, we focused on the congregation. I’m genuinely astonished that we’ve allowed parish bylaws to remain so sterile and corporate. Customarily, they talk about terms of service, parish meetings, what’s a quorum…. and completely ignore the vast majority of the people who make up the community! In our bylaws we name the different levels of parishioner, citing the Episcopal Church Canons: member, communicant, communicant-in-good-standing. In subsequent sections, we describe the “Role of the Congregation” and the “Ministry of the Congregation” and we’ve removed from the vestry oversight of core ministries and committees, assigning them instead to the congregation itself. Second, we streamlined. Taking this conversation to the congregation, we realized our core mission was reflected in five committees, not nine as it was before: buildings and grounds, Christian education, finance, outreach, worship (Principle 7). Vestry kept personnel under it’s purview, which makes good sense.

Identifying, naming, and norming the difference between vestry and congregation has enabled greater health. For one, vestry now has a more creative, collective energy. They aren’t locked into the small stuff, they can better see and respond to the big picture, and they get to work together as one body for the good of Christ’s Body (Principle 5). Also vestry meetings are a lot shorter! For another, this approach means that church operations depend more on the movement of the Holy Spirit than on our own expectations or customs. Because the core committees are the responsibility of the congregation and yet the final approval and, of course, spending decisions still come from the vestry, it is impossible to have a ‘committee of one’, even if there is a committee with only one person. Under this new system, we’ve learned to let things go where there’s no Spirit, even if it is one of the five committees. And we’ve learned to pick things up where the Spirit’s moving and not worry about establishing a new committee.

Key to this highly decentralized system are competent, spiritually and emotionally mature people who will serve as leaders and, specifically, parish staff. It’s critical to find such people to help facilitate this diverse constellation of seemingly random yet deeply intertwined conversations. I’ll write more about parish staff, in particular, in part three.

Click here to read Part 3 of this 3 part series.