Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

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.

Even two decades ago, there were early signs that the question of transitions needed to involve serious questions about the future shape of the local congregation. Could they exist any longer? Or were they paying their rector at the diocesan scale based on a sense of loyalty to that long-serving clergyperson, even though there was no way they could possibly afford to pay that same rate to a new clergyperson? In what shape would this congregation continue? In many cases, seemingly overnight, a full-time clergy call became part-time or, as we know, part-time pay with full-time expectations.

Two years into my first call, I was wrapping up an intentional, Lilly-funded curacy. Part of the Lilly grant continued with me as a kind of dowry: I was coming out with $10,000 per year for three years for any church in that diocese that would call me as rector. They were trying to incentivize smaller churches (what they called ‘mustard seed congregations’) to take a risk and go after relatively newly ordained clergy. A lot of congregations in that diocese called me. Several wardens took it upon themselves to personally visit. I thought I was something special. Then I realized that $10,000 / year for three years is quite an incentive! But none were ready. Not one congregation felt safe or well or healthy or prepared to welcome a new rector, let alone a relatively inexperienced one.

There were also questions back then about the future shape of the ordained ministry. Bishops and Canons who clearly benefited from the church pouring resources into their early ministries were starting to suggest that most clergy needed to become bi-vocational or co-vocational. Those who disagreed with that script adopted instead the buzzword ‘entrepreneurial,’ suggesting that clergy were going to have to make it rain out there. That was when we thought emergent Christianity would turn out to be a force for churchwide change and our job was to make The Episcopal Church attractive or cool; ‘relevant’ was another buzzword back then.

A lot’s been changing, and has changed, around clergy calls and congregational leadership transitions. We still talk about ‘transitions’, and it’s still called the Office of Transition Ministries (OTM). And, yes, the website is still just as clunky and unsophisticated. Search committees and search profiles are still a thing, it seems, although there’s been some wondering in certain local contexts about whether the Vestry should just become the Search Committee, and vice versa. Should we even publish search profiles any longer? And, these days, it seems that a regional Transition Ministry Conference can’t wrap up without someone posting (and everyone else sharing) the same pic of Sharpie-on-newsprint: lots of rector / priest-in-charge jobs, the vast majority of which are part-time; not a lot of full-time calls; available jobs outnumber clergy-in-search by record numbers, but most clergy aren’t interested in relocating; and it’s not entirely clear that so-called ‘part-time’ is even sustainable in that current iteration. Additionally, the Church Pension Group (CPG) adds other data points: more clergy are retiring each year than the church is ordaining. Some dioceses are actively working on alternative models: borrowing the multi-parish ‘benefice’ concept which is standard in the Church of England, or putting together ‘constellations’ of congregations to form a more robust, resource-enriched clergy call, or ensuring that tiny congregations remain / become Missions, as the priest-in-charge of a mission (Vicar) is more closely aligned with the office and resources of the bishop and diocese.

Whatever’s happening in the church today, the reality on the ground is far outpacing our capacity to imagine alternative structures and newer, more dynamic ways of resourcing clergy transitions. That’s a sad reality, but it shouldn’t be a foregone conclusion that we’ll miss this challenge and let an opportunity slip by. I believe we’re at the tip of something that’s emerging. This is exciting and good news.

I’ll close with a story a priest shared with me. I’m guessing this is set at least 40 or 50 years ago: a bishop in a Canadian diocese convened his clergy to talk about the new wave of thinking around clergy transitions. The diocese was going to try out something called a ‘search committee’ in which lay members of the local congregation would put together a profile and interview prospective clergy applicants and, with the bishop, they would call their next rector. Obviously, this was a big departure from the ways things had been: the bishop assigned priests to their parish, the rector went, and the people welcomed their new priest.

A middle-aged priest was so distressed about this new teaching he couldn’t help but speak up. “Bishop,” he stood and spoke at that meeting, anxiety pouring from his words, “you’re not serious that lay people would call their own priest!?”

I remember when I first heard that story. The priest who shared it, having been in the room that day, used it as a humorous story about how old-fashioned, outdated and, frankly, outmoded our Anglican practices around clergy- and congregational-transitions / deployment used to be. He laughed. I laughed. We all laughed. Oh, how silly we once were!

What was once a novel, new teaching has become standard: search committees put together search profiles in the hopes of enticing their next rector; the church speaks in terms of transitions (not deployment); and dioceses try to raise up clergy leaders and encourage congregations, even as we know that most communities are shrinking, can’t provide substantial resources to generously incentivize clergy movement, and most clergy are responding by staying put and keeping a careful eye on their CPG benefits.

What was once cutting-edge and new is now showing signs of its age, and it’s awfully clunky in practice. That suggests something new must be emerging. So what’s next in clergy calls?