This month we offer five resources on lay leadership. Please share this digest with new members of your vestry and extend an invitation to subscribe to ECF Vital Practices to receive Vestry Papers and the monthly digest.
1) Growing up evangelical Pentecostal gave Jade Mohorko Ortiz a unique appreciation of vestries in the Episcopal Church. In Trust the Process, she explains why having a vestry is so significant and shares helpful suggestions, especially for churches that are multicultural and multilingual.
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What did you expect?
Did you expect a Christmas miracle that would turn tense family relationships into joy at the dinner table? Did you set extra chairs in the sanctuary expecting an overflow crowd? Did you hope that hearing the Christmas story would bring you peace? Whether you daily meditated around an Advent wreath or shopped, wrapped, cleaned house, baked, hosted, and mixed cocktails for the party, what were you hoping for the most?
We hold such high, hopeful expectations for Christmas. When they shatter like a fragile ornament, shards pierce our soul with loss and regret.
That’s when the first 18 verses of John’s Gospel come in handy.
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I’ve spent a great deal of my ministry in St. Mary’s County, Maryland – the southernmost tip of the Diocese of Washington – connecting with other leaders in other churches, especially other Episcopal churches. I’ve built collaborative networks with other church leaders and, indeed, churches. In time, we have built a truly collaborative business model – two parishes becoming one parish (merging), something beyond the obvious limitations of the ‘one parish, one priest’ model.
This has been good work. Also, it’s essential work. Anyone who’s served on a vestry in, say, the past fifty years, or any clergy leader in The Episcopal Church today knows how essential this work is. There really is no other way we can keep open, let alone encourage every single Episcopal congregation to thrive unless we work together and find new, more sustainable business models.
That’s the straightforward message, and a message I’ve been crafting and working toward for more than a decade in ministry.
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We have often discussed how important it is to tell our story, whether personal, congregational or denominational.
We have made telling our story a priority at General Convention in years past and many dioceses have adopted this message including the Diocese of New Jersey that has used it as a convention theme for many years. Today we are also using the process of storytelling in our Evangelism initiatives across the church.
However, while well intentioned, we all have anecdotes about the Episcopal Church being the best kept secret, including our own congregations. Thank God for Presiding Bishop Curry, who enabled us to now say, that we belong to the church of the preacher at Megan and Harry’s wedding.
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