Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

The church is not a business. But we would be foolish to ignore some business concepts that can help us be better ministers in our communities, more effective witnesses for Christ.

We don’t scoff at the importance of audits—clearly a sound business practice. So why not consider other aspects of business and figure out how they might apply to our congregations and communities of faith?

Managing up is an important component to a successful ministry. Why? Well, we all know what happens when a priest is at juggernauts with the vestry—and/or staff. Or when the senior warden and committee members can’t communicate. Or when the bishop and the congregation’s leadership (lay and/or ordained) are at odds. It’s not pretty. Disagreements become distractions, and the focus moves away outreach and discipleship. This isn’t to say that people can’t have different opinions—even strongly held positions. But in many cases, effective “managing up” will mitigate many problems, encouraging ministry, creativity, and comaraderie.

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I often tweet about climate change. Occasionally I’ll go to meetings of an organization called 350.org and every now and then sign a petition or post some flyers. All of these things feel small in the face of a big problem.

On Sunday, however, as I marched with more than 300,000 other people down the streets of Manhattan, I felt as if I were doing something big.

Now, I suspect the average Episcopalian, like me, is not a radical. I’ve never loved marching or shouting chants. I would have rather spent my Sunday reading or watching a movie.

Yet, there I was, with other people from my church marching against climate change, doing what felt necessary. Not only our planet and the creatures in it, but also many humans are suffering because of climate change and it will only get worse. To ignore the problem is to turn our back on our neighbor.

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Part 3 of 4. (Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 4)

You may wish that change would happen like a thunderstorm, arriving quickly, without warning; that it would clang like thunder and awaken everyone to action. You may wish that vibrant lightning would alert the congregation to the spirit's leadings, that massive drops of excitement for change would soak everyone equally and fully in the new way. You may wish the coming changes were obvious and that like a heavy rain, they would, cleanse us of everything blocking the way. And surely we all wish that change would be gone as fast as it came, leaving a cool, clean feeling of newness, of freshness, of life giving beginnings.

This is a rare occurrence.

Sometimes in fact, change happens more like a hurricane, with the force of the spinning vortex scattering people apart from each other, and into destruction, violence and pain. You will start with a cleared space afterwards, but with a greatly reduced congregation, and with years of recovery, clean-up, and healing ahead of you.

The majority of change, in fact, happens like the slow, dreary and monotonous rain of New England. I remember the summer I moved to Vermont: it rained a little bit every day, for forty days, the sun never peeping out, the clouds never releasing a torrent, just one grey day after another. As long as that summer felt, change in church usually takes even longer.

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Sharing Vital Practices

Over 6,000 church leaders have subscribed to ECF Vital Practices to gain ideas, tools, and resources for building up vibrant ministry. As our congregations start back into the program year, connect your congregation to these great resources by subscribing to ECF Vital Practices. Use this link, or click on the Subscribe button in the upper right hand corner anywhere on the ECF Vital Practices website.

As a subscriber, in addition to receiving Vestry Papers each month you will also receive our monthly digest - a collection of articles related to your ministry as congregational leaders. This digest, "Empowering Volunteers," is an example of this resource. Subscribers may also post comments or resources directly on the ECF Vital Practices website.

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How do parish’s talk about debt --- when many parishioners are crushed by debt?
We began this three part series on debt retirement talking about the impact of debt on the mission and ministry of a parish. A reminder that the current rule of thumb is that debt services should comprise no more than about 25% of your budget. Begin by asking, 
“Has our parish’s debt had a negative impact in any way on the church’s ability to meet current operational needs? “
In my last blog, I wrote about the importance of connecting how mission and ministry will be positively impacted by a successful capital campaign.
But, there’s a big elephant that many parishioners are too embarrassed to talk about. Many priests, struggling with loans from seminary, are unable to tackle their own debt. 

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The kick-off for our fall Christian formation program was the most successful in years. Thirty adults sat in folding chairs to discuss Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s profound question, “What is church?” Another forty children from nursery age to senior high gathered in different classrooms for Sunday school.

Of course, numbers for the first Sunday don’t always hold through the fall, but I’m betting the momentum will build rather than slack. We didn’t change the core of the formation program. It’s still fifty minutes of Bible-based lessons. But the newly formed Christian formation commission made several key tweaks. 

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I’m reading a book this week by the priest, theologian, and amateur cook Robert Capon called Supper of the Lamb. It’s part cookbook and part meditation on life and God. There are recipes and there’s a whole chapter devoted to cutting an onion and there are paragraphs sprinkled throughout on our relationship to the creation.

For example:

"Creation exists in its own right, is no parable, no front, no Punch and Judy show in which God plays all the parts, but a vast and vacuous meeting where each thing acts out its nature, shouts I am I, as if no other thing had being. The world exists, not for what it means but for what it is. The purpose of mushrooms is to be mushrooms; wine is to be wine: Things are precious before they are contributory."

In other words (I think), it’s an appreciation of the creation for what it is, not for what it can do for us. It’s a reminder to stop and look closely at things and appreciate them as the gifts they are.

One of the reasons I’m enjoying the book is that sitting with it feels like stepping outside the flow of things happening in my life and in the world. A book with a chapter about peeling an onion is self-consciously not in a hurry.

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The return of school and these post-Labor Day days seem to have kicked the whole world – and no less the church – back into program mode. Bible studies and Sunday schools and small groups and senior ministries and other programs are in full swing, or at least they’re getting there. That’s a great thing. But why are we doing this, anyway?

The other day, I was talking with a friend. “I’ve got to tell you something,” she said, “I’ve been going to another church!” I heard genuine excitement in her voice. And I also heard a little anxiety. Previously, she and her family had been active in their local Episcopal church. She first found her way into that congregation through their passion for social justice and the food pantry they run in their economically mixed neighborhood. My friend, you see, has a real passion for justice and even though she was raised in a nominally Christian household, she was never drawn to God or organized religion in her 20s. Volunteering with the food pantry, however, led her to eventually make connections with and ground her life in the worship and fellowship of that congregation. In time, her children were baptized at that parish church.

“What’s the new church?” I asked.

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Do your commissions have enough middle managers?

I’ve talked many times about commissions and how they can be vehicles for sharing and expanding leadership in a church. But if the composition isn’t right, then they will most likely flounder.

Diversity in age, gender, and race is important. You also want varying lengths of time as members—longtime, new, and in-between members will offer different viewpoints.

But another key factor in determining the composition of a commission (or vestry, for that matter) is work experience. Commissions need executives, support staff, and stay-at-home moms or dads (which, as an aside, requires some executive-style skills). They also need some middle managers.

Effective middle managers know how to manage up—and manage down. And even though some people hate hearing business language when talking about the church, there is much we can learn from business models so that we can be more effective in our mission and ministry. 

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Part 2 of a series on debt retirement.

In my last blog, I wrote about important questions to ask when considering the impact of debt on your operating budget. The current rule of thumb is that debt services should comprise no more than about 25% of your budget. As yourself:
Has your parish’s debt had a negative impact in any way on the church’s ability to meet current operational needs?  Has the church been forced to cut back or restrict ministry resources in order to -service the debt?  Could the money currently being spent to service a debt obligation be re-appropriated to new ministries that could inspire and encourage your church and possibly attract new families? 

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When you think about stewardship, do you associate it with giving or with sharing?

To me, giving suggests a transaction, a handing off, while sharing implies relationship, a connection. God invites us into relationship – with God and with each other – and encourages us to open our eyes and to see what God is showing, telling, and teaching us.

This month our Vestry Papers articles share stories of the ways congregations or individuals are responding to God’s invitation. As contributor Demi Prentiss observes, “Our response can open the door to God’s multiplying our gifts, allowing them to bear life-giving fruit in the lives of others, in ways we may never have the privilege of seeing.”

Our September stories include:

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The concussive bursts added a heartbeat, and my eardrums thrummed for hours.

But it was so worth it, to see the sky rain fire. To watch explosions of color, whites and golds, reds and blues and greens, paint the night.

Cincinnati has an unusual tradition of fireworks on Labor Day weekend. And these aren’t just any fireworks, but thirty minutes of brilliant choreography, framed by two of the Ohio River bridges.

And my viewing perch wasn’t just any spot but twenty-four floors up, perfectly centered between the bridges and in front of the barge, where the fireworks were launched. At this height, I felt a part of the sky, a part of the show.

When you’re that close, when the fireworks seem just a fingertip away, you notice things. Even before the rocket exploded in the sky, the next one was lit and launched. Another round was sidling up to the practice mound. The entire show was scripted and rehearsed so that even when an errant firework floundered, few noticed.

Maybe it’s a reach but I thought about the dedication to planning that undergirded the evening. Sure, we would have enjoyed a random showing of fireworks but instead we were dazzled, in part because of good planning. The fireworks exhibitors always knew what was coming next, which wick to light, which rockets to prepare. 

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It’s no secret that the Episcopal Church has historically been associated with a particular stratum of society—white, educated, socially connected, middle- to upper-class. The Presiding Bishop used to live in Greenwich, Connecticut—and now lives (or could live) in a Manhattan penthouse. We are a church that can count the number of presidents who have been members  and can cite the large number of elected officials who belong.  There has always been a number of African-Americans in the Episcopal Church but by and large in majority-black congregations. Power—thanks to the church’s abysmal history of race relations  — has remained with the church’s white (and usually male) members.

In recent years and decades, this has begun to change. There are now several African-American bishops, including two of dioceses south of the Mason-Dixon line. There is a growing interest in Spanish-language ministry. We ordain priests from immigrant and Native American communities. Above all, there is the recognition that simply being the church of the white elite is no longer an option—not if we are serious about thriving in the wonderful hetereogeneity of 21st-century America nor, for that matter, if we are serious about being the body of Christ.

At the same time, the church has come to be dominated by a theology that centres [sic] on the “mission of God.” There is much to admire about this emphasis—indeed, I wrote a book about it. But I want to highlight one aspect of this emphasis. In the current theology of the church, the word mission is, as I have written at length elsewhere, often associated with a constellation of other words: task, job, do, work, labour, obligation. I once called this the Nike theology of mission: just do it.  Get out there and do the work of God.

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Like every other church, St. George’s deals with deferred maintenance on our buildings and grounds. We try to keep up with as many projects as we can, but our forebears gave us a lot of stuff and, today, the funds and the personnel are limited. But even more limited than the money or the volunteer core has been the vision to do something and the will to carry it out.

For the life of me, I could never figure out why we couldn’t get a properly organized Buildings & Grounds Committee at St. George’s, despite the fact that there are lots of handy and capable crafts-people in this congregation and community. In part, that was the problem: the do-ers wouldn’t come to the table because they just wanted to get a project done, and the planners would slow down the process and frustrate the former group.

Over the course of this past year, that heavy dysfunction has begun to change. It changed when one person came on board, gifted with a calm, straightforward, clear, and balanced leadership capacity. She has convened meetings and made the meetings – not to mention the agenda and overall process – quite clear and transparent. She has massaged egos and calmed nerves and clarified points of disagreement. She has her own thoughts about what should happen and what something should look like, but she leads with her experience and gifts as a group facilitator.

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Part 2 of 4. Read Part 1 here, Part 3 here, and Part 4 here.
When you begin to lead from the side in your church, I have found that people will question your authority, question your power, and question your ability to be a leader. To stand firm in my commitment to lead from the side it has helped me to be able to explain why I am allowed to do this, why I am encouraged to do this, why I am called to do this. You can do this, and while you are at it, you can explain to your fellow congregants that they are called, too.
Calling is a big word, and the authority to lead is a big idea. How can I so broadly claim that you have this authority? Quite simply, baptism is a call to ministry, Church is a gathering of ministers, ministers lead both in the church and in the world. Ordained leadership is a good and powerful thing, but it is not the only thing, nor even the primary thing, that keeps a church gathered together discerning God’s ministry. The primary thing is the people of the church listening for God’s guidance for being in the world. It would be great if every church was developing programs to help you discern your calling, and was empowering you to lead ministries both within your church and in the world. But whether or not your local congregation is helping you with your calling, God is calling all baptized Christians to ministries of leadership. If you wish your congregation would change, you have the authority to be one of the leaders of that change.

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"What do we do with the people who say they want to learn but can’t come to a weekly Bible study, or even Sunday school?"

Over the past eighteen months, I’ve learned a lot about how new ministry models emerge: Collaboratively. In fits and starts. Through a creative combination of need and excitement. With more failures than successes. And by the power of the Spirit of God who never fails to make her presence known when we’re on the right track.

The story of hybrid faith formation began at the 2013 Forma Conference.  My friend and colleague Day Smith Pritchartt had read an article I wrote about “faith formation networks,”  eporting on work by John Roberto as part of the Faith Formation 2020 research project he helped lead.

I was excited because faith formation networks seemed to be a great answer to a question I get by phone, email, and social media inquiry every couple of weeks in my job in the faith formation resource center where I work:

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Can you handle one more ALS ice-bucket challenge video? I promise. There’s a twist.
When my husband was challenged on Facebook, we talked about how to make it fun – and engage the whole congregation. This is what we came up with:

(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));

Post by Richelle Thompson.

It was fun—and funny. Plus, it is, I think, a good example of being relevant and connected. Too often church isn’t a part of the world, but an insulated place of refuge and escape. Too often our priests are on pedestals, in the world but not of it. When we take ourselves too seriously, we often forget to take Jesus serious.

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On Saturday, I marched with a couple thousand others through Staten Island. People of every race from all over New York City marched peacefully against police brutality and on behalf of Eric Garner and all the other black men who have died tragically in recent years. Garner was killed last month when the police held him in an illegal chokehold.

My own interactions with police have been mostly traffic-related and pretty uneventful. I didn’t go because I personally feel like I am the victim of discrimination. In fact, I don’t really like protesting all that much. This is a problem that would be easy for me to ignore.

But I’ve learned that the recent killings of young black men are signs of a deep and ongoing discrimination and injustice, and I know this only because I’ve heard it from others who have experienced it.

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Nota - Este artículo es disponible en español aquí.

Daily reports from the US-Mexican border are truly devastating. Despite numerous documentaries and endless footage showing the tortuous trails Latinos are forced to take as a means of protecting their lives—or to somehow provide sustenance to their loved ones—nothing, absolutely nothing, compares to the heartrending experience of personally hearing the profoundly moving and miraculous testimony of a child who has survived that unimaginable exodus. Their stories are heartbreaking in their realism and their truthfulness.
I have had the opportunity, as many others have, to hear, with my heart in my hand and holding back tears, one of the thousands of stories of that often fateful crossing that brings men, women, and children to this country. Firmly holding the hand of a father or a mother, and in the case I had before me, a young man and an eight year old girl with no family, crossing through unknown worlds, surrounded by languages and cultures similar and dissimilar to theirs and feeling completely alone. A bit like Moses, miraculously saved from the waters.

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Note: This blog post is also available in English here.

Las noticias que oímos a diario provenientes de la frontera entre México y Estados Unidos son verdaderamente asoladoras. Aunque hemos visto documentales y muchos vídeos mostrándonos los recorridos de esa humanidad latina que se ve forzada a dejarlo todo como única posible solución que proteja ya sea su propia vida o las de sus familiares, o para de alguna manera proveer el sustento necesario a sus seres queridos, nada, absolutamente nada se compara con la conmovedora experiencia de oír testimonios conmovedores y milagrosos mirando a los ojos de un joven o de un niño o niña sobrevivientes de ese éxodo de miles de millas, inimaginable al pensarlo, y al oírlo, desgarrador en su realismo y veracidad.
Debo decir que tuve la oportunidad, como muchas personas la han tenido, de poder escuchar con el corazón en la mano y reteniendo las lágrimas, una de las miles y miles de historias de esta travesía muchas veces fatídica, que trae y deposita en este país a hombres y mujeres, a jóvenes y a niños y niñas de la mano firme de un padre o de una madre, y en el caso que tenía enfrente, a un joven y a una niña de ocho años sin familiares, recorriendo esos mundos desconocidos, rodeados de personas, lenguas y culturas parecidas y no, sintiéndose completamente solos, y a la vez algo así como Moisés, milagrosamente salvados de la aguas.  

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