Episcopal Church Development & Endowment: What are the Priorities?

There is a proposal in the Episcopal Church to launch a development campaign that would raise endowment funds to offset congregations’ financial obligations to clergy.  At present, congregations send 18% of their clergy’s salary to the Church Pension Fund to invest in clergy pensions.  I am fully supportive of that.

Of course, whether the Episcopal Church is in a position to launch any major development effort is a valid question.  Smarter people than I are looking at that question.

But I’d like to take a step back.

Let’s say there were a well-organized fund-raising effort to create an endowment for the Episcopal Church.  The proposal now on the table is to help congregations fund the 18% contribution to clergy pension funds.  I’m in a smallish parish with an average Sunday attendance of about 135 people.  We have a full-time priest and some part-time  lay employees (Christian Education Director, parish administrator, choirmaster, and organist).  We manage to pay our full diocesan assessment, salaries, the clergy pension, and all the other employee benefits we are called to make.  All those are part of our core budget.  We budget them before other “discretionary” items.  It’s a moral obligation, in my view.

But I’d like to look at this in a different way.  There is much energy around the topics of the structure and future of the Episcopal Church.  Many people are urging that we “re-invent” The Episcopal Church to be more effective and responsive to the world around us and to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I expect we all have our own wishes, hopes, biases, and hobbyhorses around those topics. Those will all come together at the 2012 General Convention in Indianapolis in July.

Would I like to see our parish reduce its clergy expense?  Sure!  Why not?  But is that the best use of new monies that might flow into The Episcopal Church?  I’m not so sure.

If we were going to create endowments, I’d like to suggest a couple more areas that might be better investments in the future of the entire Church.

Seminary Education 
Many people throughout The Episcopal Church have decried the high cost of seminary education.

The cost of seminary education prevents some great candidates even from beginning the discernment process.  I know some people who didn’t even enter the process because they knew they could not afford to attend seminary. I don’t think “ability to pay” is a reason that Jesus would have used to knock some people out being his disciples.

Too many of our new clergy are burdened with massive debt.  For those who do enroll and graduate, I suspect seminary debt has a subtle (or not-so-subtle) influence about where they will serve.  Or at least it would influence me, were I in their shoes.

What if we had an endowment that enabled every qualified seminarian to graduate from seminary and move to the congregation to which s/he felt called, without having to worry about a mountain of debt to repay?  Would more move into small/mid-sized congregations that now lack full-time clergy?  I don’t know, but I think it’s worth asking.

Campus Ministry

I’ve heard from some marvelous priests – like Tom Woodward, David Fly, and Bill Coats – about how effective Episcopal Campus Ministry was in the 1960s and ‘70s.  Not only did they raise up great priests in our church, but those ministries also helped young adults get involved and excited about the mission and ministry of the Episcopal Church.  Admittedly, that is now a half-century in our past.  But even today in the Diocese of Missouri, most of our young priests have come out of campus ministry.  Unfortunately, though, we have few such ministries in our diocese.  (I expect that’s true of many other dioceses, too.)   Campus ministry seems to be an area in which many dioceses have reduced their spending – or eliminated it altogether.

Admittedly, we are in a time when most young adults are not affiliated with any church.  Surveys show that they eschew church largely because they view Christians as “judgmental,” “hypocritical,” and other negative adjectives.  But what if Episcopal priests were active on college campuses – engaging the issues of the day from our lens of God’s mission on earth?  Might more “spiritual-but-not-religious” young adults see in the Episcopal Church as an expression of Christianity through which they might live out their values?

Priorities

As we move toward the 2012 General Convention, a great many groups with their own agendae are proposing resolutions.  You can see all the resolutions in the massive, 800-page Blue Book available here.   In that report of the current status of the Church, you will find some wonderful reports and many proposals for moving forward.  Some – not well represented in the Blue Book – are trying to think anew about how we go about being  the Church.

It seems to me that the current structure of The Episcopal Church might be depicted as a series of farm silos.  Each is surveying its plot of land and doing what it deems best.  I have no doubt that the various Commissions, Committees, Agencies, and Boards of TEC are faithfully trying to discern a way forward.  Reading through the Report to the General Convention, I find many good ideas and good intentions.

But we – like almost all churches – are in a period of re-visioning.  Our membership and funds are declining.  We can no longer afford to fund all the “good stuff” we would like to fund.  We need to prioritize.  We need to look at all those good ideas and prioritize them – judging which ones are most likely to advance the kingdom of God here.

If we were to create an endowment, where might it best be directed?  Should we direct it to help those congregations that are barely hanging on – barely able to afford a full-time priest?  Or might we direct it toward areas that might bring us energy and growth – areas such as seminary education and campus ministry?

I look forward to conversations with other Deputies.  But, for now, I think seminary education and campus ministry would be better investments in our future.  

Blogger Befuddlement

I apologize for the mess that appears in my recent posts. I've been blogging for quite a while, but this week I've been confronted with a whole different version of Blogger.  I suspect it's going to take a while for me to learn how to format my posts.

Giving Room for Conservatives

Several weeks ago, on the HoBD list, I talked about the "political" views General Convention takes and wondered out loud how we could honor those who are in the minority of our resolutions.  I urged that we should give some gracious space to those who voted in the minority. I received quite a bit of push-back by many friends on the liberal side. 


Yesterday, Presiding Bishop Jefferts Shori spoke to Province V.  She spoke about the General Convention process, and she seemed to decry the culture of "winners and losers."  If I understood her correctly, she was calling our church into a process of conversation that would not merely result in "winners and losers."  


The Presiding Bishop reminded us Deputies that we have the opportunity to move into a "committee of the whole," apart from strict parliamentary rules -- in which we could have conversation rather than confrontation. 


I had the opportunity to talk with the Presiding Bishop this week.  I informed her that I had suggested the Deputies have holy conversation rather than just parliamentary debate.  I confessed that I am a liberal on social and political issues. However, I also feel for those Deputies who come out on the losing end of our debates.  


I sense it is time for us to find a way to hold debates that give room for the minority.  Perhaps my thinking is guided by the realization that, in the ebb and flow of things, my positions will someday be in the minority.  

Fox & Martins in Accord!

I  attended  the Province V Synod meeting in Chicago earlier this week. At breakfast on the first day, I saw Bishop Dan Martins.  He and I have sparred on the HOBD list over the last few years, but we had a fond greeting over breakfast. 
Few official votes were taken at the Province V Synod meeting. But I could see Bishop Dan from where I sat.  Let the record show that we voted the same way on the two votes that were cast.  Who says miracles can't happen? :)  

Canadians in Rupert's Land Name It -- Reject Anglican Covenant

I have never considered the Diocese of Rupert's Land (Anglican Church of Canada) an enclave of liberalism. Some people in the Diocese have issued a statement against the Anglican Covenant. Therefore, I'm doubly impressed by their statement. You can read the whole statement at the No Anglican Covenant blog or below.

I especially appreciate this frank statement from them:

Finally, of course we are aware of the reason that this document has been born, but on which the document is entirely silent, namely, the matter of gay and lesbian persons’ rights in regard to marriage, ordination and consecration.

I agree. Many of the proponents of the Covenant claim it's about ecclesiology. But, looking at the genesis and history of the Anglican Covenant, it seems to me the whole thing grew out of anathema toward gay/lesbian people -- especially those in holy orders -- in the Anglican Communion.

I appreciate the observation that the people who forced the Anglican Covenant are silent on the bigotry that spawned it -- namely, their hatred of gay/lesbian people and our relationships. Thank you, Rupert's Land, for pointing to that. Many of us point to the ugly heritage of racism in our history. Someday, I hope the proponents of the Anglican Covenant will be named as the bigots they are. Their supposedly Biblical hatred of gay men and lesbians is the veneer behind which they hide. One day, they will be remembered alongside the bigots who repressed the Africans in South Africa and the African-Americans in the U.S. South.

My Anglican heart sang when I read their statement of the Anglican virtue of "muddling through." They write:

Anglicanism works best when it is allowed to muddle, rather like John Ralston Saul claims Canada works best. Muddling is also an important aspect of listening for the Spirit. We muddle big ideas and changes for a while, often quite a while, but then we move, as in the ordaining of women. We trust and hope that we will get over our sexuality muddle relatively soon. In the meantime, we don’t need the pressure and promised endless process of the Covenant to place a stumblingblock in the midst of our muddling.

Each autonomous Anglican Church lives in the midst of cultural and other conditions that profoundly shape its missional response to the gospel call for justice and compassion. It is our central task to search in each time and place for that faithful response, which will differ as we perceive that call. While acknowledging that change can be both painful as well as liberating, we ought not to chain ourselves to seeking agreement across vastly different cultures and contexts before responding to the Spirit’s call for justice, compassion and inclusion.

I think they are right. We have had other fierce debates in the history of the Anglican Communion -- from questions of vestments and altar candles to the question of women's ordination. But the ordination of gay/lesbian persons is what first that threw some members of the Communion moving to a juridical instrument and breaking communion with other Anglicans.

There have been serious debates in the Anglican Communion which touch upon matters of salvation. The blessing of same-sex relationships does not touch upon salvation, nor do the ecclesiological questions about ordination or consectation of partnered gay/lesbian people. Yet some people have chosen this to be the issue upon which to break the Anglican Communion.

Doesn’t that make it clear? Some forces in the Anglican Communion are more icked-out by the LGBT issue than they care about serious theological issues in Christendom.

I should pity them … were I not so angry at them.

Addenda:
The full text of the RupertsLand letter has been published here and is copied below.

You can see the The Anglican Church of Canada's Governance Working Group on Legal and Constitutional Issues (June 2011) here.


Here is the full text of the letter from Rupert’s Land Anglicans:

March 24, 2012

To Rupertsland Anglicans

Dear members of the Body of Christ
We are aware that the Diocese is studying the final version of the Anglican Communion “Covenant”. There have been several deanery meetings, and it appears that further meetings may be scheduled, with a view to bringing recommendations to Diocesan Council and thence to Synod this fall.

We know too of the extensive literature opposing the Covenant that has developed, as for example in the website www.noanglicancovenant.com.We have also reviewed the General Synod document in the link below which sets forth serious procedural and doctrinal questions to which there do not appear to be answers at present. Finally, of course we are aware of the reason that this document has been born, but on which the document is entirely silent, namely, the matter of gay and lesbian persons’ rights in regard to marriage, ordination and consecration.

While it is quite appropriate to study new documents that attempt to speak to our faith in relevant and yet historically faithful ways, we do not wish to debate the contents of the Covenant, confusing and unclear though they are. The much more central issue is the assumed need for the Anglican Church of Canada to subscribe to this latter day creed, with its quasi-judicial processes in section three and four.

The best test in regard to the need for such a document is to ask, “What would happen if this document were adopted, and then a real issue came along that promised division among the world-wide Anglican Communion?” Appropriately enough, there was such an issue 35 years ago, namely, the ordination of women.

What would have happened regarding the plan to ordain women when first it was being advocated if the “Covenant” were in place 35 years ago? First, there would be notice given about the plan to ordain women. Then unhappy churches, some of whom still today do not ordain women, would express their discomfort through the world councils such as Lambeth, or the meetings of bishops. Then would come committees, consultations, theological debates and more process. Finally, if the initiating church stuck to its plans, it could be “sanctioned”; thrown out of wider church councils, or even perhaps be declared to be “not in communion”.

It seems to us that this is not an exaggeration. Some parts of our world-wide communion still do not ordain women, let alone consecrate women bishops.

Anglicanism works best when it is allowed to muddle, rather like John Ralston Saul claims Canada works best. Muddling is also an important aspect of listening for the Spirit. We muddle big ideas and changes for a while, often quite a while, but then we move, as in the ordaining of women. We trust and hope that we will get over our sexuality muddle relatively soon. In the meantime, we don’t need the pressure and promised endless process of the Covenant to place a stumbling block in the midst of our muddling.

Each autonomous Anglican Church lives in the midst of cultural and other conditions that profoundly shape its missional response to the gospel call for justice and compassion. It is our central task to search in each time and place for that faithful response, which will differ as we perceive that call. While acknowledging that change can be both painful as well as liberating, we ought not to chain ourselves to seeking agreement across vastly different cultures and contexts before responding to the Spirit’s call for justice, compassion and inclusion.

Please give this letter and the document in the attached link your prayerful consideration. If you have not yet done so, please read the Report of the Governance Committee of our National Church at the website below. Other helpful websites are listed as well for further reading. We have attached the letter as a Word doc. file as well for ease of forwarding.

If you wish to join your name to ours in sending this letter to a wider audience, please reply accordingly to this email. You also may wish to know that we have informed the Bishop about our intent, and shared with him this letter.

Good Friday ... Holy Saturday

I have intentionally kept silence during this Triduum. I have sought to keep still.

I realize that my reflections now may be too late. After all, Christians throughout the world are already saying, "Alleluia, He is Risen!" Easter Joy is unleashed, and I am glad it is.

But I want to back up a couple of days. Since coming home after the Maundy Thursday service, I have been tongue-tied here. The Good Friday liturgy left me still more silent.

This has been one of those years when I have been able to immerse myself in the Gospel story.

I went to my parish's celebrations of Maundy Thursday and (as my priest said) the day that our Church persists in calling "Good" Friday.

Walking through the death of Jesus, I was reminded of another death. The death of my friend, Jane Pairo.

I enlisted Jane to her job. Weary of my job, I persuaded her to come to my organization and be my boss.

A dear friend and colleague, Jane went with me to a national conference in Philadelphia. While there, she had an attack of diverticulitis. She was taken to the hospital. She had surgery. She should have been all right. I visited her in the hospital, expecting her to recover.

I came home from the conference, expecting her to come home shortly after. Instead, I got a call that she was dead. A blood-clot broke loose and killed her. She was never coming home to me, this woman I had loved and respected.

I came home this week from the Liturgy of Good Friday, expecting to think holy thoughts and do holy deeds.

Instead, I started washing dishes and house-cleaning. It was a few hours later that I realized: that's exactly what I did after I heard that Jane had died: I launched into a frenzy of housecleaning.

I wonder what Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany and Mary Virgin did after they saw Jesus die upon the cross. They had had a long day. They had seen Jesus ride into town. They had participated in the feast. Then they had had seen him be arrested, tried, and crucified. Oh, crucified.

What did they do when they returned to that upper room? Did they do as I did? Did they busy themselves with cleaning up after the meal? ... And did they weep, as they cleaned?

What is it about us women that -- after we grieve deeply -- we return home and clean up the remnants?

Another Maundy Thursday

Here it is again: another Maundy Thursday. I'm never ready for it. Even after the long season of Lent, and that crazy Palm Sunday liturgy, it always seems to sneak up on me.

Our parish gathers at 5:30 in the parish hall for a meal together. A veritable banquet of food is set out. Our rector gathers us, reminding us what Maundy Thursday means in the Church: an invitation to Eucharist, a call to love one another, and a call to pray with Christ through this evening.

Then we share a meal together. The parish hall is loud and boisterous, as folks chat in this parish of people who truly care about each other and enjoy each other's company.

At 6:30, we are called to move into the nave. Having shared the Liturgy of the Word in the parish hall, we move into the Eucharist with Hymn #329 ["Now, my tongue, the mystery telling..."]. Then it's straight into Eucharistic Prayer A.

There is a goodly crowd tonight -- the largest I remember seeing in our parish for a Maundy Thursday service. Strangely, tonight it's the front pews that are crowded. The back rows are empty. Perhaps our parish is maturing. Perhaps more people want to be near the cross and the altar. I do not know.

For me, the Eucharist moves too quickly. I know what this liturgy tells us. I know we are commemorating the last meal Jesus shared with his disciples, his friends. And I know what's going to come afterwards: He's going to the Mount of Olives to pray, asking his friends to stay and pray with him a while. And then he's going to be betrayed. And then the crucifixion will come tomorrow--another innocent man murdered for no just reason.

Tonight, I just want to dwell with the meal, the fellowship. But our liturgy takes me into the heart of Maundy Thursday.

Like so many other parishes, our service ends with the lights dimming ... and then the "stripping of the altar." It's not just the altar that is stripped. It's not just the vestments and paraments and candles and Eucharistic elements that are removed. No, the whole church is stripped of every last symbol of hope.

You readers of this blog know how much I treasure my ministry as crucifer, and you have heard some of my stories about how bearing the processional cross matters to me. You've heard how joyfully I bear it in ordinary times, in baptisms, and how fiercely in heart-breaking funerals.

This week, our altar guild asked me to remove the torches and processional cross from the back of the nave during this service. I was honored to be asked, because these are objects that are very dear to my heart as an acolyte and crucifer.

In the quiet and nearly dark church, I moved to the rear of the nave, removed the torches, processed them forward ... to the altar .. and into the sacristy. With people kneeling in the darkened nave, I felt powerfully what it meant to remove those torches -- "the light of Christ" -- now extinguished and removed.

Then I moved quietly back to the rear of the nave. I once again lifted our massively heavy processional cross which I have so often carried in triumphant procession, always lifting it as high as I could. But not tonight. Tonight, I moved it tenderly out of its stand. I didn't heft it high in procession. I carried it low ... slow ... and tenderly out of the nave, through the chancel, and into the sacristy. ... And it broke my heart. Every other time I have carried that cross as crucifer, I have carried it boldly as a sign of hope -- leading the procession of choir and clergy. Tonight, I carried it low, in near-darkness, removing it from our our sacred space. Removing it from our hopes and our fierce faith. I have seldom felt more mournful as I made that impossibly long trek from the back of the nave into the sacristy with that now-shrouded cross. This cross which I generally bear as a sign of hope ... I now carried in mourning and with a deep sense of loss and grief.

I didn't time any of this. But the Altar Guild members were scurrying around, stripping off all the paraments, Eucharistic vessels, altar cloths. I think I -- carrying that cross low, not high aloft -- carried the very last vestige of "Church" out of our church tonight. It felt meet and right so to do.

Then I went back to my pew in the darkness and knelt in silence, trying again -- as I do every Maundy Thursday -- to wrap my heart and soul around the events two millenia ago. Trying to grasp what Jesus' friends must have experienced. Trying to imagine what Jesus experienced, praying alone in that garden.

Praying in a dark, stripped-bare church.

And so the Triduum begins for me. I pray it will be a holy time for me and for you ... and for all God's children.

Courageous LGBT Voices in Sudan

I was amazed to learn today that a few LGBTs in Sudan have had the courage to launch an online magazine to speak of their concerns.

A brief notice is available here, from The Daily Activist. A more extensive story is available here at PinkNews.

As the PinkNews story reminds us, "Sudan is one of the strictest countries in the world to criminalise homosexuality. Same-sex sexual activity is illegal and, according to Article 148, capital punishment applies to a man or woman engaging in such acts."

I encourage you to read the PinkNews story. The courage of these gay/lesbian Sudanese is astonishing. If their identities become known, they can probably be put to death. That puts our U.S. actions at Stonewall in perspective.

It appears that the Sudanese involved in this publishing effort are mostly located in the Muslim country of Sudan. But the article makes clear that the nation of South Sudan -- with Christians and animists in the majority -- is not much more progressive. As one commenter writes: "It will be interesting to see how the mainly Christian breakway nation of South Sudan develops when it comes to LGBT issues." Another commenter writes: "If it doesn’t end up as another Uganda it will be a very pleasant surprise." Indeed it will.

Gay-bashing is very popular in Africa -- and certainly among those with a link to the Anglican Communion. I hope homophobia will not overtake the national climate of South Sudan, which has so many more life-and-death issues with which to deal.

I spent a couple of weeks in South Sudan in 2006 as part of my diocese's Companion Diocese Relationship. I wasn't there with a partner. I wasn't there as an advocate for LGBT concerns. But I couldn't help being the lesbian I am. And I was in constant fear that some Sudanese force would identify me and nab me. I was well aware that I could have been snagged away from my Missouri and Lui friends by the Sudanese government. If they suspected or declared me "gay," the government could have killed me. Nobody that I am, I knew the State Department wouldn't do anything to help me.

How much greater is the courage of these Sudanese citizens who are publishing this online magazine! I am in awe of their courage. I wish I knew some way to offer my support. But I'm as ignorant about help them as my friends would have been had I been nabbed by Sudan back in 2006.