Going beyond restructuring
The Rev. Margaret Watson, currently serving the Episcopal Church on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota reflects on the discussion of restructuring the church.
--and it sure sounds like a familiar drum beat. If I said, de-regulate, de-fund and give back to the States and localities, strip bare, no structure here or there, no centralization here or there, no giving to a national or international body, all spending, all everything would be local... wouldn't it sound kinda like the Republican platform?
And that is exactly what it is.... Crush the structure, push back to Provinces and Dioceses and congregations decision making and control and allow all the decisions to happen locally, allow formation and etc. to happen at grass roots level etc. and the Church will then be free of dysfunctional structures that nobody knows what they do and why we have them and then we will all be free for Mission.
....
Our current system --our current structures aren't working because they are under the same duress as our government --polarization, --and polarization is alive and well because our cultures themselves are under great stress and change and reformation (interpersonal relationships, gender roles, how we make and spend money, our responsibilities to each other and the earth).
...
And, this is what is happening here. It is cultural. It is contextual. And it is good. This is exactly the kind of structural shift that some are calling for. But what I also see happening is a lack of depth in the training --in the things that make our tasty and distinctive Christian and, yes, Anglican/Episcopalian approach to death present. Some things have become so contextualized that a touch-stone with what unites us is like a very dim star.
And I both applaud all these circumstances --the present morphing, the contextualization --and my fear and discomfort (which I am willing to own and keep before me for Oh So Many Reasons).
Back to the current melt-down in the church... those that are raising the loudest ruckus for de-centralization and de-regulation would probably be the least supportive of the changes and enculturation that is happening here... and, quite frankly, this work here would not happen were it not for our centralization and historical commitment to mission as in sending a priest to build congregations and serve/teach/be with the people funded by the greater church.
It's like a Catch-22.
What somebody needs to say aloud is that we are living in a great time of reformation, and that reformation has FINALLY struck the church broad-side. But what somebody needs to say aloud is that we need to be conscious of this reformation, and not do knee-jerk reactions (equivalent to the olde-style reformation of chopping some one's head off or burning them at the stake). Conscious.
As to structure --I don't see de-centralization and de-regulation working. It doesn't work. Look. At. Us. Remember.
...
I am caught in that place of knowing that the death of current church structures is an event that is coming. And of knowing that I will grieve that great death, for all kinds of reasons. And of knowing that my great mis-trust of institutions and institutionalization and institutionalism will cause me to have great hope in an unexpected future --but that hope will be broken. Because we are a broken people....
--and that my vision of what the Church could be is far too radical to hope for... and would be most closely modeled after AA --which requires that there be no structure at all, no buildings, no safe guards, no establishment, no leadership... one book, a rule of life --only the experience and acknowledgement of death and the hope of new life
Read it all here.
Can't help myself... there's a lot of verbiage happening on the House of Deputies/Bishops to General Convention email list serve and various other places about re-structuring the Church because the Church is dying....
--and it sure sounds like a familiar drum beat. If I said, de-regulate, de-fund and give back to the States and localities, strip bare, no structure here or there, no centralization here or there, no giving to a national or international body, all spending, all everything would be local... wouldn't it sound kinda like the Republican platform?
And that is exactly what it is.... Crush the structure, push back to Provinces and Dioceses and congregations decision making and control and allow all the decisions to happen locally, allow formation and etc. to happen at grass roots level etc. and the Church will then be free of dysfunctional structures that nobody knows what they do and why we have them and then we will all be free for Mission.
....
Our current system --our current structures aren't working because they are under the same duress as our government --polarization, --and polarization is alive and well because our cultures themselves are under great stress and change and reformation (interpersonal relationships, gender roles, how we make and spend money, our responsibilities to each other and the earth).
...
And, this is what is happening here. It is cultural. It is contextual. And it is good. This is exactly the kind of structural shift that some are calling for. But what I also see happening is a lack of depth in the training --in the things that make our tasty and distinctive Christian and, yes, Anglican/Episcopalian approach to death present. Some things have become so contextualized that a touch-stone with what unites us is like a very dim star.
And I both applaud all these circumstances --the present morphing, the contextualization --and my fear and discomfort (which I am willing to own and keep before me for Oh So Many Reasons).
Back to the current melt-down in the church... those that are raising the loudest ruckus for de-centralization and de-regulation would probably be the least supportive of the changes and enculturation that is happening here... and, quite frankly, this work here would not happen were it not for our centralization and historical commitment to mission as in sending a priest to build congregations and serve/teach/be with the people funded by the greater church.
It's like a Catch-22.
What somebody needs to say aloud is that we are living in a great time of reformation, and that reformation has FINALLY struck the church broad-side. But what somebody needs to say aloud is that we need to be conscious of this reformation, and not do knee-jerk reactions (equivalent to the olde-style reformation of chopping some one's head off or burning them at the stake). Conscious.
As to structure --I don't see de-centralization and de-regulation working. It doesn't work. Look. At. Us. Remember.
...
I am caught in that place of knowing that the death of current church structures is an event that is coming. And of knowing that I will grieve that great death, for all kinds of reasons. And of knowing that my great mis-trust of institutions and institutionalization and institutionalism will cause me to have great hope in an unexpected future --but that hope will be broken. Because we are a broken people....
--and that my vision of what the Church could be is far too radical to hope for... and would be most closely modeled after AA --which requires that there be no structure at all, no buildings, no safe guards, no establishment, no leadership... one book, a rule of life --only the experience and acknowledgement of death and the hope of new life
Read it all here.
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