Dispatches from the HoB/D: We Are Royally Screwed

from Stand Firm by Greg Griffith

Sisters and Brothers,

The national 2010 statistical report is grim. If you have not seen it, check out the new report ( It is buried pretty deeply on the national website)

There is a multi-year report by province.

We are 19% down in ASA between 1999 and 2009.

We are at the point of Scrooge looking into his grave. If these trends are not reversed---I expect over twenty-five dioceses will functionally cease to function.

Several, maybe half, of our Episcopal seminaries will vanish into neighboring universities with brave words about 'forging new educational frameworks for the 21st century', leaving Anglican Tracks right to the edge.

The decline is particularly pronounced in Province 1, but it is bad everywhere but Haiti.

Here's the fact that sobers me most: the median age of an Episcopal priest is 58.

The median age of an American is 35.

They walk in---and see their grandparents.

And don't say this is because we aren't having children. Our children and our children's children are not drawn to our vision of Christ and or our byways of worship and community. Otherwise, they would be in the seats beside us in sufficient numbers. And lots of first generation Americans are having children, but they are not coming our way.

A few churches have plenty of young people---not enough, and we are not starting any more. There are too many churches burning through their patrimonies without children and without confirmands.

The lawsuits will be won, but we will end selling the buildings to the Baptists, or whoever else practices intentional evangelism, or to folk who wants to retro-fit a church as a bar for the frisson.

On the bright side, this has happened before (One history: revolutionary Virginia from 200 to 7 open parishes.). God changed the game in the subsequent generations—with Bible thumping evangelicals, and some years after, on the frontier, with heroically sacrificial Anglo-Catholics---all of whom passionately believed that belief in Christ was necessary, not merely preferable.

We can re-learn lost arts: evangelism, church planting and learning other languages, including, say, Karin, Tea Party, Rural, and Spanish?

Or do we want to pontificate about the Dennis Canon, the rights of TEC, and I-Pads at GC, until there is no one left standing but the lawyers?

Or is my worry just a bit of bad beef?


Victoria Heard

The Rev Canon Victoria Heard
Canon for Church Planting and Congregational Development
Episcopal Diocese of Dallas
C 3 Dallas