SUCKER BET
A bottle of really good Scotch says that Jim Naughton doesn’t appreciate the irony of what he posted here:
Even if one assumes that some parishes will fare better when the economy improves, these numbers raise a difficult issue. Should Episcopal bishops be more aggressive about closing struggling churches?
So how does the church confront the fact that by any worldly calculus it has too many units, and this surplus appears to be driving up overhead and diminishing its capacity to spread the gospel, while at the same time working within the constraints of our intensely localized polity, and people’s abiding commitment to their small churches?
Should I remind Jim that spending millions and millions of scarce church funds to hold on to buildings that TEO is just going to have to turn around and sell, probably at a loss since it won’t be able to keep parishes going but it refuses to sell to traditionalist Anglicans, is just too unbelievably stupid on too many levels to name here?
Or is that so blindlingly obvious that not even a liberal Episcopalian could miss it?
Even if one assumes that some parishes will fare better when the economy improves, these numbers raise a difficult issue. Should Episcopal bishops be more aggressive about closing struggling churches?
So how does the church confront the fact that by any worldly calculus it has too many units, and this surplus appears to be driving up overhead and diminishing its capacity to spread the gospel, while at the same time working within the constraints of our intensely localized polity, and people’s abiding commitment to their small churches?
Should I remind Jim that spending millions and millions of scarce church funds to hold on to buildings that TEO is just going to have to turn around and sell, probably at a loss since it won’t be able to keep parishes going but it refuses to sell to traditionalist Anglicans, is just too unbelievably stupid on too many levels to name here?
Or is that so blindlingly obvious that not even a liberal Episcopalian could miss it?
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