ADVENTURES IN MISSING THE POINT
Washington DC’s new Episcopal Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar NotChane, is a realist. She knows as well as anyone that the Episcopal Organization is circling the drain:
And yet [Ross] Douthat’s question haunts me: can our church be saved? No matter how wonderful the Episcopal Church at its best can be and how many individual congregations are doing well, the harsh truth remains: we are a church whose vital signs hover somewhere, in Douthat’s words, between decline and collapse. The decline began in the 1960s and has accelerated precipitously in the last decade. Since 2003, we’ve lost 23 percent of our church attendance.
Not because of any of our innovations, mind you.
Why? Because we allow women to hold positions of authority, celebrate the full inclusion of gays and lesbians, have an expansive understanding of God, and value insights of other faiths? I don’t think so.
After all, we did the theology and stuff.
I’ve lived with the reality of decline all 25 years of my ordained life. I’ve heard all the reasons why those who disagree with recent positions we’ve taken cite for our demise, and I simply don’t see it. And even if it were true, it wasn’t as if we decided to make these changes on our own. Hard as it is for some to believe, we felt led by God to change, much the same way that others before us felt led by God to change their views on slavery or the subjugation of women, and more recently, on the prohibition of divorce, all of which have biblical justification.
What should the Episcopal Organization do to get people like me to start calling it a church again? Basically, Bishop NotChane recommends that TEO keep doing what it’s been doing since the 1970′s but work in the terms “Jesus” and “Holy Spirit” more often.
In the Diocese of Washington we’re devoting time and resources to developing our spiritual lives. We’re encouraging people to participate in small group study, contemplative prayer, and spiritual retreats, and so far, they are responding. We talk freely now about how the power of God changes our lives, about the healing presence of Jesus and the movement of the Holy Spirit. We’re strengthening existing congregations and planning for new ones in immigrant communities and among university students and young adults. We’re engaged in the public arena not simply because we want to relevant, but because at our baptisms we promised, “to strive for justice and peace and respect the dignity of every human being.”
And for the love of Vague, Ambiguous, Infinitely-Malleable, Inclusive, Affirming, Open-Minded And Tolerant Deity Concept, liven things up a little.
Contrary to the conservative critique, it isn’t what we’ve changed that is weakening our congregations, but rather what we’ve been unwilling to change. For all our liberal theology and progressive politics, we’ve remained rather stodgy in worship, wedded to unwieldy structures, and resistant to growth. When I ask young people what keeps them from attending church, the answer, predictably, is that it’s boring. And they’re right! But we’re committed to changing that, both in the Diocese of Washington and across the country, so that all our congregations will be vital centers of Christian worship, learning, community, and service.
We’re done here. Bishop NotChane may think that she’s come up with a new and innovative insight. But anybody’s who’s been an Episcopalian for any length of time knows that there is no older or more futile idea in the Episcopal Organization.
For crying out loud, we had that conversation when I was in my teens and twenties. How do we make church interesting and relevant for the Young PeopleTM who are the future and crap?
I think I mentioned a while back that my own parish, Emmanuel, Webster Groves, once went the guitar mass route. My mom and I even sang in one of those choirs, knocking out Godspell songs and similar dreck(we never sang it but one book we used even had John Lennon’s “Imagine” in it; insert John Shelby Spong joke here).
That choir didn’t bump up our numbers and nobody was all that impressed anyway so we eventually dropped it and went back to being high-church Anglican. Membership went up a good bit after that. Know why I think that was, Bishop NotChane?
If you can think of a single instance when an attempt to make worship more interesting for the Young PeopleTMresulted in growth for any Christian church, I’d really like to know what it is. Adopt that mindset and you willeventually run into one big-ass brick wall.
Young PeopleTM eventually become Old People.TM
I listened to a lot of rock and roll when I was a kid and scorned people like Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller and Louis Armstrong(I was, of course, a blithering idiot; a lot of the garbage I grew up loving bores the hell out of me today but if I had nothing but Louis Armstrong in my music collection, I’d be a happy man).
Age taught me that. Age also made me realize that if my Episcopal parish had ever decided that “worshipping” to the music of Bachman-Turner Overdrive, REO Speedwagon or Pat Travers was a good idea, I might have enjoyed it for a while but I would have bailed out of the Episcopal Organization long before I eventually did.
I care about eternal things, Bishop NotChane. Ephemeral things don’t interest me.
And yet [Ross] Douthat’s question haunts me: can our church be saved? No matter how wonderful the Episcopal Church at its best can be and how many individual congregations are doing well, the harsh truth remains: we are a church whose vital signs hover somewhere, in Douthat’s words, between decline and collapse. The decline began in the 1960s and has accelerated precipitously in the last decade. Since 2003, we’ve lost 23 percent of our church attendance.
Not because of any of our innovations, mind you.
Why? Because we allow women to hold positions of authority, celebrate the full inclusion of gays and lesbians, have an expansive understanding of God, and value insights of other faiths? I don’t think so.
After all, we did the theology and stuff.
I’ve lived with the reality of decline all 25 years of my ordained life. I’ve heard all the reasons why those who disagree with recent positions we’ve taken cite for our demise, and I simply don’t see it. And even if it were true, it wasn’t as if we decided to make these changes on our own. Hard as it is for some to believe, we felt led by God to change, much the same way that others before us felt led by God to change their views on slavery or the subjugation of women, and more recently, on the prohibition of divorce, all of which have biblical justification.
What should the Episcopal Organization do to get people like me to start calling it a church again? Basically, Bishop NotChane recommends that TEO keep doing what it’s been doing since the 1970′s but work in the terms “Jesus” and “Holy Spirit” more often.
In the Diocese of Washington we’re devoting time and resources to developing our spiritual lives. We’re encouraging people to participate in small group study, contemplative prayer, and spiritual retreats, and so far, they are responding. We talk freely now about how the power of God changes our lives, about the healing presence of Jesus and the movement of the Holy Spirit. We’re strengthening existing congregations and planning for new ones in immigrant communities and among university students and young adults. We’re engaged in the public arena not simply because we want to relevant, but because at our baptisms we promised, “to strive for justice and peace and respect the dignity of every human being.”
And for the love of Vague, Ambiguous, Infinitely-Malleable, Inclusive, Affirming, Open-Minded And Tolerant Deity Concept, liven things up a little.
Contrary to the conservative critique, it isn’t what we’ve changed that is weakening our congregations, but rather what we’ve been unwilling to change. For all our liberal theology and progressive politics, we’ve remained rather stodgy in worship, wedded to unwieldy structures, and resistant to growth. When I ask young people what keeps them from attending church, the answer, predictably, is that it’s boring. And they’re right! But we’re committed to changing that, both in the Diocese of Washington and across the country, so that all our congregations will be vital centers of Christian worship, learning, community, and service.
We’re done here. Bishop NotChane may think that she’s come up with a new and innovative insight. But anybody’s who’s been an Episcopalian for any length of time knows that there is no older or more futile idea in the Episcopal Organization.
For crying out loud, we had that conversation when I was in my teens and twenties. How do we make church interesting and relevant for the Young PeopleTM who are the future and crap?
I think I mentioned a while back that my own parish, Emmanuel, Webster Groves, once went the guitar mass route. My mom and I even sang in one of those choirs, knocking out Godspell songs and similar dreck(we never sang it but one book we used even had John Lennon’s “Imagine” in it; insert John Shelby Spong joke here).
That choir didn’t bump up our numbers and nobody was all that impressed anyway so we eventually dropped it and went back to being high-church Anglican. Membership went up a good bit after that. Know why I think that was, Bishop NotChane?
If you can think of a single instance when an attempt to make worship more interesting for the Young PeopleTMresulted in growth for any Christian church, I’d really like to know what it is. Adopt that mindset and you willeventually run into one big-ass brick wall.
Young PeopleTM eventually become Old People.TM
I listened to a lot of rock and roll when I was a kid and scorned people like Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller and Louis Armstrong(I was, of course, a blithering idiot; a lot of the garbage I grew up loving bores the hell out of me today but if I had nothing but Louis Armstrong in my music collection, I’d be a happy man).
Age taught me that. Age also made me realize that if my Episcopal parish had ever decided that “worshipping” to the music of Bachman-Turner Overdrive, REO Speedwagon or Pat Travers was a good idea, I might have enjoyed it for a while but I would have bailed out of the Episcopal Organization long before I eventually did.
I care about eternal things, Bishop NotChane. Ephemeral things don’t interest me.
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