I have been casually reading comments on the General Convention
going on now, and the comments from
George Clifford, on Episcopal Café follow along
with the more reasonable ones. He hammers home the point that much of the
discussion at church conventions (all denominations) rates barely a blip in the
rest of the country, and that all the various “reforms” do little or nothing to
stop the numerical and financial decline of the denomination. He made a few
ho-hum, re-hashed suggestions about what to do about all this.
Near the end of his commentary, he made real progress
though. This makes sense:
… formal denominational efforts to influence national
and international policies and legislation have achieved proportionately few
results for the resources invested. Single-issue ecumenical organizations, such
as Interfaith Power and Light, have enlisted greater support, received larger
resources, and produced greater results.
Successfully re-visioning and re-creating TEC will produce
an organization focused on its strength (building local communities of God's
people who join in worship, caring for one another, and offer hospitality to
strangers) that networks with other Christian organizations to achieve other
aspects of the gospel mandate. The end of Christendom suggests that a strategy
loosely linked multiple organizations may be more effective than the monolithic
church of the past. The Church’s unity will be seen in relationships rather
than structures.
The central organization of the Episcopal Church (using that
stupid abbreviation “TEC” or even worse “ECUSA” is a major PART of this whole
problem! So fucking in-groupy) can do whatever it wants to. It doesn’t matter
to the mission of the church. People can go to Convention and work out
governance matters, and we clergy can follow the rules. Fine.
Meanwhile, the real church happens, as Clifford says, in
de-centralized relational organizations, groups which rise up as occasions
demand, and then fall away – if those who organized them have the good sense to
get out of the way when the purposes for which they were organized no longer
exist.
Enlightenment/entitlement theology has a death grip on the
institutional church. Every fractured interest group wants a seat at the Table
– but guess what: there is no Table any more, no one place where all the
important decisions are made. There are many, multiple tables, and the ones
which offer the most effective hospitality are the ones on local levels – some
Christian, some interfaith, some post-Christian.
In 1919, the churches developed the strategy that the best
way to influence American society was to imitate it – to develop its own
corporate structure that mirrored the most successful models of American life,
the corporation. This strategy became fully incarnate with the establishment of
the Church Center at 815 Second Avenue. Church as corporation worked for a
while, but it has calcified. Even big American corporations are more flexible
than the Episcopal Church. Management schools have for quite some time
developed more decentralized models, sensitive and able to change and adapt to
changing environments. Business, which we imitated, changed – even Mad Men,
by the 5th season, wasn’t Mad Men in the same way. The church,
however, remains wedded to what it looked like in 1960. There are thousands of
people who like it that way – all those people who love going to church
meetings. It is fun. It can be exhausting. You can come to believe that it is
important.
Meanwhile, whole new webs, relationships, projects, plans,
organizations grow and shrink around us. In many cases, they ARE us, and in
many more cases we can find common mission in ways that have nothing to do with
institutional structures.
