May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Last week I read an article for you about the ministry of the baptized. Today I am going to focus on two of her main points. First we are going to look at her ideas about church organization. Does anyone remember the word they used where we would use “diocese?” – It doesn’t really matter, but the word was “judicatory.”
The authors say that church structure needs to change so that it can respond to the new reality facing ever smaller churches. The old model where those at the top say how it is to be done and all the churches follow those instructions no longer working. More and more, every church is finding that it needs to be different than other churches, even churches of the same denomination.
Some dioceses within the Anglican Church of Canada are not responding to this reality very well. Since I know it well, I will use the Diocese of New Westminster as an example. In that diocese, there is a list of criteria that a church must meet to be deemed “sustainable.” If you don’t meet those criteria, the diocese will provide some limited support to try and get there. One criterion has to do with average attendance. Can anyone guess what the minimum is? -- 70. And I was told at VST that a more realistic minimum was 100. How many churches in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island have an average attendance of 100? Or even 70? Not many. They are also very reluctant to have priests serve more than one church. A church should be able to support at least one full-time priest.
Our own diocese is leading the way in responding to the changes facing our church. In the past, our structure was set up so that the individual churches supported the ministry of the diocese. At our last synod, we made big changes to our structure so that we could turn this around. It is now the work of the diocese to support ministry in the parishes. The changes that were made make it possible for the diocese to respond much more quickly when new needs come up throughout the diocese. Instead of needing to wait until the next synod, diocesan council can set up new programs and working groups as the needs arise. One of the major sources of funding in the diocese, which was reserved exclusively for new buildings, now has funds available for supporting new ministries in existing parishes. Some of this money could easily be available to us for the repairs and upgrades that need to be done on our parish buildings as long as we focus on the ministry that we could be doing from them instead of merely trying to keep them standing for another generation.
So is our diocese changing as the authors of last week’s article say it needs to? I think it is. As with any change, it is a slow process and it has its problems. But the change is happening.
The second point in the article that I wanted to talk about has to do with how we look at life and change. I’m going to read again the quote from Jim Kelsey. Jim Kelsey was the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan.
"This is something I have found to be true without exception: that when we, any of us, focus on things in our lives that are passing away, we get scared, we get anxious, we get depressed, we lose hope; and when we focus on things that are being birthed and are coming newly into creation, we get excited, we get imaginative, we get optimistic, we feel drawn closer to one another, we feel as if we have meaning and purpose in this life, and we have joy. . . . we are given change as an ingredient in life. We can be frightened and anxious and resistant to it or we can embrace it as a tool to transform us." —Jim Kelsey (1952–2007)
We are facing a time of change here in this parish. It is not something that is sudden or unexpected. It is not something that is unique to us here in this parish. For many years attendance at our churches has been steadily declining. At the same time, expenses have been going up and the money available to provide ministry here has been going down. Many other churches in this diocese are facing the same realities that we are.
There are essentially two ways we can face our current situation. We can respond with fear. We can get depressed because we can see that what we are doing is not working. We can lose hope about being able to pass our faith and our church on to future generations.
If we go down this path, I can assure you that it will come true.
Our other option is to look for new meaning. We can look at our own needs and the needs of our community and bring them together to give us new purpose. Our faith teaches us that our purpose is to minister to those around us. As we address the needs we have in this parish, this is where we need to spend most of our attention. It is from our ministry that we will find new birth. Our buildings do not define our ministry. It is our ministry that should define our buildings.
Remember: “when we focus on things that are being birthed and are coming newly into creation, we get excited, we get imaginative, we get optimistic, we feel drawn closer to one another, we feel as if we have meaning and purpose in this life, and we have joy. . . . we are given change as an ingredient in life. We can be frightened and anxious and resistant to it or we can embrace it as a tool to transform us.”
Thanks be to God.
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