Care with the Blue: Joint Standing Committee on Local Ministry and Mission

Continuing my series on the Blue Book, we turn to Joint Standing Committee number four out of five: the Joint Standing Committee on Local Ministry and Mission.

Summary of the Report
This committee has a mandate that cuts to the core of the mission of the church, "focusing on congregations and leadership on the local level." It works with individuals, congregations, and dioceses in all nine provinces of The Episcopal Church (TEC).

With nearly $6 million allocated for church planting and mission enterprise zones (including $1 million specifically focused on Latino ministry), this Committee had their work cut out for them. (Full disclosure, my own parish, St. John's Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, was the recipient of a MEZ grant that helped us found our El Corazón Latino Ministry Initiative).

This Committee also took on the work that would have been the part of some of the standing interim bodies which were disbanded by the last General Convention, including Lifelong Christian Formation. It oversaw Constable Grants along with United Thank Offering (UTO) and young adult campus ministry grants.

With an evangelism minded Presiding Bishop in Michael Curry, this Committee worked particularly hard in the areas of digital evangelism, the "Evangelism Matters Conference," and the revivals that were held around the country. They supported the Beloved Community racial reconciliation program. In addition to overseeing the grants noted above, they supported the Genesis Group which called together church planters and mission developers (and, full disclosure, of which I have been a part). They also created a grant fund that could match diocesan and local parish evangelism projects.

They have proposed several resolutions in the area of evangelism (I'll get to those below) and have also proposed resolutions to seek to expand participation from Province IX youth in the Episcopal Youth Event and the General Convention Children's Program.

This is also the committee that has worked with the four ethnic ministries of the church: Latino/Hispanic, Asiamerica, Black, and Indigenous. With that work, they have supported several conferences and event that bring together people related to ethnic ministries in our church for learning, discernment, and strengthening in ministry. They also oversaw a $1.5 million block grant to work toward sustainability in the four principal dioceses which are engaged in Indigenous ministry. This is not only financial sustainability of indigenous ministries. Rather, it also includes, "developing resources to keep their church communities viable over the long term." Really, you should read their whole report. It's pretty stunning.

Reaction to the Report
Holy smokes. If there was ever a Committee that seemed overworked, it might be this one! To be honest, a part of me would love it if the work of this Committee actually comprised the bulk of the work of EC. What a statement that would be about the role of evangelism in our church!

Overall, this report is great and makes me proud to be an Episcopalian. I am hopeful we will actually not only rediscover the gifts of being a community of evangelists, but that we will also equip people to be a evangelists in their daily life and work. The work we are doing right now with church planting and mission development is tremendously important. And it is bearing fruit! I hope that it can continue and grow—and not just because of the ways it has impacted my own local parish ministry.

That said, some aspects of this work have not quite been very compelling to me. The "Episcopal Revivals," for example, certainly have a place in the life of the Anglican tradition—but the very term "revival" brings to mind the experience of an immediate call to change your life, often predicated upon an emotionally powerful narrative.

I'm reminded of a story about Archbishop Michael Ramsey that I recount in my book, Safeguarded by Glory,

During that time Ramsey was strongly drawn to the Anglo-Catholic mis-sioner, William Temple. He attended Temple’s lecture every night with the exception of the one night he attended the lecture of the evangelical missioner, W. P. Nicholson. He found Nicholson’s emotional revivalism absurd. Ramsey later recalled,

I remember the Irish evangelist [Nicholson] as a super-modern gospeler, a Billy Graham. I found him whipping the people into hysteria. He kept saying they should come to the Lord by standing up—‘Stand up, sir, bless you!’ . . . ‘Stand up, lady, bless you!’ People were bobbing up and down all over the place. I was holding tight to my seat. In the midst of all this we had another verse of the hymn ‘Almost Persuaded’ and then the evangelist called for all hypocrites to leave the church. ‘You who came here to stare and maybe to laugh, you may leave the church now. Go back to your wine and your women and your cigarettes.’

Simpson notes that within a couple minutes Ramsey got up and left the service “thoroughly revolted by such revivalism.” When it came to Tem-ple, however, Ramsey resonated with his honest and intellectual ap-proach to the complexities and difficulties of religion.

Now, I would not be quite as dismissive of revivalism as Ramsey was. I believe in big-tent Anglicanism and believe that it is important for more evangelical and even revivalist streams to be honored. However, it seems to me that this is not at the core of who we are as Episcopalians and I wonder if there would not be other ways of doing conferences and large worship services that would actually pay attention to the riches of the Anglican liturgical, spiritual, and theological tradition. After all, those are the things that generally draw people into our church.

Reactions to Resolutions
This is the first Committee which also is submitting resolutions to General Convention for consideration. So, I'll take each resolution in turn.

Resolution A029: Commend the Evangelism Charter for the Church to all Episcopalians (full resolution here)
This charter was created by a group of Episcopal evangelists who were gathered by the Committee. They are working to create video and curricula based upon the principals of the charter so that Episcopalians can learn the best practices for evangelism. As I read through the charter, it struck me as an excellent encapsulation of a uniquely Episcopal approach to evangelism.

The charter is based in the baptismal covenant promise to "proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ." It recognizes the importance of Christians continually being converted in their daily life through practices of prayer, scripture reading, worship, and service, avenues by which we experience our belovedness as children of God and learn how to articulate our experience of God's love. It commits to practices of evangelism that focus on listening deeply to the stories of others, recognizing God already present in those stories, and sharing how we have experienced Jesus in theses stories. The hope is that this will lead to our own transformation, a deeper understanding of who God is, and growth in numbers to do the work of God.

This thing is seriously awesome. I hope it passes. But more important than it passing, it will be essential that significant funding is put to implementing this work so that a strong video and curricula can be created to help Episcopalians put this in action. My rector's heart goes pitter pat at such a thought.

Resolution A030: Small Evangelism Grants (full resolution here)
In comparison to resolution A029, this one is smaller, but is also important. It represents a commitment to a continuation of a project began in 2015, providing matching grants for local evangelism efforts. This should be an easy yes as well.

Resolution A031: Evangelism Staff Officer (full resolution here)
Resolution A032: Congregational Redevelopment (full resolution here)
The goal of these two resolutions is to "the culture of The Episcopal Church to embrace and intentionally practice evangelism is critical work that needs to happen at every level of our church’s life."

The first resolution creates a full-time "Staff Officer for Evangelism" who will serve on the Presiding Bishop's staff. I don't quite understand the need for this post, as we already have a stellar Canon to the Presiding Bishop for Evangelism and Reconciliation. The resolution itself is remarkably short, with no explanation of how this person would interact with Canon Spellers or even what sort of funding would be required to create the position. I'd say this should be a no. If Canon Spellers needs further staffing for her work, I'd rather she articulated exactly what she needed to EC and that EC quickly approve it. This seems like an odd Committee solution to something we are already doing better.

The second resolution asks to create a Community of Practice for congregations who are seeking to redevelop in order to better engage the cultural realties of their communities. This seems slightly duplicative of the work already being done through the Genesis program, but we need to remember that redeveloping a congregation is markedly different than church planting or creating missional initiatives within dioceses and congregations.

What is unfortunate about this resolution is that it hopes to overlay the multicultural lens over all redevelopment. While that lens is helpful for many Episcopal congregations whose makeup does not reflect their community's reality, it is not a lens that covers all congregations going through redevelopment. What I would rather is that we find a way to create a community of practice for all congregations seeking to go through redevelopment that then had a subgroup focused on redevelopment through multicultural ministry.

Resolution A033: Supporting and Expanding Episcopal Youth Events (full resolution here)
I'm not sure why General Convention needs to consider and vote its support for its work. Surely no one is confused about it. That said, if the Committee thinks the support of General Convention will help this work (particularly in the budgeting process, perhaps), then I am happy to support the resolution. I would prefer it had greater specificity for precisely how General Convention will support this work and an actual budgeted amount attached.

Resolution A034 : Supporting The General Convention Children’s Program (full resolution here)
OK, I'm going to be really honest here. I had idea what "General Convention's Children's Program" was. However, thankfully Google exists and I could figure it out. (You can see what the program looked like in 2015 online here). As a parent with a toddler at home, I am newly and keenly aware at the challenges parents face seeking to be fully present in the life of the Christian community. This should be a very easy resolution to pass.

Note: You can click here for a list of all Blue Book Reports & Resolutions that have thus far been reviewed.