I think you've hit it here: spiritual and moral leadership.

Clergy: proclaim the Gospel to us! Teach us our history and our theology.

Laity: Christianity isn't something that occurs for two hours on one day of the week on those weekends when you're not taking the kids to soccer or playing golf. We need to take responsibility for our spiritual growth.

Solving our irrelevance doesn't mean becoming a better social services agency or a better lobbying organization. We're the church! We make ourselves irrelevant when we're not connecting people with the Living God.

Yes, food for the hungry, care for the neglected, justice for the dispossessed is a key part of our portfolio---but because it's part of God's portfolio first!

Phillip,

I'm afraid that the core of your message may be lost in the angry screed around which you surround it.

The Church and the Episcopal Church should be concerned that they are excelling in irrelevance brought about by navel gazing, self preservation, parochialism, and a failure to hold its membership accountable for its own hierarchy of values.

It is true that the Episcopal Church lacks a credible voice on national issues. That's partly due to its distracted inward gaze. And partly due to powerful voices in the church that don't understand like just because the US has lost manufacturing jobs doesn't mean its lost its way. We are producing services, we are becoming more productive, the cost of food and clothing is incredibly low -- I'm talking about the long view taken over the last century, not blip in the other direction caused by increases in oil prices or housing price bubbles. And let's ask ourselves if you want to live in an economy without financial services where you had to carry cash, couldn't buy insurance, couldn't get a mortgage even we had a good credit score, but had to pay 100% down.

If we want to be heard in our criticisms of real excesses we have to avoid going over the top.

Since I'm tottering towards my 60th birthday, I'm certainly familiar with inner frustration that the church isn't doing enough, or is doing the wrong thing, or isn't doing anything.

Some comments about our current situation -

I think that full and equal membership in the Episcopal Church for LGBT people is not a side issue, not a diversion, not an irrelevancy. The personhood of LGBT people is the central justice issue of this Church in this time and in this culture. We have the first chance in the history of the world to get this right. Resources spent on gathering us to speak to this question are well spent.

Also - for the first time in the history of the world - we know what's going on all over the world. We have no excuses of ignorance or distance to hide behind. It is hard to endure the depth and power of the ethical imperatives driven by this knowledge. We want to fix everything at once - every sick child, every hungry village, all of it. Our guilt is so big, our love is notional, and we can't fix everything with money.

But processes have to happen. I do not have an easy time with apostolic patience, and I struggle with it every time I open the newspaper.

I think the church needs to be the church. We need to keep on forming disciples for Jesus. That is our great and transformational work. When we neglect it, we will fade away and become another small organization that does a small amount of good.

Let's not forget all the well spent money on the Lambeth Conference! Could it not have been put to better use? What exactly did we gain or learn from this?

Blessings

Brother John-Anthony

I read this article with sadness, because I realize that I agree with most of it. I personally agree with Derek's comments and think it's time we as a church have to rethink our job in society.

What personally strikes me is to see that even when clergy and laity are concerned about those issues, the whole "establishment" makes it hard to do anything.

And as someone who comes from the "third world", some things I see (and just to be fair, not only in the US, not only with the Episcopal Church) particularly offend me... especially when they involve the usage of massive amounts of money with furnishings or non-essencial remodeling of infra-structure.

For example, one parish I know is about to spend 2 million dollars just to remove a (historic) high altar and make it free-standing. Another church I know, which is located in a degraded downtown area of a big city, has just spent nearly 3 million to buy a new organ, even having a historic one that worked just fine. The most outrageous one, however, was a historic church that has spent lots of money converting the much more recent rectory just to make it look like the architecture of the centennial church building.

At the same time, I've seen some small congregations with such an attachment to the past that makes them lose complete track of the future. Sometimes, tiffany windows, Queen Anne's chalices and Victorian reredos have become the main feature for that congregation, in such a way that they end up being unwelcoming to new people, as the handful of old members strike their chests to say that their great-great-great-grandfather was part of the vestry.

As with GLBT people, I agree that it is a relevant issue, but even with all the talk around it, I don't see it as clearly reflecting the struggles we have in society. From my own experience, I notice that historical progressive churches are much more apt to be a safe environment for the middle-class, professionally successful and well-resolved gays and lesbians. However, I don't see much work being done with the suicidal teenagers in lower-class fundamentalist families, for example.

I still believe there's relevance in the Church, but we seriously need to be fully inclusive, and in some cases, we are more inclusive when it comes to sexual orientation than when it comes to social status or ethnicity. I've been asked so many times things like "why are you in our Church? You are not Anglo anyway..." that, even when said innocently, reflect a very discomforting unwillingness to accept the "unusual" in their congregations.

It is also necessary to think about creatively using Church money in a way that reflects the Gospel, even when it comes to art and architecture. Why not, instead of spending millions with overtly expensive furnishings, sponsor local businesses, and cooperatives of poor people who in many times have the skills, but not the proper training to do architectural church work. Why not granting scholarships for talented artists and musicians from the lower classes to pursue higher studies, turning our choirs and guilds part of their internship process?

There are some good examples of churches who have gone beyond the once in a while soup kitchen and have seriously implemented mission and evangelism initiatives that pay attention both spiritually and socially (and some would say it's in fact the same thing) to the environment within which they are located. I think an inventory of such good experiences would be a wise way of giving people ideas of what to do and how to proceed especially in these times of social problems and Church decline.

I'm sure Fr. Cato is correct that there is a problem with our hierarchy of values. This is not new, though. "Values" in dispute are often proxies in battles of identity politics, and the original issue becomes less important that what our position says about who we are.

I flinch when I read about the importance of leadership in the Episcopal church, however, because I am afraid the discussion will soon turn to the concept of a "failure of nerve." The phrase draws attention to the book of the same name and generally to one of a series of biological metaphors about, e.g., the neocortex (the other side lacks a functional one) and the immune system (leaders need to phagocytize more non-self entities).

It is a breath of fresh air to see a discussion which avoids all that. The more we speak to one another in English, the fewer idols of the den, the better. Thank you.

Aw, nuts, Fr. Cato. This church is actively engaged in mission everywhere you look.

Its lack of prophetic impact nationally comes amidst a 30-year assault by preachers with microphones who have redefined Christianity in the public/media mind to mean Fundamentalist politics. All mainline denominations have been marginalized. But our clergy and laity have kept speaking out over and over again.

Our loss of status has led both to declines and renewal. Churches that couldn't adapt have closed. Others have opened. Local ecumenical efforts have flourished; we need each other across denominational lines.

More laypeople are pursuing serious Christian spirituality than ever before.

But yes, we need to ditch the Lambeth Conference as a waste of time and money. It's Lambeth and the Church of England that have become totally irrelevant. Give Episcopalians a break.

If you're making disciples for Jesus (see Matthew 28:18-20), then you're not irrelevant. It would be nice to do more to heal this world, and, as God enables, we should do it, but Jesus knew that we would never win that victory (Matthew 26:11, also see the whole book of Revelation). But if we're not making disciples, we're missing the core of our charter, and whatever else we manage to do isn't going to be enough.

Ralph Wagenet

Spot on, Mr Cato! Maybe an unwelcomed voice of sanity, but it needs to be rung out from the steeples!
- Jay Vos

I would agree with Phillip Cato and John Chilton that we, in the Episcopal Church, need to get over our fascination and fixation with sexuality and engage with other more important issues. I think that we, in the Episcopal Church, need to take a serious look at issues such as the financial "crisis" this week, as well as the ongoing tragedy of world poverty. We have much to do on many issues, and we need to do more. I agree with Phillip Cato on this account, however, we need more WE talk and less US vs. THEM talk. Lord knows we need to do more, I think the movement to focus on the MDGs is a step in the right direction, but we definitely need to do more.