By Kathleen Henderson Staudt

Over the altar at Virginia Seminary, where I teach, are the words from Mark 16:15. “Go into all the world and preach the gospel.” (“proclaim the good news to the whole creation” is how the New Revised Standard Version has it.) These words have inspired generations of people called to the ordained ministry of word and sacrament. But as one of the people called to the ministry of teaching in and beyond the church, I find myself drawn, this ascensiontide, to Matthew’s version of the Great Commission, and I wonder what the church would look like if we spent more time reflecting on what Jesus might have meant here. In Matthew 28: 19-20, he says “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

A lot of the literature I’ve seen on stewardship and congregational development seems to focus on attracting more members to our congregations, through programs that meet perceived needs: it’s about “marketing” the church. Young adult ministries, I’ve noticed, focus some energy on encouraging vocations, but often that means raising up young people to be the next generation of ordained ministers in the church. But I have been wondering what we would look like as a church, as congregations and schools and communities, if we focused more energy, not so much on selling the church or attracting new members, but on “making disciples” of the people who come in our doors, and the seekers who inquire about us. What might this call to “make disciples of all nations” mean in our time and culture and in the current theological climate?

The term “discipleship” is probably associated, for some of us, with more evangelical and fundamentalist traditions and “making disciples” primarily with overseas mission, often associated with cultural conservatism. But I believe it’s a term that we in the Episcopal/Anglican tradition should be reclaiming, reframing, and considering in light of our tradition and the culture surrounding us. Brian McLaren, in A Generous Orthodoxy, moves in this direction as he seeks a very Anglican-sounding “generous third way” between Evangelicals’ preoccupation with a personal savior and liberals’ with modern culture. He writes of how he muddled for some time over how to describe the mission of the Church, moving from the familiar language of Evangelicals in his description of the church. He tells how he started with formulaic language: the church’s mission is to make “more Christians and better Christians.” But on reflection he tweaked it further, moving to “To be and to make disciples of Jesus Christ” and then “To be and to make disciples of Jesus Christ, in authentic community, for the sake of the world.” I like his movement away from labels to the affirmation of discipleship as part of our communal identity and our work in the world. And I like the language of discipleship better than language about “the ministry of the laity” (much as I revere the work of Verna Dozier and others of her generation) because it gets us out of ecclesiastical categories back into Biblical language that describes the shared mission of everyone in the Church. How do we understand discipleship in our time? That’s the question we should be asking together, regardless of office or vocation within the structure of the Church.

The idea of discipleship also gets us back to the concept of our faith as something we practice – the great insight of Diana Butler Bass’s influential work. Jesus tells his followers to make disciples of all nations – i.e. not only the Jewish community that they know but ALSO all nations: this is for everyone. And it’s about observing what he commanded. Love your neighbor as yourself; pray; teach, heal, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, seek forgiveness and reconciliation; look at the world through the lens of one who can say “blessed are the poor/ blessed are the meek.” This is not about convincing people to be like-minded or to join-up, nor is it a self-help project, about “becoming a better person.” Rather, the idea of discipleship gets to the heart of who Jesus is or wants to be for us. It moves us beyond worrying about the shape of institutions and back to a focus on the mission that Jesus has promised to support, if we try to follow him: “I am with you always, to the close of the age.”

What would the Church look like if we thought of “disciple-making” as our core purpose, in adult formation programs, in seminary education, in worship? The language of the baptismal covenant and baptism service in the prayer book provides some good language for this, in our tradition – though somehow or other the “ministry of the baptized” has been relegated to a category that goes with “not called to ordained ministry,” in many discussions in seminaries and vocation/formation programs. (Sometimes implying a contrast between the ministry of the ordained and the ministry of the baptized, as if the ordained were not baptized!) But discipleship: that’s something we all share, whatever office we’re called to in the church – it’s something we can reflect on within our tradition and also across denominations. How might the vision of a “disciple-making church” transform and refocus our work, worship and teaching? A question to reflect on as we approach the Feast of Pentecost.

Dr. Kathleen Henderson Staudt keeps the blog poetproph, works as a teacher, poet, spiritual director and retreat leader in the Washington DC area, and teaches courses in literature, theology and writing at Virginia Theological Seminary and the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of two books: At the Turn of a Civilisation: David Jones and Modern Poetics and Annunciations: Poems out of Scripture.

By Greg Jones

I am an Episcopalian. Not by accident of birth, or cultural happenstance. No, I am an Episcopalian because The Episcopal Church welcomed me, embraced me, and initiated me into the mysterious Body of Christ Jesus, the Lord and Savior of the Whole World, of which our church is a vital part.

I do not come from a 'cradle Episcopalian' family. My paternal grandmother was most decidedly uninterested in organized religion. My paternal grandfather was a Baptist. My maternal grandparents were extremely traditional old world Roman Catholics. My father was not raised in any Christian church, my mother left Roman Catholicism as soon as she could, and most of my cousins were almost entirely unchurched in their growing up.

I spent a great deal of time with a family in our neighborhood that had tons of kids and they became like another family for me – the mother of which led the choir in a Methodist church. I joined that choir – and thus began my first experience of church life. "All Thing Bright and Beautiful" was my favorite hymn from those days. I was five years old, to be exact, when I sang in a Methodist children's choir.

My parents separated before I entered the first grade, and for the rest of my childhood, adolescence and early adulthood, I would shuttle between households. However, and thankfully, at the very time of my parents' divorce, a neighbor invited us to attend worship at his church. It was St. Columba's Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., and from the moment we walked in the front door on Albemarle Street, I knew I had a home. Not only a spiritual home – but a home made of bricks and mortar, wood and glass, with a fixed location and a glorious capacity to bring people in. Every time I drove by my parish I would look at it and smile – and know that it was my place too.

St. Columba's was undergoing revival in those days, seeing tremendous growth in worship attendance, music ministry, outreach, mission, education, and spiritual formation – much like St. Michael's is today. I joined the choir there – my mother took classes and was received into the Episcopal Church – and for the rest of my childhood we spent most of our quality time associated with parish life in one form or another.

My first band played there – we played rock and roll at a talent show – and some poor kid in my band even did a break-dancing routine. (It was 1982.) I knew every single square foot of that entire facility. When they had a capital campaign and added significantly to the worship space and bought a world-class organ – it was something I was very excited about, even as a young kid. I took great pride in the beautification and expansion of the nave – and in the glorious sound which came from the organ. The beautiful architecture and the music formed me deeply.

Choir, Sunday School, retreats, youth trips, soup kitchen work, friendships, pancake suppers, weddings, funerals, sneaking around with a pack of kids – it was all what made that parish my home and my way into the Kingdom.

Quite simply, other than my own parents and grandparents, and a few other people – no other place, no other community, no other shaping force has done more to make me who I am than the Episcopal Church – as found on Albemarle Street in Washington, D.C.

If it weren't for the Episcopal Church, as expressed in that congregation with its very specific place in space and time, and its faithfulness to the Gospel, I wouldn't even know who I was. Thank God for the evangelism of the people of St. Columba's who knew that it takes more than talk to spread the Good News. It takes more than getting doctrine right. It takes more than knowing what the Scripture says. It takes more than all of that. It takes the creation of a spiritual home which is alive in the Spirit, and which is truly focused on being the place where disciples of Jesus worship God, meet and grow together, and are formed into the full stature of Christ.

For this I continue to be grateful for and at home in the Episcopal Church.

The Rev. Samuel Gregory Jones ("Greg") was educated at the University of North Carolina and the General Theological Seminary, where he is on the Board. Greg is rector of St. Michael's Raleigh, and author of Beyond Da Vinci (Seabury Books, 2004). He blogs at fatherjones.com.

By Andrew T. Gerns

The beauty of research like the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey released this week by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life is that in many ways it tells us what we already knew. The survey has confirmed and challenged a few hunches that arise out of my experience as a parish priest.

It is not particularly news to me that America’s life of faith is defined by fluidity. All I have to do is look out from the pulpit every Sunday. In my own parish, I have four basic groups of parishioners: people who used to be Catholic, people who used to be Lutheran, and people who used to be something else—they grew up in one of a myriad of other Christian traditions. Oh, I almost forgot, the fourth group of people are the ones who grew up and remain Episcopalian. That’s the smallest group in my own parish. And even then, there ought to be an asterisk because most of the folks who grew up Episcopalian were the children of parents who were themselves raised in another tradition.

Statistically speaking, I am the odd duck: a cradle Episcopalian who is the son and the son of a son of cradle Episcopalians.

So fluidity is a defining mark of American religious life. Forty-four percent of Americans belong to a religious group or tradition that is different than the one they grew up in.

But we live in an age where loyalty to brand or institution is a thing of the past. I remember visiting the Harry Truman presidential library, and one of the exhibits is a sampling of some of the cars that Truman owned. They were all Plymouths. He described himself as a “Plymouth man.“ Outside of the fact that they don’t even make Plymouths anymore, the idea of being eternally loyal to one make of car is a rare thing. Manufacturers are excited when they can get a buyer to stay with the same company, let alone the same brand, two cars in a row. And that’s not just true of cars.

I remember once meeting a self-described Episcopalian, who spoke with the pride of familiarity of things Prayer Book and his time as acolyte and the member of a Canterbury Club in college, telling me that he goes to a Lutheran Church. Why? Because it was closer to his house, he could walk or jog there, the service time was better and the kids knew kids who went there.

Speaking to a former Roman Catholic in my parish, she told me, partly in jest, the reason she is an Episcopalian is that our church doesn’t work so hard to make her mad. But that runs both ways. I remember talking to a United Methodist who used to be a member of my church; he told me that things our denomination did just “made me mad.”

Of the mobile 44%, roughly half choose to go to another Christian tradition. The other half leave the church altogether, with only a tiny fraction of those go to another religious tradition. Most of this other group completely drops out of religious life.

We should have seen this coming—and many of us have but have been at a loss to come to terms with it. The question now is how we respond. Seems to me that there two choices: we can be reactive or we can listen to what the culture is telling us and work to make the Gospel comprehensible and compelling in a free-market of ideas driven by personal freedom.

The reactive comes in many forms, but it is to me essentially an exercise in trying to hold back forces bigger than us. In trying to preserve what the past and its ways teach us, we can overdo it.

Overdoing it has recently landed on my pastoral lap. I have one member whose husband is Roman Catholic and they are raising their kids in both churches. They wouldn’t call it that, but they are. The kids go to parochial school but they go to church with either one parent or the other depending on work, sports and activity schedules. Mostly they go the Roman parish, but at least once a month, they show up in our parish. I didn’t think twice about it but I have been pulled in pastorally because the pastor at the Catholic Church is pressuring the family to only bring the kids to his congregation. This not only tears at Mom’s heart—and risks breaking covenants the couple made with each other at the time of their marriage in that very same church. It is also forcing the kids to choose not only between religions but, in effect, between parents. All of this is because the kids are hearing from the Catholic priest that they may only receive Communion in that church and no other. At the same time, they hear from me and my church that they are welcome to receive because they are baptized. The mixed message is causing the kids to ask uncomfortable questions at home.

This is a crisis happening in slow motion. For the family, the conflict is causing them to think ahead to an anticipated moment of truth where they will either have to choose one tradition over another, or else drop out altogether. I do what I can to keep the lines of communication open to both parents.

My conversations with the priest of the other church have been as revealing as they are frustrating. The priest is from Africa, which complicates matters. We don’t speak the same cultural language, and he sees only threat coming from my concern that we might work together. Besides the fact that he won’t say out loud his assumption that his tradition has primacy over mine, his basic argument is that he must “hold the line” for the sake of both the family and the Church.

He does not seem to realize that in pushing them to make one kind of commitment—one that might have made sense in another time or another cultural context—they might make a completely different choice. I am afraid that if he doesn’t lighten up they could choose another religious community (maybe mine, but just as easily another more neutral one) or none.

In our history there have been lots of American religious movements that have sought to “hold the line” against some cultural movement that was marching right past them. The current political transformation of American evangelicalism is an example of the tension between “holding the line,” with its desire to return to a more structured “past” (if one ever existed), and the need younger evangelicals have for religion to speak to the culture we have instead of the culture we choose.

In the face of a religious marketplace of ideas where people are free to explore, to go where they want, for whatever reason they want. I believe there is a difference between “holding the line” and articulating values that answer the traps, contradictions and realities of a culture that emphasizes absolute individual choice and responsibility over the values of community and tradition.

So what’s a church to do? If we don’t “hold the line,” what alternative do we have?

For one thing, we must become proficient at the language of the marketplace of ideas we live in. Like every human endeavor and institution, we tend to fight yesterday’s battles. We mainline churches tend to act as if we were still the bastions of privilege and status that we were before blue laws and civil religion went away. Recently, I had the chance to speak to the local Church Women United Lenten service. It was a chance for me to realize that speaking to yesterday’s church in yesterday’s language is not a problem restricted to Episcopalians.

Another thing we can do is to change our approach to evangelism. Since people are more likely to move between traditions for all kinds of reasons ranging from conscience to convenience, I believe we should adapt an attitude that is at once more clearly defined and more generous. We should be clearer about who we are and what we offer as Episcopalians, and we should acknowledge that people choose their faith communities for a variety of reasons and that, as wonderful as we are, we might not be the right place for everyone. Whereas denominationalism used to be defined solely in terms of governance and doctrine, today it may be seen as a diversity of styles and emphases.

In terms of the Gospel mandate to go into the world, to baptize and teach, we need to decide if the goal is to make more Episcopalians or to invite more people to Christ. I would suggest that the first is about institutional survival and preserving the past; but the second allows us the freedom to be at once who we are at our best and to give people the freedom—in a culture that trains us to make individual choices in the context of a competitive marketplace—to first choose faith, and then choose the community within which to nourish it.

The most difficult thing for a congregation that assumes a kind of brand loyalty will be to learn how to discover stability, purpose and renewal when we live in a mobile culture. We may need to content ourselves that we will be places of spiritual stability…for now.

Our biggest challenge will be for us Christians to see ourselves as one church with many, diverse institutional expressions: where having people know and follow Christ is more important than what flavor church they belong to.

The fluidity of American religious life drives us to be both better differentiated and more generous. This requires us to hold on to a tension. We must be clear about what we proclaim and yet let go and give the outcome to God. Our task is to proclaim and invite and to give to God the task of transformation and conversion.

The Rev. Canon Andrew Gerns is rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Easton, Pa., and chair of the Evangelism Commission of the Diocese of Bethlehem. He is keeper of the blog Andrewplus.

By John B. Chilton

This essay is the second half of my review of FACTS on Episcopal Church Growth, authored by C. Kirk Hadaway, Director of Research for The Episcopal Church. FACTS on Episcopal Church Growth is based on a 2005 survey. The survey was completed by 57% of congregations surveyed, usually by clergy. The 4,102 responses were weighted to reflect size and location in the population of Episcopal churches as a whole to improve the representativeness of the sample.

Growth in membership can be measured either as a rate or as a change. Small congregations can show large growth rates (or decline) even if it is just a change of a few members. And large congregations can have large growth in numbers with a small growth rate. Congregations were therefore classified as growing if they had “substantial growth in numbers” and at least a 5 percent rate of growth comparing 2000 membership to 2005.

Hadaway’s results are presented in five groupings of characteristics of congregations: demography, worship, orientation towards growing, conflict, and clergy leadership. In Part I of my review I focused on demographic factors. Here I consider the other factors. I find it curious, though, that one of the factors asked about in the survey, outreach, is not covered in the report. Wouldn't be interesting if churches with focus on mission were among those that were most likely to grow? Why outreach is not discussed is not explained.

Purpose, spiritual vitality, and openness to change. Churches that view themselves as fitting any one of these descriptors were very likely to grow.
Joy. Congregations that affirm their worship is joyful are more likely to be growing.

What direction, though, is the causation? Growth surely increases self esteem, sense of purpose and joy of the congregation. No doubt joy is attractive and causes growth. But can you choose joy?

Can a congregation choose to be open to change, or is that a characteristic that’s in its DNA? Likewise, spiritual vitality. All organizations face such questions. A course of action for growth may be clear to the leadership but it’s another thing to change the culture of the organization.

Conflict matters. Two sources of conflict were examined, (1) conflict over the actions of the General Convention 2003, and (2) conflict over the leadership style of the priest. Conflict is not conducive to growth (Hadaway writes “apparently even minor conflict tends to lead some people to leave the congregation”). Leadership conflict appears to have been more debilitating than conflict over GC2003. That is intriguing.

I wonder, though, if some respondents reported conflict over GC 2003 even though conflict was not so much within the parish, but with the diocesan or with the national church. Conflict with an external group could cause growth. Conflict within a parish over GC2003 could be worse than conflict over leadership style. The survey question on GC 2003 does not distinguish internal and external conflict.

Drawing a conclusion about the effect of leadership style of the priest is also problematic. It could be that decline or slow growth causes conflict and blame is placed on the priest. Alternatively, it could be that congregations that are falling below their potential are more likely to be confronted by the priest – it’s not the style, but the context.

Nevertheless, we all know of anecdotes where it was the rector’s style of leadership and failure to adapt a new style that was harmful to the health of the congregation. The survey result is consistent with this anecdotal evidence.

Clergy Enthusiasm. It helps.
Cooperation. Congregations whose rector or vicar “knows how to get people to work together” are most likely to grow.

For both enthusiasm and cooperation above causation could go both ways.

Clergy Tenure. Growth is unlikely in the priest’s first two years. In this sample, the likelihood of growth improved with tenure up to the fifth year. Thereafter it falls off.

This is useful to know. Your new rector cannot replace your old rector. Not everyone in the congregation will find the old rector suits them. This pattern is normal: there's nothing necessarily wrong if it happens.

Number of services. The more services, the greater the growth.

Size is related to number of services so this could be saying that larger congregations are more likely to be growing rather than that the number of services causes growth. Smaller congregations more likely to be in rural locations and smaller towns that are not growing, or not growing as fast as urban and suburban areas are.

Contemplative, formal liturgy, absence of percussion, predictable. Congregations affirming any of these characteristics were less likely to be growing. (Yes, even contemplative.)

Could it be that “stuffiness” hurts church growth and should be avoided if your desire is growth? Or could it be that churches do desire grow and are choosing the character of worship most conducive to growth but that “markets”- mission fields - where formal liturgy (for example) is best are not likely to be growing? The data cannot tell us. What we are alerted to is that if you want to grow it’s worth asking the stuffiness question and even to experiment to find out what works in your market. (As long as it doesn’t cause too much conflict in the congregation!)

Variety. Among churches with more than one weekend service the ones where the services differed considerably were most likely to be growing.

There is the suggestion that adding variety would help growth. And several services makes it easier to experiment and compare which service attracts newcomers. But again we cannot exclude the possibility that churches are making the best choice given their mission field and some mission fields aren’t growing.

Children’s participation. Churches in decline seldom have children or youth speak, read or perform during worship.

How much of that is due to choice as opposed to lack of children is not stated. The survey did also ask about the age distribution of the congregants. Thus the question of availability could have been addressed.

Desire. Congregations that affirm they welcome growth are more likely to be growing.

Evangelism. The greater the participation of the laity in seeking new member the more likely is growth.

Communications. Among congregations that opposed a website only 12% were growing.

That’s not to say websites make a difference; it could be that lack of a website is a better signal that the congregation isn’t interested in growth than asking the congregation if it is.

Visits. Churches that don’t make phone calls or visits to newcomers or visitors aren’t likely to grow. Half of all Episcopal churches make 2 or less such contacts per month. The number of ways of following up with visitors also matters (mail, phone, email, visit, handouts).

Family enrichment. Congregations offering parenting or marriage enrichment as a key program were much more likely to be growing.

Correlation, again, is not causation; it could be that these programs are not a draw to newcomers, but rather exist because the congregation is comprised mainly of younger families.

Throughout this essay I have taken a skeptic’s perspective on what a survey of this sort can tell us. There is the question of the direction of causation. There is the question of what things are within the control of the congregation. I have pointed out that correlation can arise because of an omitted factor (such as the underlying conditions of the local market).

At the level of the congregation it would be easy to take these arguments and take a complacent attitude, or an attitude that the status quo does not need to change, or that whatever we do it’s not going to make a difference. Or that surveys like this simply aren’t useful to a congregation.

My conclusion is different. My conclusion is that there are no easy answers. Surveys like this are useful. First, they permit some degree of benchmarking for the congregation. How are you doing in comparison with similar congregations, be it similarity in terms of demographics or in terms the factors discussed above? Are you lagging behind similar congregations? If so, are there local conditions that might explain that? Are you ahead of other similar congregations? If so, this is something to feel good about and to share.

Second, while such a survey cannot tell you that, say, adding percussion to the worship service will lead to growth, it does plant the suggestion that it might. In conjunction with local knowledge of the congregation and its mission field the congregation must decide what course of action to take if it wants to grow.

I'm no expert in evangelism nor do I think of myself as a good practitioner. I've offered my thoughts on some of the research available from The Episcopal Church and urge you to take a look for yourself if you are interested in seeing your church grow. Here are some links to follow:

Studying Your Congregation and Community

Research & Statistics

Dr. John B. Chilton is an economist specializing in applied game theory. In January he will conclude six years of service at the American University of Sharjah (United Arab Emirates) and return home to Orkney Springs, the location of Shrine Mont Episcopal Conference Center of the Diocese of Virginia.

By Derek Olsen

Join with me for a moment in a dream, in a vision. We’ve been talking more and more in the Episcopal Church of that dreaded “e” word that strikes terror into the hearts of the staid faithful—evangelism. For some it conjures fearful scenes of complex theological refutation, of fast and furious verbal sparring until—pressed and pinked by verbal weapons of dialectic—our opponent throws up his arms, confessing Jesus as an act of intellectual surrender. The prospect of such a thing makes the average church-going heart quail—is that really what’s expected? How do they expect me to do that?!?

The answer from calmer quarters is: relax, that’s not what evangelism is fundamentally about. Evangelism isn’t about beating opponents into submission—intellectual or otherwise. At its heart, it’s about sharing love, communicating who God is and how God is about the work of redemption and reconciliation. It’s less about what we know than who we know—and how he has made himself known through the power of the resurrection at work in our lives. That having been said, there is some knowledge, there are some fundamentals that have to be covered.

Turning to the Scriptures, St. Peter suggests that among the basic equipment of the Christian is having at hand and in mind “an account for the hope that is in you with gentleness and reverence” (1 Peter 3:15). That is, when questions arise about our faith we need something to fall back on, something to guide our way in explaining what we believe. Now—here’s my dream; here’s my vision. If I were the Evangelism Czar for the Episcopal Church, I’d try and put together a brief yet comprehensive statement of what we think on things. I’d want it to be broad—we need to cover our major bases, and yet I’d want it to be beautiful too. I’d want it, in its simplicity, to hint at depths of thought and experience that could be evoked and not exhausted by a tantalizing turn of phrase. If I could pare it down to something around one hundred words, I’d send out this “account for hope” to all the Episcopal churches with instructions that it be memorized so it could be readily called to mind whenever a useful opportunity might arise.

But, hey—why stop there? Why not have a second version as well? Maybe something twice the length of the first that might clear up a few more connections but also evoke greater mysteries and introduce some language that cuts to the heart of the human religious experience—light, breath, life abundant… Embed some deeper poetry, some metaphors to be chewed upon and savored, and you might have a worthy follow-up to the first that again, isn’t just about knowledge, but that evokes a new way of being and relating to the world in which we live. Of course—I’d want that one to be memorized too.

Who am I kidding, though, right? There’s no way this crazy scheme could work, is there?

Actually…it’s already been done. The texts have already been written. Not only that—they’ve already been infiltrated into your Book of Common Prayer. Many of you have already even accomplished the hard part—the memorizing part. There’s just one little catch. The infiltration has been so successful, has been so complete, that few realize the treasure that we got. Instead of recognizing this amazing “account for hope” for what it is, it’s something that we mumble through between the sermon and prayers at Eucharist, or stick between prayers in the Daily Office.

Yes, I’m talking about the creeds. We’ve got them. Many of us know them by heart—by rote, even—and therein lies the problem. We know them so well, have become so accustomed to them, that we’ve lost sight of their power—and their potential when it comes to evangelism. So let’s review quickly what it is that we have and how we might begin the process of rediscovering them.

The Apostles’ Creed was an early baptismal formula of the church in Rome. This was the basic outline of faith that converts (and in those days they were all converts) would embrace in order to be received into the faith. It served to nail down some fundamentals to establish Christian belief and to refute some potential misunderstandings. First, it asserted that God, the good God, the Father of Jesus Christ was also the God who Creates in distinction from philosophies that suggested that created matter was not just indifferent but downright evil—that bodies were prisons for souls. No, the creed affirmed, the good God made us bodies and—not only that—second, God even took on a body in the person of Jesus the Messiah. Like us, he was born, lived, and died as a historical person in a real place with Roman officials and everything. Third, that the breath, the spirit of God isn’t just a good idea or a nice metaphor—the Spirit is the reality of God moving, living and active.

Our other creed—what we call the Nicene Creed—is more properly called the Nicene-Chalcedonian Symbol. That sounds pretentious but is really just an affirmation that the church called together four world-wide councils to make sure that the faith they were handing down was the faith that they had received from their own teachers extending back to the apostles. Built on the framework like the Apostles’ Creed, it introduces the language of Greek philosophy, not for the sake of getting all complicated, but to somehow encapsulate in word and thought how the church had experienced the power of God moving in its worlds and ways.

Please—don’t underestimate second and fourth century people, though. Even without particle physics or flush toilets they knew that there were things in these affirmations that were at odds with the daily world they experienced; for the creeds—both of them—invite us into a mystery that they neither solve nor resolve: a mystery that begins with the assertion that Jesus is both God and man. Born, yes, but of a virgin—a clear impossibility according to the mechanics of the life we know. Died, yes, but rose again on the third day—another impossibility. Ascended to the Father? We know that can’t happen…unless our grasp of the mechanics of life is somehow incomplete. Unless there is a more full understanding of reality to which we may awake, to find ourselves caught up in, a reality where life wins, where love wins, despite what our senses tell us. Even back then, they knew that these affirmations were asking them to step beyond the threshold of life as they knew it into a bigger, a broader, a wilder world where they didn’t know all the rules.

What the creeds evoke, what they invite us into, is hope. Hope that there’s more to reality than what can be touched and quantified. Hope that death does not win in the end. Hope that we are not merely isolated islands in trajectories of decay but that as our life is caught up in the reality of God we are somehow bound closer to our fellow creatures as well. But the creeds do not simply give us hope; they give us language and a framework for understanding the spiritual stirrings and movings that we detect in our lives. They give us a vocabulary to understand the movement of the Spirit, the breaking forth of resurrection power. For the creeds are grounded in our experiences of the God of whom they speak.

This, in turn, is our own offering to a world that is in need of hope: the hope and the promise that there is a reality, a deeper reality, than what can be measured, quantified, and mathematically modeled. Actually—this is evangelism; it’s the sharing of the hope that we find in Christ Jesus. It’s telling the stories of how God has shown us a deeper reality in our lives. It’s communicating the hope of resurrection even in the face of death. So next time you find yourself in worship or in prayer and you encounter the creeds, take a minute, I beg you. Think about the words. Think about what they say and the realities and hopes to which they point. Ponder the phrases and fit them to your own life’s tale . And lastly, share them. With gentleness, with reverence, give an account for the hope that is in you.

Derek Olsen is in the final stretch of completing a Ph.D. in New Testament (with a healthy side of Homiletics) at Emory University where he is an adjunct professor at the Candler School of Theology. His reflections on life, liturgical spirituality, and being a Gen-X dad appear at Haligweorc.

By Howard Anderson

I’ve always thought that institutions should focus on what they are best at. When you don’t you end up backtracking. St. Thomas University in St. Paul, Minnesota, for instance, banned Archbishop Desmond Tutu from speaking on their campus because he compared the treatment of Palestinians in Israel to the treatment of non-whites in apartheid-era South Africa. Banning a Nobel Peace Prize winner takes amnesia about academic freedom. They forgot what a university does. Happily, not everyone forgot, and they had to re-invite him when local Twin Cities Jewish groups, their students and alumni and scores of others advocated for St. Thomas to have the archbishop speak after all.

Now there are some institutions who have been very successful at keeping people out of their ranks. My wife, Linda, comes from a long line of Missouri Synod Lutherans. They have managed to keep women out of their ordained ranks as successfully as the Roman Catholics have. There doesn’t even seem to be much pressure to ordain women, even among female members and only very recently, in a very few places, have women claimed any significant lay leadership roles. Missouri Synod Lutherans also deny communion to those who do not believe as they do about matters of faith, and sometimes will even require an interview, in advance of a service, to determine if you are orthodox enough to be admitted to communion with them. They are very good at keeping people out.

How different we Episcopalians are from that. We are simply TERRIBLE at keeping people out. We banished African Americans to the balconies of our churches, only to find, somehow, before the end of the 18th Century even, Absalom Jones and a great host of gifted and committed African Americans not only on the main floor, but leading congregations with great skill. And when we tried to keep African Americans from the Episcopate with the clever little suffragan gambit, that didn’t work either. Some of the most effective, most inspiring bishops in the last century, and certainly today, were and are African American. What a failure we are at keeping people out of leadership in our church! Gee, we even elected the Rt. Rev. Barbara Clementine Harris the first female bishop in the entire history of the Anglican Communion…not only a woman, but African American to boot! We are the leaky sieve in the Anglican wall trying to keep people out of leadership! Thank God those Primates in the Global South are showing some ability to keep people out. We surely are not.

Up in the part of the world I come from, we tried to keep Native Americans out of the Church. Rascals like Bishop Henry Benjamin Whipple, the first Bishop of Minnesota, was encouraging Native people to become Episcopalians, at the time the state of Minnesota was perpetrating the largest mass execution in U.S. history on the losing side in the Great Sioux Rebellion in 1862. Why, Bishop Whipple was ordaining Enmegahbowh, and scores of other Native clergy, many trained at Seabury Seminary, which in the 19th Century was in Faribault, Minnesota. And across the country Native clergy were being ordained and giving fine leadership. Heavens, there have even been a host of Native American bishops, beginning with The Rt. Rev. Harold Jones (Lakota) of South Dakota, and including such bishops of native ancestry as Steven Charleston, (Choctaw), Mark MacDonald (several tribal lines), the late Steven Plummer (Navajo), Fred Borsch (Mohawk), Creighton Robertson (Dakota), Michael Smith (Pottawatomie), William Wantland (Seminole), Lani Hanchett (Native Hawaiian) and others whom I know I have forgotten. Better yet, we could not only not keep Native American men out of the episcopate, but the Rt. Rev. Carole Gallagher, (Cherokee) became the first indigenous woman to be elected bishop in the Anglican Communion. We are terribly inept at keeping anyone out. Why we tried to keep kids out of the General Convention and being considered full members, and now we baptize and chrismate them at Baptism, and we even succumbed and allow 16 year olds to vote. Once again, our ineptitude stymies our best efforts to keep people out.

Oh, but we can keep the gay and lesbian community out of leadership, right? Ooops…it turns out that while we all know we have always had gay bishops, we cannot even keep uncloseted gay folk from the episcopate. Gene Robinson is anything but the first gay bishop, but he was the first to be honest and out of the closet before his election. I guess The Episcopal Church is not only terrible at keeping people out of our pews and leadership ranks, we are also terrible at lying. No matter how hard we have tried, no matter how much pressure conservatives in our church or the wider Anglican Communion have tried, they cannot help us get any better at excluding people. People threaten us. People leave the Church. People withhold money, and darned if we still fail to figure out creative ways to keep people out.

Right from the beginning, when the colonies won the American Revolution and the Brits tried to strangle the Episcopal baby in the cradle, they failed to keep the Scottish Episcopalians from consecrating our first Episcopal bishops. We couldn’t even keep the Scots out of the U.S., and off we went on our long tale of woe and failure at keeping people out.

Maybe, just maybe, we should think about our Episcopal DNA . We inherited it from the British Isles. What were the British to do with Picts, Angles, Celts, Normans, Saxons of every stripe, some Vikings mixed in just for flavor. One size church did not fit all. And as the state church they had to figure out how to accommodate wide differences. So they took the only logical path, and began to accept differences as being okay. Militarily, they would like to have kept out all the invaders, but failed, and adapted. And when the English Reformation led to a period of see-sawing between Catholic and Protestant, with bloodshed and disruption being the result, it took a woman, Elizabeth I, to say, ‘Boys, boys, stop fighting. We are both Catholic and Protestant. Now go pray together! And don’t let me see you fighting over this again!” And The Church of England emerged as a non-confessional church that believed that praying shapes believing and did not require intellectual assent to a particular set of doctrines as a requirement for membership. Wouldn’t have worked if they tried. One also sees a great humility in our Anglican forebears about what we can know for certain about God. God is essentially a mystery in our tradition. And we still believe that the Holy Spirit moves in the Councils of the Church to guide us just as Jesus said.

We are a both/and church. It is in our DNA. We inherited it. We are just no damn good at keeping people out. Why not look at it this way. We are good at including people. Just like Jesus was good at including people the “decent,” law abiding Temple goers wanted to exclude.

Maybe the Holy One is saying, “My Spirit led New Hampshire to elect one of my dear ones as Bishop. He is a tiny bit different in one small way, and that has made the “decent” orthodox folks mad. But Jesus showed you that I rather enjoy breaking down barriers that you all set up thinking you are doing a good thing. Okay, just in case you thought Gene Robinson was a mistake, My Spirit is going to lead you to elect, oh let’s see, how about a Woman as Presiding Bishop. I think you are getting cold feet. You passed that B-033 at your convention restricting some people from being leaders in My Church (uh..remember, it IS MY CHURCH), so I thought it would be a good thing to burn some bridges so that you can’t go back to the same old ways you human beings have used to exclude people from leadership in MY CHURCH. Now-be MY CHURCH. Be the Church Jesus showed you--one where your petty little intellectual doctrines do not become more important than my love commandment. Be MY CHURCH and let all of humanity, gifted by My grace and able to lead can be called out by My Spirit and MY CHURCH to show the world that we are all one, that I love each and every one of you. I love those who are mad at you because you are following the guidance of My Spirit. I love them just as much as I love you. Don’t worry about them. I am God, you aren’t. Your Bishops aren’t either. I know they are trying to keep the family together. But right now, I want you to follow My Spirit, even if it is painful, and besides, you aren’t any good at keeping people out anyway. And that may just serve My purposes well.”

The Rev. Dr. Howard Anderson is Warden and President of the Cathedral College at Washington National Cathedral. He was a long time General Convention deputy and most importantly, is grandfather to a five year old theologian, Will.

By John B. Chilton

What do we know about how or why Episcopal congregations grow? We can start by asking which congregations are growing and what are their characteristics. I say “start” because correlation does not prove causation. For example, congregations with parenting programs are likely to be growing. But is this because congregations with parenting programs attract newcomers, or is it because congregations with young growing families adopt these programs?

In 2005 the research and statistics office of the Episcopal Church issued a report, FACTS on Episcopal Church Growth, authored by C. Kirk Hadaway, Director of Research. Faith Communities Today (FACT) is a project of Hartford Seminary and the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. Thus far, FACT has conducted surveys of congregations in participating denominations in 2000 and 2005. FACTs on Episcopal Church Growth reports the results of the 2005 survey of Episcopal congregations. In this essay I summarize a portion of the report and offer some of my own thoughts.

The FACT 2005 survey form given to congregations is here. The survey was completed by 57% of congregations surveyed, usually by clergy. The 4,102 responses were weighted to reflect size and location in the population of Episcopal churches as a whole to improve the representativeness of the sample.

Growth in membership can be measured either as a rate or as a change. Small congregations can show large growth rates (or decline) even if it is just a change of a few members. And large congregations can have large growth in numbers with a small growth rate. Congregations were therefore classified as growing if they had “substantial growth in numbers” and at least a 5 percent rate of growth comparing 2000 membership to 2005.

Hadaway’s results are presented in five groupings of characteristics of congregations: demography, worship, orientation towards growing, conflict, and clergy leadership. In this essay we focus on demography. For my purposes this will include location (rural, suburb, etc.), year of establishment of the congregation, the age distribution of the membership, ethnicity, gender balance, the theological conservatism of members, and the conservatism of the diocese.

Location matters: New suburbs of cities have the largest proportion of growing congregations (39%). In downtowns the proportion was 30%. In other categories – rural, small town, old suburb, older residential in a city – the proportion growing ranged from 21 to 24 percent. Hadaway does not state whether, say, downtowns had both a large proportion growing and a large proportion in substantial decline.

Newer congregations grow: Of congregations formed since 1990, 48% were growing over the period 2000-2005; dioceses plant new congregations where the capacity for growth is greatest, often new neighborhoods. Of those formed earlier the proportion growing was 28% or less depending on the age interval examined. Older congregations in new suburbs are less likely to grow than new congregations in new suburbs. This may reflect behavioral differences between new and old congregations, or it could reflect the fact that dioceses choose to plant churches in those new suburbs whose residents are most likely to be open to the Episcopal Church, or simply that older congregations often literally don't have much room to grow. The clear suggestion however is that existing churches in growing neighborhoods should ask if they appear insular to outsiders.

Immigration and ethnicity: US Census figures tell us the white population is growing slower than the black population, the Hispanic population, and populations influenced by immigration (e.g., Asian). Hadaway finds growth of congregations is related to their ethnicity but “the relationship tends to be stronger in other denominations.” It has been said more than once that growth will not be found by going after the traditional constituency of mainline churches.

Presence of children: Of congregations with over 40% under the age of 18 the proportion that are growing is 40%. Other categories are much lower. Even in congregations with 20 to 40% under the age of 18 the proportion growing is 26%. But is it the presence of kids that attract new families? Or is it merely that congregations with children have many families that are growing? Or are we perhaps also seeing the effect that in new suburbs there is population growth and most residents of new suburbs are younger families?

Aging congregations don’t grow: In congregations with less than 25% of the membership over age 50 the proportion growing was 42%. Of congregations with 26% to 50% over the age of 50 the proportion drops to 31%. And it only gets worse if more than 50% of your congregation is over age 50. As Hadaway has underscored elsewhere, the birthrate among Episcopalians has fallen below the replacement rate. With that as given the age distribution membership of the typical congregation will shift towards older cohorts unless we evangelize. Yet many aging congregations are a reflection of their community so it is easier said than done that to grow these congregations you must attract young families.

Gender balance matters: It’s well known that regardless of denomination more females than males attend church. What Hadaway finds is that gender balance matters to growth. Of congregations that were more than 60% female, 50% were in decline. The proportion in decline is 45% if the congregation is more than 60% male (however unlikely that might be!). 40% are in decline in the “balanced” category (40 to 60% female). Since age is not held constant, it could be that we are merely seeing the effect of age combined with the fact that females have a longer life expectancy. If not, there could be a policy suggestion here: think harder about strategies that bring men to church.

Theological orientation of the parish matters: Congregations were asked what is the “theological outlook of the majority of your congregation’s regularly participating adults?” There is a stair-step fall across categories from “predominantly conservative” in which 48% of congregations were in decline, to “predominantly liberal” where just 34% were in decline. That would be consistent with the presumption that conservatives are most likely to be leaving the Episcopal Church and growth is occurring in those parishes that most reflect the liberal direction of the national church.

Conservatism of the diocese matters: If you are in a conservative diocese (in Hadaway’s classification there are eleven such dioceses) your congregation is more likely to growth. At the same time, if you are in a conservative diocese your congregation is more likely to be growing if it is left or right of “somewhat conservative.” It appears that conservative dioceses are more successful at holding onto conservative members than are other dioceses. In addition, I suspect part of what we are seeing in conservative dioceses is polarization due to conflict, where congregations towards the ends of the spectrum are picking up members from congregations in the middle, as well as from each other.

There are several questions on the survey form which Hadaway does not report on, probably because they had no strong effect on growth. These included questions on political conservatism of the congregation, household income, proportion of adults with college degrees, encouragement of personal piety, programs, outreach, and clergy.

There are also questions that could be asked that were not. For example, what other Episcopal churches, or churches of other denominations, are nearby? Where there is more opportunity for people to choose a congregation according to their theological preference are congregations in the middle growing slower? Or might it be that some people are attracted to diverse congregations or congregations that offer variety in worship?

A way to add value to the survey would be to match the congregation’s responses with the data available at from the national church at Studying your Congregation and Community. As stated there,

In order to know who you are, you need to examine where you are and where you have been.

Looking at the social and demographic characteristics of the local community sheds light on the people to which we hope to minister. Looking at trends in membership, average worship attendance, and financial giving sheds light on congregational strength and whether current patterns indicate growth, decline or stability.

But it would also be possible with census data to group the surveyed congregations by community type. One example: group congregations according to the ethnic mix of the community (not just to the ethnic mix of the congregation). A question that could be asked then is which congregations in ethnically mixed communities are growing – those that focus on the traditional white higher income segment in the community, or those that take a less traditional approach? What makes for a sensible evangelism strategy will differ in each context. And these factors may have more to do with the efficacy of different growth strategies than demographic characteristics of the congregation itself.

More will be said about growth strategies in Part II this coming Monday. See, also, my essay from last week is here.

Dr. John B. Chilton is an economist specializing in applied game theory. In January he will conclude six years of service at the American University of Sharjah (United Arab Emirates) and return home to Orkney Springs, the location of Shrine Mont Episcopal Conference Center of the Diocese of Virginia. He maintains two personal blogs, The Emirates Economist and New Virginia Church Man.

By John B. Chilton

In 2004 C. Kirk Hadaway, Director of Research for The Episcopal Church Center published “Is the Episcopal Church Growing (or Declining)?” The title may suggest the report is trivial. It is not. First, it carefully documents membership in the Episcopal Church 1930-2002. Thus, we know we stand (circa 2002 at least). Second, Hadaway uses the report to point to a core fact behind the decline in the growth rate of the church: the demography of its members.

To answer the question posed by the title of the paper, Hadaway had to first develop a consistent time series for membership. (The period covered is 1930 to 2002.) Over several decades there had been changing formats in the annual Parochial Report that the national church administered to gather numbers on membership from parishes, and changing methods of using those reports to calculate total membership in the national church. (Further, non-domestic dioceses have not been included in membership numbers since 1985 so Hadaway’s series excludes them prior to 1986 as well (adding back in Hawaii and Alaska).) Much of the report is an account of how Hadaway identified and corrected for the changing definitions and formats. It makes for rather mind-numbing reading, but the careful documentation is absolutely essential if we are to have confidence in the time series, and whether it tells us anything about the changing state of the church over time.

The corrected membership time series shows that, like other mainline churches, the Episcopal Church grew rapidly during the post-World War II baby boom. But in the late fifties growth slowed and by the mid-sixties had turned negative. Hadaway summarizes (pp. 11-12, describing Figure 6 in the report):

The [growth] trend line for the Episcopal Church has tracked quite closely to other mainline denominations. Growth rates declined precipitously from the mid-1950s [2.5%] to the mid-1970s [negative 1.5% for the mainline as a whole] and then began to moderate. From 1950 to 1974 the only meaningful difference between the pattern for the Episcopal Church and other mainline denominations was that the Episcopal decline [negative 2 to 3 percent growth] was more severe during the early-1970s. … After bottoming out in the early 1970s, the Episcopal rate of membership decline began to improve greatly [between 0 and 1% decline annually] and by 1980 the loss rate was consistently better than the United Methodist Church and other mainline denominations. So even though the Episcopal Church has not seen consistent membership growth, we are not declining at the same rate as other mainline denominations—a state of affairs that has existed for over two decades.

Thus, over the decades of the eighties and nineties membership in the Episcopal was at virtual plateau. This plateau was obscured by the issues surrounding Parochial Reports and highlights the importance the work Hadaway did in resolving them to establish his time series. The decline over the sixties and seventies did not continue.

In Hadaway’s analysis the reasons for the decline have to do with demography, not theology or church growth strategy. Or, rather, where he would place emphasis in a church growth strategy is in broadening our constituency. The membership of the Episcopal Church has been predominantly white. And the birthrate among whites has declined substantially since the fifties. Hathaway finds (p. 13) “the association between [white birthrate and mainline membership growth] is so strong that it produces a correlation of .94 (0 being no relationship and 1.0 begin a perfect relationship). In statistical terms, 88% of the year to year variation in mainline membership can be explained by the birth rate.” (He finds the correlation .89 between white birthrate growth and member growth in the Episcopal Church.) Further (p. 16),

As noted earlier, all denominations—mainline and conservative—were affected adversely by social changes occurring in the 1960s and 1970s. However, mainline denominations were hit hardest by the changes because declines in the birth rate were much more severe among the more highly educated white population. (Among conservative Protestants and Mormons the birth rate remained much higher than for the mainline, insulating these groups from the full effect of declines in fertility).

The Episcopal Church has the highest proportion of members among mainline denominations who are college graduates and in households earning $75,000 or more. As a result, the birth rate among Episcopalians is much lower than the national average—and even lower than the population of non-Hispanic whites. A reasonable estimate, based on education and race, is approximately 1.5 children per woman (compared to the replacement level of 2.1) for Episcopalians.

Earlier I reviewed recent academic work on church membership trends in mainline and conservative churches. It echoes what Hadaway concludes about the Episcopal church demography. That work also suggests that mainline churches have lost another source of growth: dropouts from conservative churches. As I wrote,

It's a great irony that after differential birthrates, the second most important fact in explaining the rise of conservative membership relative to the mainline is that a portion of conservative youth that in the past would have converted to mainline in their adulthood now drop out of Christianity altogether.

This raises an interesting empirical question: is the Episcopal church an exception? How many of its new members come from other Christian denominations?

Next Monday, Part II: an examination of Hadaway’s “FACTS on Episcopal Church Growth.”

Dr. John B. Chilton is an economist at the American University of Sharjah (United Arab Emirates) specializing in applied game theory. In the summers he resides in Orkney Springs, Va., home of Shrine Mont Episcopal Conference Center of the Diocese of Virginia. He maintains two personal blogs, The Emirates Economist and New Virginia Church Man.

First of two parts.

The author gratefully acknowledges the input of other participants in Northern Virginia's Mesh Community for ideas she developed in this essay. It doesn't necessarily reflect any individual's opinion other than her own, however.

By Helen Thompson

I was talking to a friend about the challenges we face by virtue of being born after 1970--well, of being gen-xers in general, and being caught between the "Boomers" and the "Millennials," and how this affects us in faith communities. It came up last week on an email group, and I passed it along to several of my friends who are doing their part, in my humble opinion, to attract people like me to the broader church. On Sept. 20, that group met over margaritas to discuss, as my friend put it, "the theological / ecclesiological / missiological / tequiliological implications" of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; indeed, the Harry Potter series as a whole. Where on earth can you find something like this? In our homespun small group, called MESH, which is an acronym for mix, entangle, share, harmonize. What it is, for me, is church. Three friends had the idea to read some books and invite their friends over for munchies and chat. And they're telling their friends. And they're telling their friends. We're not part of any one church, but part of the church.

The more I see things with top-down architectures being applied to us youngish people, the more I realize it doesn't work. I've seen great ideas committee-ed to death all because people older and wiser than me must control every outcome of every plan of every initiative. And the more input I got from friends of mine, the more I realized:

Your invitation to me to participate doesn't mean much if you don't let my input—and leadership—count. And that's what I'm hearing from frustrated 30-something laity who want to take on leadership positions but still get flak for being slackers, which we really are not anymore and we'd like some credit. It's not just the Episcopal Church. I worked at a financial services magazine that refused every pitch I made about Gen-X prospects because we're not buyers. I work for an association that's trying to figure out how to attract people under 40 because we're not joiners. One friend of mine added to the conversation that she'd like to see "'young adult' stricken from the Episcopal vocabulary"--for reasons that resonate with me: mortgage, career, family. Heck, my son is almost 15, and pretty soon I'll be the young adult parent of a young adult.

So, if we're not young adults anymore, and nowhere near middle aged (if 50 is new the 30, we're actually teenagers), what are we? How do you address the wide demographic of a narrow slice of the population that's holding an awful lot of cards and generating absolutely no buzz? Sure, skip us. Move on to the millennials.

Here's my take on things, though. Generation X is the bridge between the Boomers and the Millenials. We were raised with enough technology that we're conversant in the ways that today's teenagers interact on social networks. But we also know how to dial a phone. We're all wired in varying ways, but each succeeding generation is increasingly plugged in. Let me put it another way. Historically, many immigrants have come to America speaking only their native language. Their children, however, speak both languages fluently. But I know many cases where the grandchildren don't speak anything but English, and the middle generation must help the bookending generations understand one another--literally. So what happens if you skip the middle generation?

Here's an example I ran across recently. Blogs are a publishing platform that were adopted quickly by compulsive writers with varying degrees of web-savvy. I've had so many that it's a wonder I can populate them all with random Helen/Gallycat brain noise on a regular basis, so I wax and wane with all of them. They're a great way to distribute content, to self-publish (no, really, I'm more prolific than Stephen King!), to bypass censorious editors, to think aloud, to take the podium, to brainstorm in community. So of course, many organizations, seeing the value of being able to share content with one another, decided to barrel full speed ahead with a blog. Occasionally, some would enlist me to help get the blog off the ground, since I know the technology. One, in particular, was a church that was looking forward to getting some ideas out there.

But they didn't listen to my input on certain key issues that ultimately doomed the blog. Granted, this is a church that has huge outreach on many fronts and I don't fault them at all for determining that this wasn't the vehicle for them, especially since I was constantly moving from place to place and too peripatetic to fully participate in the community. (This is a major reason why "online" was my permanent residence, up til recently.) But the problem was that every post had to be approved by a committee. I felt like Cassandra, trying to explain to them why it would inhibit participation on the blog. It died a few months later. I was sad, but Episcopal Cafe emerged right around then, so I had another place to focus my energies.

So how is this an example of why we, Gen X, are the translators? We are well equipped to understand social media, which is going to be the communications medium of choice for today's young people. How is this changing the face of communications? My connections in the news media say it's as revolutionary as Gutenberg and the moveable type printing press. Ignore this opinion at your peril, unless you think Luther's revolution had nothing to do with Gutenberg's (again, a hat tip to my friend for saying this; I hope he outs himself in the comments). Blogs are just a part of what that next generation is coming online with. We can speak their language. We can speak the Boomers', too, though. Did I mention my teenage son? Yes? What about my aging parents? How's your retirement portfolio?

So anyway, back to the matter at hand. Don't skip Generation X. We've seen it more than once. We've heard you ask how to reach us, and seen you form committees hoping to find the magic pill that will get us back in the pews. To be honest, you might not. My fiancé has stalwartly avoided church services pretty much since he was old enough to say "no" to them. But cookouts, labyrinth walks, drum circles, soup kitchens, river clean-ups? He's so there. How is he going to hear about those activities if he doesn't come to church each Sunday? Through our blogs, our Facebook accounts, our Livejournals, our Myspace pages. I'm on each of these platforms, and on every single one it's plain to see that I'm a Christian, an Episcopalian, a Harry Potter fan and a Diet Pepsi addict. And I have slowly been building my own net community, little pockets of which occasionally gather for margaritas, that is my church.

You don't need a committee to study us and come up with a strategic plan that you'll implement just in time for my grandchildren's confirmation, by which time said strategic plan will be as obsolete and full of cheesy music as 8-track tapes. Try flying by the seat of your pants. Take a hint from my Tequila-loving pals and get a group together over dinner and a movie and see what happens. Take some popular music—U2 is just the beginning—and see what happens when you treat the lyrics as songs to God. Look at how subcultures like emo and goth have spiritual subtexts that tie in beautifully with the poetry of psalms. Take church outside the church, and take advantage of social networking technology to bring more people into the fold. Not the pews, THE FOLD. For we are his flock in the world. In the world! Such is the call to the diaconate, and the call of the deacon at the end of the service. But it's important to everyone; otherwise, such would not be the call of the deacon to us: Go forth into the world to love and serve the lord.

It's not enough to study us. Listen to us, yes, but more importantly—

Join us.

Helen Thompson directs social media initiatives for an international association in Northern Virginia and is a freelance writer and editor. She lives in the northern Shenandoah Valley, where she is in her second year of studies in Education for Ministry and plugging away at her first novel. Catch her on the web at http://www.gallycat.com, among others.

By Sam Candler

I must admit that I like large churches. I like the suggestion that their sheer size represents something of the grandeur of God. I like all the programs and mission opportunities they provide. I like the enormously talented staffs that they are usually able to afford. Many people have deep needs met in large churches, and the better large churches really do proclaim the gospel in effective ways.

I grew up, however, in a small church. There I learned much about the idiosyncrasies of community. I learned the values of diversity (when folks got upset, no one could up and leave for another church; we were the only Episcopal church around!) For many years, however, that church remained quite small. Our parish and mission life developed a cycle of boom and bust, up to various renewal movements then down to depressed clergy, then back up to mission trips, then back down to tedious music and dry liturgy. Lately, that parish has flourished with fine and healthy leadership among both its clergy and its people.

By “flourished,” I mean that the parish has grown in numbers of people and in numbers of dollars. I realize, of course, that growth can occur in other ways; but, again, I like physical flourishing and growth. My own parish is quite large, and I know that unless we are growing in people and in dollars, we might just be standing still.

But what if there are limits to growth? Several books on natural economy proclaim that very reality in the natural worlds of farming and energy production. I have eagerly enjoyed those books in the interest of earth stewardship and sustainability. Some scientists claim that the world’s production of oil has actually reached its peak, and we do not realize it yet.

Michel Pollan makes the same sort of point regarding the commoditization of agriculture in his book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Once we determine everything’s value primarily in terms of its financial cost and reward, in dollar figures, and in “yield per acre,” we actually begin to cultivate crops that are less nutritious and less healthy for us. Finding it cheaper to grow huge supplies of beef and corn with synthetic fertilizers, antibiotics, and hormones (mostly made with petroleum products), we feed ourselves with items that are missing key ingredients.

At one point, Pollan contrasts industrial production with artisanal production. “Industrial farmers are in the business of selling commodities,” he says, ever more cheaply so that the enterprise can grow profits (page 250). On the other hand, artisanal production, “is based on selling something special rather than being the least-cost producer of a commodity” (page 250). Having read that, I considered our own communities of growth and health. Is there a size-limit to the community where Christians can know authentic community and be challenged to mission?

If we get too large, do we lose the sense of “something special?” I believe that point occurs when we begin to relate to religion as a commodity, as if church is only a delivery system for something sterile and industrial. Some of the biggest mega churches today realize the principle of “artisanal production.” They arrange members in smaller cell groups of study and accountability. These churches are successful both because some larger structure and larger set of resources has enabled them, but also because they remember the uniqueness of small communities of diverse faith.

Small groups, like small parishes, are where different seeds meet with different soils and wonderful fruits sprout. Small communities are where we learn to be fascinated with individual searches and discoveries, those journeys of people who become our true friends. A church, of any size, becomes sterile and lifeless when it begins to speak simplistically and to make faith into a “commodity,” like any big industrial producer.

A church which can change the world, however, knows the values of natural systems; “the efficiencies of natural systems flow from complexity and interdependence—by definition the very opposite of simplification” (page 214) is how Michael Pollan puts it. What he writes about eating, a necessary and natural element of human life, is also true about praying, an equally necessary and natural element of life. Healthier prayer occurs in those communities which are not afraid of complexity. Relatively speaking, those spiritual communities can be large or small. But they need complexity no matter what their size. Healthy churches need complexity and interdependence in order to realize the grand and graceful mystery of life itself.

The Very Rev. Sam Candler is dean of St. Philip's Cathedral in Atlanta. He helped start that city’s interfaith group, and leads regular community bible studies. He is also inspired by playing jazz piano, hunting, astronomy, and poetry. His sermons and reflections on “Good Faith and Common Good” can be found on the Cathedral web site.

By Heidi Shott

Just yesterday morning, I was thinking about what to write for my monthly deadline at the Café. Several times a day I get flashes of ideas for essays – the commonplace moment somehow connects to some big idea - but then the phone rings or someone says, “hey, did you pick up my shirts at the cleaners?” or I get a pop-up on feedreader with a story about a cop in Glasgow who was attacked by an octopus and I can’t help but click. These interruptions make it hard to be faithful to all the ideas that present themselves for consideration.

But some ideas are more tenacious than others. There’s something in the way they keep rising to the top of my mind that makes them hard to ignore.

The James Taylor concert falls into that category.

In March for his birthday or perhaps in June for Father’s Day, (sadly, I can’t remember) my sons and I bought my husband Scott two tickets to see James Taylor in August. The plan was he would share the second ticket with me.

So one evening a few weeks ago, 50 miles from our quiet village, we sat down to a table at a lovely restaurant near the Civic Center in Portland. The young waiter asked if we were going to the concert.

“S’pose you have a lot of middle-aged people in tonight before James Taylor?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he grinned and concentrated on opening the wine.

Over the last 20 years we’ve been to a lot of events at the Civic Center. Once years ago I paid for my sons to ride the elephant at the circus, then they chickened out so I rode it with one of their friends. I’m against elephant riding in general, but I’d bought the damn tickets. We’ve seen Bonnie Raitt and Bruce Hornsby. We’ve gotten backstage passes to see the Barenaked Ladies twice because our only famous friend, Ned Steinberger, is a friend of the bass player.

As we took our seats on the floor of the Civic Center, eerily near the spot I bestrode the elephant, we saw that the place was sold out. It was sardined with people of the boomer persuasion. We played a game of spotting people under 30 with the couple to my left (you can do that in Maine). “There’s one!” chirped the 50-something engineer-type beside me.

“Well, yeah, she’s under 30, but look, she’s with her mom,” Scott said.

“Right,” he said, disappointed, “doesn’t count.”

“Our son is here,” said his wife. “He’s 32. But he won’t sit with us.”

One night in the lazy summer of 1982 - the summer Scott and I painted the barn on my family’s farm, played a lot of badminton and didn’t do much else - we drove to Saratoga Performing Arts Center to see James Taylor and his band. Most people were on the lawn with their blankets and buckets of beer, but we had tickets inside. It was a great show but I didn’t notice that anyone in the audience seemed particularly old, including James and Karla Bonoff who opened for him.

At this concert, however, there was no opening act, no band, just James Taylor, his guitars, and a fellow musician playing various keyboard instruments to complement the show. He started out with a wave and hello and launched into “There’s Something in the Way She Moves.” He had all 8,000 of us from the intro. His untouched voice; his deft, self-deprecating manner; all was a balm. Just about everyone in the room had either come of age with or grown up with these familiar songs, depending on their place on the boomer continuum.

I remember first hearing “Fire and Rain” played by my brother Jim, ten years my senior, around 1970. By the time I started high school in 1976, I was listening to “Greatest Hits” every night as I nodded off to sleep. “You’ve Got a Friend” was the last song on Side A and my record player would click off all by itself. The cover of the “JT” album spent several years mounted on the wall next to my bed. He still had hair back then.

In college, Scott and I listened to “Flag” and “Dad Loves His Work” on the 15-hour road trips between school in Boston and his home in West Virginia. After we were married and terribly lonely working as teachers in Micronesia, pining for mail and books we hadn’t already read, two copies of “That’s Why I’m Here” on cassette arrived from different friends on the very same day. Years later, I listened to “New Moon Shine” over and over during those first quiet winter months of doing little else but sitting and nursing our twin sons. This extended soundtrack of my life, our life together, is an odd and precious thing.

It’s crazy to think that this man who I don’t know nor will ever meet and, moreover, have no desire to ever meet, has accompanied me through these last 35 years. At the concert an alarming number of people felt compelled to shout personal greetings to him, which he absorbed graciously. The concert ran three hours with four encores. We got our money’s worth certainly. We had a nice dinner out, alone, like a real couple on a date. We talked about the first concert 25 years before in Saratoga when it took us 45 minutes to find the car, back when we never suspected we’d be together all these years later.

As a person of faith, I can’t help but wonder what it is about James Taylor – this gawky, bald, 60 year-old - that draws 8,000 busy middle-aged Mainers to buy tickets and sit on folding chairs in a dusty ice hockey rink/monster truck arena…and to be able to hold that attraction for 40 years. As someone who thinks a lot about marketing the Church, I can’t help but wonder what we’re doing wrong. The song that we’ve been gifted with is a million times sweeter than “Sweet Baby James.” If you read the Gospels with a fresh eye, it’s hard to escape that the person of Jesus is wildly attractive and charismatic. Read the Gospels cold, and you know why the fishermen of Galilee dropped their nets to follow. Talk about backstage passes!

But what are we doing in this Episcopal Church of ours? On what are we focusing our attention? We’re not so great at crafting an achingly sweet soundtrack that draws people back again and again and again.

One of the most disheartening stories I ever heard as a diocesan communications officer was from a single mom who had stopped going to one of our churches. Bumping into her after not seeing her for a few years, I asked why she’d stopped attending. She told me that she’d arrived one Sunday with her two daughters and someone caught her before she sat down to remind that it was her day to provide snacks and juice for coffee hour after the service. Her life was complicated at that time and she’d forgotten.

“I panicked,” she told me. “I had exactly $25 in my checking account, but I was too embarrassed to tell the person who chided me for forgetting. That I didn’t have any money wouldn’t have occurred to her in a million years.” Though I knew this woman was doing better now, I could see how much it cost her to recount the story. “I grabbed my girls, drove out and bought juice and crackers, and set them up in the parish hall. Then we left and we’ve never been back.”

If only we knew how to flip the switch to be better at this stuff. If only we knew how to absorb the winsome attractiveness of Jesus and offer it freely to everyone – people we agree with and people we don’t, people we find interesting and people we don’t. In the James Taylor model, despite his addictions and demons so publicly chronicled, there’s a guilelessness, a generously proffered gift, a constancy over time, that his admirers are drawn to. It’s not a bad model after all.

That night James sang:

“The secret of love is in opening up your heart It’s okay to feel afraid But don’t let that stand in your way ‘Cause anyone knows that love is the only road”

I started this column last night with my laptop in bed. I was going great guns when Scott said, “Time to turn out the light.” So I woke up this morning and finished it. I’m just glad I remember who to send it to.

Heidi Shott has served as press officer to Bishop Chilton Knudsen of Maine since 1998. She is also communications director of the Genesis Fund, a revolving loan fund that provides expertise and low-interest loans to nonprofits engaged in community development. Heidi's essays about trying to live a life of faith may be found at Heidoville.

By Diana Butler Bass

September is my favorite month of the year. In these embracing days, as summer wanes, certain things signal autumn: the shopping trip for new school clothes, the slant of sunlight through the tress, the breeze bearing Canadian coolness. And, perhaps most notably, every Episcopal Church hangs out a banner bearing the words: “Homecoming Sunday.”

Although I have never read a history of this custom, I suspect that Homecoming Sunday began in the early twentieth century as a way of welcoming back parishioners from their summer places after months away from church. At that time, Episcopalians conceived of church as religious “homes,” complete with parish parlors full of extended family, bustling with quotidian chores of flower arranging, ironing, and cooking, all under the care of a priest called “Father.” Homecoming Sunday liturgically marked a return to the regular schedule of work and school, and the family gathered around the table to engage worship and ministry once again. Coming home served as a welcoming metaphor in this domestic spiritual world.

If you grew up in the church, Homecoming Sunday is a lovely custom. And therein lies the problem. We no longer live in a world of Episcopal churchgoers where hanging out a sign announcing “Homecoming Sunday” invites the neighborhood to church. To us theological insiders, “Homecoming Sunday” may be a way of saying “Welcome Home to God,” a sort of subtle Episcopal evangelism. Of course, we would welcome newcomers—not just returnees—on Homecoming Sunday. Good intentions aside, in a society where less than 18% of Americans attend church on a weekly basis, Homecoming Sunday seems increasingly irrelevant and even inhospitable. How can a church invite people to homecoming who have never been in the building in the first place? How can anyone understand finding a home in God if they have no spiritual language to express their longings? From the point of view of twenty-first century post-Christian people, the “Homecoming Sunday” banner may as well read “Members Only Club.”

With so much groaning about numerical decline and awkward evangelism, Homecoming Sunday is a good opportunity to rethink the messages we send to our neighbors. Therein, I have a modest proposal. Can Homecoming Sunday in favor of Open House Sunday. Instead of welcoming members back, invite everybody to church. Open God’s house to complete strangers, seekers, the curious, and the noisy. Not just Episcopal alumni.

Although church folk never consider it, the very act of walking on church property—much less through church doors—is a completely terrifying prospect for most people. Take away their fear. Give them a reason to visit. Offer tours. Let the neighbors roam through your building, trample your carpets, and ask impertinent questions about your furniture and decorations. Explain to them the meanings of Christian architecture, the stories depicted in the windows. Feed them. Have a party. Do not recruit for committee slots or solicit money for any purpose. Expect nothing in return.

Finally, measure the custom of Homecoming Sunday by the words of Jesus regarding hospitality, words that depict the church as an open community: “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors . . . But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you” (Luke 14: 12-13). We may well discover that “Open House,” describes both the ancient Christian practice of hospitality and the contemporary Episcopal Church far better than any old-fashioned homecoming.

Diana Butler Bass is the author of the award-winning Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith (Harper One, 2006). She is a member of Church of the Epiphany in Washington, D.C.

By Kit Carlson

An old youth group friend of mine recently died, and as I read her obituary, about her good work with her local parish, her funeral in a large Episcopal church in Manhattan, I thought, “Yup, Mom, you got another one.”

My mother was very proud of the people she “got” into the Episcopal church. As her own death neared, she would often run them off on her fingers, her friends, my friends, my sister’s friends, all the people she had managed to get firmly planted in some local parish. Jack and Jodie, Marcia and Chuck, Ken and Sally, Susan, Patty, Merrie. She was almost as bad as my high school Baptist friends, totting up her converts with pride.

But my mother was an unlikely evangelist. Her belief in God was tenuous at best, she rejected most of the sentences in the creeds, she railed at the hypocrisy she found in Bible studies and Episcopal Church Women groups, and she complained about the priests in our high, Anglo-Catholic parish. Holding her nose against the incense, she would murmur, “Do they have to swish around like that in those robes?”

Still, she loved getting people settled in a church home. And she believed, to the end of her days, that the Episcopal church was the best church home anyone could find. She relished inviting people to join her at church … even if it was the first time she had gone in months, and she was only going to escort them. She gleefully coaxed my sister’s and my friends into joining us for youth group. And when they got baptized or confirmed, or married, she was there with bells on … or at least a great hat and matching shoes.

Now my mother could sell snow to Canadians. She had a variety of careers selling everything from real estate to home health services. And perhaps her salesmanship just carried over to matters of the church as well. But I wonder, after all these years of Decades of Evangelism and 20/20, and every program the church has dreamed up to introduce people to the Episcopal way … I wonder if maybe her approach isn’t the better one, even if it is the more neglected one.

For we all know people who are lonely, and who need a community. And we all know people who have questions about faith, and who need a safe place to bring those questions. And we know people who are seeking meaning and purpose and need companions in that journey. They are our friends, our neighbors, our co-workers, our children’s friends

Somehow, though, we continually fail to overcome our reticence, our “politeness,” our fear of rejection. We eagerly tell these folks about great movies, new restaurants, trustworthy doctors. Yet when the ultimate questions of life and faith and purpose arise, we fall silent. We do not offer what we have found inside the big red doors of our local Episcopal church. We do not promise to take someone with us and sit with them until they learn the service. We do not invite them to parish suppers or Messiah sing-alongs.

Perhaps there is nothing wrong with “getting” someone into the Episcopal Church. Perhaps it is something our friends will thank us for in the end, something their loved ones might thank us for at the very end, when the folks we “got” into the church exit this world and enter the next, borne along on the liturgy of the Episcopal burial service, sustained by the love and care of their church family.

The Rev. Kit Carlson, is the rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in East Lansing, Mich. She is a graduate of Virginia Theological Seminary and was associate and interim rector at the Church of the Ascension in Gaithersburg, Md., for seven years.

By Kit Carlson

For many years, I was a serious Anglophile. I loved being an Episcopalian, because we talked like Thomas Cranmer every single week (at least until the 1979 revision of the Prayer Book). I was obsessed with the Masterpiece Theater series on Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, and the connection between my local church and the its convulsive beginnings in the 15th Century was really powerful for me.

As I got older, I drifted in and out of churches. As a young 20-ish woman, there was nothing that spoke to me in most Sunday services. But on All Saints Sunday 1986, my husband and I wandered into Our Saviour Episcopal Church, just next to the Beltway in suburban Maryland. We had relocated to Silver Spring, I was pregnant with our first child, and I wanted to find a church we could settle down in as a family.

Our Saviour had a pipe organ. And a choir, one that needed a soprano. It worked for me. We joined.

Shortly after, something wonderful began to happen at Our Saviour. It had been founded in the late '50s as a "white flight" church, spun off from another Our Saviour in the Brookland area of Washington when things began to "change" in the neighborhood. But as the 1980s turned into the 1990s, Our Saviour-Hillandale also began to change. Folks started showing up, immigrants from Africa and China and India and the Caribbean.

It was another connection to British history, its history of empire and of conquest. For if once the sun never set on the British Empire, then it also never set on Britain's national church. There were Anglicans all over the world and as they moved to the United States, many of them made their home at Our Saviour.

Harwood Bowman, the founding rector, had planned for Our Saviour to be built next to the Capitol Beltway, then only a dream, because he wanted folks to come to Our Saviour from "all over." Folks were definitely coming to the church from "all over," from places Harwood had never imagined they might come, bringing their culture and customs with them. It became a Pentecostal church ... not the kind that rolls around in the ecstasy of the Spirit, but a church that looks like the feast of Pentecost, when each person heard the good news proclaimed to them in their own language.

Through these changes, Our Saviour flexed, painfully at times, but accommodated the shifts. When I worshipped there last month, for the first time in years (and for the last time for me as a resident of Maryland ...), it was very different and yet the same.

The congregation was more than three-quarters black. But not because the whites fled ... the old-timers were still filling the same pews. The parish had just grown and changed along with them.

The Mother's Union, another exported British tradition, had turned out to make a presentation. In their matching blue dresses and white hats, they claimed their pride of place as a force of feminine leadership. The sermon -- preached by the new young assistant, who is also the parish's pastor to its Latino congregation -- was free-form, delivered from the aisle, and powerful. The music was traditional (with ALL the verses of St. Patrick's Breastplate) and pietistic, with three hymns from LEVAS at communion, sung with great volume and joy. Some people waved their hands in the air. Others silently bowed their heads in prayer. It was my church. It was a homecoming.

Our Saviour is not a perfect parish. It has had its dissensions, its debates, its struggles over what is going on in the wider Communion and what is going on among its own members. But it is a community that has held together through those dissensions and struggles. It is Anglican in all the best definitions of that word ... international, comprehensive, thoughtful, traditional, yet open to the leading of the Spirit.

I am proud to have called it my church home. It has made me the Anglican I am today.

The Rev. Kit Carlson, is the rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in East Lansing, Mich. She was associate and interim rector at the Church of the Ascension in Gaithersburg, Md., for seven years.

Episcopalians do not do evangelization by reproduction. We also don’t do a terribly good job at retaining the offspring we do produce.

- Katharine Jefferts Schori, Hays Daily News, June 18, 2007

By John B. Chilton

The mainline denominations – Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian – didn’t pay much attention to competition for members from conservative denominations until the early 1970s when the number of conservatives passed the mainline denominations in total membership. Since then conservatives have continued to grow relative to the mainline churches. In the 1950s mainline denominations constituted 60% of Protestants; by the 1990s it was the conservative denominations that held 60%. Is this because the mainline denominations are soft and the upstart evangelicals do a better a job of evangelism? Many have supposed this to be the case, and I echoed those views in my essay in the Daily Episcopalian last month.

A friendly commenter suggested that the reasons had to do more with lower rates of fertility in mainline denomi