I have been a member of the same Episcopal Church for 32 years. During that time we have had 5 Rectors (I think, as I remember). The personalities of those 5 men, and the (mostly male) Assistants, have varied tremendously. Their overall viewpoints about fellowship, young people and their families, and how to attract new members has also varied.

Over those 32 years, the demographics of our members has changed quite dramatically. Some of that is natural evolution, and some very much intentional.

There were only 2 Episcopal Churches in my area when I joined. Now there are 5. They are all different, physically (in terms of architecture, the grounds, etc.) and in terms of membership. The differences are not due just to the neighborhoods the churches occupy, but, I would argue, the whole ethos of the parish. That depends partly on the members, but also on the clergy, and what the Rector and Vestry considers to be priorities. There will be a lag time, if a new Rector initiates a change in direction, before it reaches its full expression. And people will travel far beyond a local church if there is one that better meets their needs and comfort level farther down the road.

All this is to say that I don't understand why people attend a church, dislike it for one or many reasons, or come to dislike it after initial comfort, and then ascribe to the entire denomination the characteristics of the one parish. I'm not talking only about the writer of this article; there have been several lately, some about why young people don't like church. If it doesn't work for you, why don't you leave and seek out another parish, whether still an Episcopal church or not, that better meets your needs?

There have been writers here lately, in The Lead or in the Daily Episcopalian, who have said that they were firmly silenced if they spoke up with alternative ideas. To a point, I get that, from the Rector's standpoint -- he/she doesn't need every other parishioner coming in to tell him what he "needs" to do differently. My current Rector has faced quibbles ranging from why he grew a beard to why he preaches about Jesus all the time (!!). On the other hand, if I felt that I could not even voice my concerns, and have a rational conversation about why they were or were not something that might be fixable, I'd be out the door.

Within the Episcopal Church, more than most other denominations, there is variety from parish to parish, because not only are there differences in the personality and style of the leadership, but there are options in the style of worship from very Anglo-Catholic to very "low church."

I have taken to heart for a long time the dictum "if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem." If you cannot be part of a solution because no one will listen to you, then go somewhere else, for crying out loud! If you are not the only one who feels the way you do, enlist your fellows and hold meetings, document the problem, present the Vestry with something other than "I didn't feel welcome." And if nothing can be done, or the parish is just plain stuck in the mud, then vote with your feet and your pocketbook. The odds are you can find another place that will feel more like home to you.

Sarah Ridgway

Unfortunately I think the writer's experience is more common than not in Episcopal Churches. I visit a lot of churches doing supply and interim and just attending - I see that behavior towards some and not towards others by church members. I generally stand around at coffee hour and look friendly - open to conversation - usually I end up talking to other visitors while members rush on. One place I went they had tables for coffee hour - a great idea - but all the members clumped up at tables leaving no place for newer people or visitors - we ended up sitting around the edges deciding if it was worth a return. As to finding another church - not so easy in small towns or if one can't drive all over looking for another one and you really like Episcopal worship. Hard to be part of the solution it no one will speak to you.

I have very rarely experienced this and I have probably attended two dozen Episcopalian churches as a visitor as a constantly moving Navy wife. I am not discounting the experience of the writer, but I don't want this to be seen as universal. Episcopalians have always been friendly to me. And I definitely am not upper class; I'm a twentysomething lower middle class enlisted military wife to a baby boy, by profession a teacher, using welfare to pay for groceries. But I have always made an effort to attend smaller congregations instead of mega-churches. They always seem grateful to see a new face.

Lisa Jones

MHO. Transcendence is what I have found through prayer and meditation. I don't think I've ever actually found that in church. What you usually find in church is that life is messy and relationships can be problematic. BUT, those messy, problematic relationships can also transform us.

At my church we have a deliberate procedure for welcoming newcomers and I think that has merit.

Back in the '90s, I had a couple who sent or dropped off their children for SS & worship for nearly a year. It steamed me, as the young vicar of my first church. But they had friends in the congregation who supervised the 3 young boys, who were all delightful. One Sunday the parents came to worship and rarely missed a Sunday thereafter. A mystery to me at the time.

It was some time after, when the mom was on the Vestry, that I learned the back story - one evening the oldest boy, about 8 at the time, called a family meeting. At the kitchen table he said to his parents, on behalf of himself and his brothers, "Mom, Dad - I want you to come to my church." The parents - lapsed RC & Methodist - were moved to tears.

A powerful message to this new priest about patience, evangelism, and the wisdom of children.

Oh, Bonnie, I've definitely found transcendence, if I understand that word in this context, in liturgical worship. I can't truthfully recall an instance from Episcopal worship aside from my present parish, though; I experienced it more often in Orthodox churches. I think much of the dominant liturgical culture of the Episcopal Church might actually aim to tamp down that aspect of worship in favor of what i think of as the 1970s-style (pottery chalices, whole wheat bread, homespun vestments, earnest eye contact and emoting between celebrant and congregation), which is viewed as more incarnational.

Bill, you know what, I wonder if people are coming to church wanting to ascribe religious value to, or paint with a shiny coat of Jesus, things that aren't really religious and have little religious content, because they aren't getting the homespun "authentic" experience at home, complete with emotions, messiness and lots of texture. Or, they find these things so self-defining that they must see them everywhere they go, from their living rooms to their cars, their churches and their vacations, or they aren't "into it". Same music, same look, same stuff, but with a Jesus-tinted semi-gloss. Many people seem to want the stuff that they think defines them to be validated even religiously so that they too are validated. But that's not a very deep welcome, that's a welcoming of someone's jewelry, or hairdo, or t-shirt, or musical tastes, or taste in wine, or what have you. Church does the world a disservice (pun?) when it works this way; all that needs to be taken off the table (Table?) and a culture of truly welcoming every person, greeting with a smile and a nod and a dose of real attention because that's how you treat people, that what it takes to turn our parishes from oaken country clubs to the Lord's House.

Melissa, I am so sorry that you found your parish experience cold and distant. It all sounds so sad, both for you and your family.

I wish I could make it up to you in some way, but I don't know how, I'm afraid. I'm just another Piskie posting here on the website, and not "there".

All I can do is empathize and hope that I will see "Another You" in the future(whoever that may be) and make them feel welcomed and affirmed. And I pray one day that you and your family will give us another chance.

Pax!

Kevin McGrane

Sorry Bill. I should back that up just a tad.

"The body of Christ." "The cup of salvation." The gift that has always kept me from leaving.

Years ago when I was in seminary I observed a few families in the church where I did field work. They arrived in their tennis togs, dropped the kids off for Sunday School, and went off to the club. They finished a set or two, and arrived back just as Sunday School ended to pick up the kids. Their timing was perfect, and their discipline was dependable.

I want to give Melissa Holloway credit for trying. Perhaps she and her husband might have preferred Starbucks, but they did in fact stay at the church to drink their coffee.

I want to note that because what I saw more often was not that folks who felt invisible, or who felt imposed on because they couldn't be invisible, were missing the point. They were making an effort. More often, it was the tennis parents who were seeking to acculturate their children into values they didn't share. What I fear they succeeded in teaching their children was that faith was for children; and that once one was sufficiently grown up one could reasonably leave it behind. These were the families who, once the kids no longer enjoyed Sunday School, simply disappeared altogether. The parents thought there was no more to be gained from Church than simple "Sunday School values;" and once it seemed the kids were no longer interested there was no reason for any of them to go.

Even Ms. Holloway's daughter counters that concern for her family. She does have expectations of the Church and at a time when she's trying to be an adult, she's thinking about whether her church is meeting her needs. I'm not happy with her decision, but she hasn't simply faded away, thinking it's not important.

At the same time, I have to raise a question about appropriate expectations in church. Specifically, just whom are we in church to be visible to? Living in Christian community is, at least to some extent, about discipline - which sometimes means doing it when it doesn't feel fulfilling. If it's about our relationship to God in community, and not just about the relationship to the community, we do need to press it.

If, then, "the church is the one place we hope to find transcendence, to find mystery, to find beauty, to believe in love," that's worth pursuing for myself, and not just for my children. "Maybe, we parents who have done/do the dropping off have an irrational hope, that even though our experience denies it, church is the home of the transcendent and we are slow to deny that to our children." Maybe; but it undermines our efforts to have our children learn that if we by our behavior deny that for ourselves.

I don't want to make to strong a claim. It's been so long since I've been "invisible" in church that I usually enjoy it, at least for a while. At the same time, if we want our children to have faith, we need consistently to show our children that faith is an adult thing to do. We need them to know that faith and church are "grown-up" activities. After all, what does any child want to be more than to be "grown-up?"

Marshall Scott

Oh dear. Funny how difficult communication can be. Most of mine these days are in fact here, every Sunday in church, busy about lots of things, for the most part deeply Christian. Our vicar has indeed gotten lists about what I think 'welcome' means (bless him).

Interesting thing that I have been read, in some cases, as someone who 'left' or someone with no commitment.

There is to me a dark side of 'community' that most of those who stay, especially those who find their vocation in the church, haven't experienced and don't imagine. And when we, the ones who do the work in the sacristy, at the altar, in the pulpit or in the nursery, are confronted with the non-takers, however they present themselves, we need to be careful how we tell the story. It makes a difference in how those people are treated, and it also makes a difference in what kind of people we become.