Beyond Vestries? Is it time to change parish governance
The Episcopal Church in its local, lived expression is very good at stifling new ideas and suffocating relational groupings if it appears that such movements will threaten the establishment. Creating these checks-and-balances between Vestry and Parish Council, then, will lead both groups to become partners in the work of ministry, one paying greater attention to relational matters, the other to those more functional (and necessary) concerns of what it means to be church.