The Episcopal Church and the ‘E’ Word

 

In the 1980s I attended a Creative Christian Education workshop conducted by the late Howard Hanchey, then professor of pastoral theology at Virginia Theological Seminary, and hosted by Christ Episcopal Church in Covington, Louisiana. During the workshop Dr. Hanchey told the participants about his plans to write a book on outreach, evangelism, and church growth. He explained that he first needed to work through his anger at the Episcopal Church for the state that it had allowed itself to get into before he would be able to write the book. What frustrated him was the negligible value that its clergy and congregations placed on outreach, evangelism, and church growth. Consequently, the denomination was stagnating when it should have been thriving and growing. This was a few years before the Decade of Evangelism, in which it became very clear to me that Dr. Hanchey had every reason to be angry. The bulk of Episcopal clergy showed little enthusiasm for outreach and evangelism. Indeed, they had a decidedly negative attitude toward evangelism. This attitude also infected the congregations that they served. 

From 1985 to 2003 I was involved in planting and pioneering two new churches in St. Tammany Parish in the Northshore Deanery of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana. During that time period St. Tammany Parish which lies about 30 odd miles north of New Orleans was one of the fastest growing parishes in the State of Louisiana. In Louisiana counties are called parishes, a vestige of the state’s French colonial heritage.

The first new church, St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, Mandeville, then known as the Mandeville Mission, was launched in 1985, initially as a satellite congregation of Christ Episcopal Church, Covington, the oldest Episcopal church in St. Tammany Parish, one of two Episcopal churches in the parish at the time, each located at opposite ends of the parish. It was the church that my family had attended since moving to St. Tammany Parish in the early 1960s and was the church where I was then a licensed lay reader, a member of the mission’s steering committee, and the worship coordinator on its launch team.  

The nucleus of the new congregation consisted of a group of parishioners from the community where the new church would be located and other residents of that community who had attended a public interest meeting advertised in the local newspapers. 

Before the American Civil War Mandeville had been the site of an Episcopal church, All Souls, but yellow fever had ravaged the community, forcing its closure.  Christ Episcopal Church in Covington had absorbed the remnant of its congregation.

The new congregation initially gathered for a Sunday Eucharist at a tennis club in one of the community’s neighborhoods but was forced to move to a new location due to complaints from the residents of the neighborhood. The tennis club’s small parking lot was not able to contain all the cars and the neighborhood’s residents objected to the attendees’ parking on the neighborhood’s streets. 

As the new congregation grew, it would occupy three other venues—an office building, a storefront, and an old high school gymnasium--before occupying its own multipurpose building on property that the diocese had purchased for the new work.  In less than a year after it formation, it would become a mission of the diocese with its own vicar.

 Among a number of factors that contributed to the mission’s growth, and which are worth noting, was that the population of St. Tammany Parish and the community where the mission was located was growing rapidly. New churches were popping up across the parish seemingly overnight like mushrooms.  I conducted demographic studies and windshield surveys for the dean of the Northshore Deanery, my former rector, and concluded that the parish could have supported additional Episcopal churches. I identified potential meeting places for start-ups, only to see the start-ups of other denominations occupy these venues.

Favorable population growth, however, was not the only factor that accounted for the success of the mission. It adopted a number of deliberate outreach strategies designed to reach and engage a broad segment of unchurched families and individuals in the community, families and individuals with a wide variety of church backgrounds and no church background at all. It chose not to focus on Episcopalians who had not settled in a church home as they formed a very tiny segment of the population and were elusive fish to catch.  They also had expectations that a congregation worshiping non-traditional settings could not meet such as replicating the ambiance that longtime Episcopalians associate with the Episcopal Church. Among these strategies were a popular summer vacation Bible school, a successful early childhood development program and nursery school, a popular women’s conference, and home Bible study groups to which individuals who might not attend a church service could be invited. All four strategies, while they enjoyed the vicar's full support, were lay initiatives.

Church services were simple, unembellished, and relatively informal compared to other Episcopal churches. Rite II was used on most occasions. Prayers of the People Form C and Eucharistic Prayer A were the most frequently used prayers at the Sunday Eucharist. Sermons were succinct and to the point, focused upon topics affecting the spiritual lives of the congregants. 

On ordinary Sundays the vicar wore a cassock-alb and a seasonal stole. On festivals like Christmas and Easter and during the Twelve Days of Christmas and the Easter Season, he donned a festal chasuble; for baptisms he wore a special chasuble that the children of the mission had made for him with the help of their parents. 

To make the music used in church services appealing to the mission’s primary ministry target group, an eclectic blend of contemporary and traditional hymns, worship songs, and service music was employed. This music was taken from a variety of sources as well as new hymnal, The Hymnal 1982.  Among these sources were Songs for Celebration – Church Hymnal Series IV, the Community of Celebration’s Come Celebrate, and several Jubilate Hymns, Hope Publishing, GIA, NALR, and Vineyard music collections. A number of the songs are now found in the Episcopal Church’ hymnal supplements. One of them, “I, the Lord of Sea and Sky,” is rated a the fifth most popular hymn in the Church of England.

A concerted effort was made to select hymns, worship songs, and service music that was accessible to children as well as adults and which might be familiar to churchgoers from other church backgrounds beside the Episcopal Church, Roman Catholic as well as Protestant. Pre-service congregational rehearsals were held to teach new hymns, worship songs, and service music to the congregation and to practice them. Based on the advice of the Rev. Jerry Godwin of the Standing Commission on Church Music and others, an upright piano rather than an electronic organ was purchased to accompany the congregation and the mission’s small choir. Later on, the piano was supplemented by a small acoustic guitar ensemble.

St. Michael’s Eucharist celebrations had several distinctive characteristics. In place of a piano prelude, the congregation might be invited to join medley of simple worship songs or listen to a soloist, a choral prelude, or a string or woodwind prelude. In place of sequence hymn, a gospel acclamation, an alleluia or an alleluia verse, was sung before the reading of the Gospel, except during Lent.  The Sanctus-Benedictus, the Memorial Acclamation, the Great Amen, and the Fraction Anthem were sung to simple, easy-to-memorize settings like Richard’s Proulx’s “Land of Rest Acclamations.” Communion songs with lyrics or refrains or repetitions which could be sung from memory were sung by the congregation as it processed to the communion stations. The distribution of the communion elements concluded with the singing of one or more songs of praise, thanksgiving or adoration. Only after the song or songs had concluded, did the vicar proceed to the post-communion prayer. 

A concerted effort was also made to integrate the children into the life, ministry, and worship of the church. The children’s Sunday school was held before the Sunday Eucharist, and the children joined their parents for the service. A nursery was provided for infants and toddlers. Older children and youth were recruited and trained, not just as acolytes, or servers, but also as lectors, leaders of the intercessions, gift bearers, and ushers, handing out service bulletins and collecting the people’s offerings. High school students who sung with the chorus at their school were invited to join the choir and to perform solos. Those playing with their school band to perform were invited to perform instrumental pieces. The participation of the children in other areas of the life and ministry of the church was encouraged.   

The mission’s approach to “doing church”” generated a high level of enthusiasm in the mission’s congregation. Congregants would talk about the church with friends, relatives, neighbors, coworkers, employees, employers, clients, customers, and strangers and invite them to its church service, social gatherings, and the like.  Those to whom they had talked would visit to see for themselves what all the excitement was about.

St. Michael’s would thrive and grow and become a self-supporting parish in a surprisingly short period of time. It would grow from two services on Sunday morning to three services and a weeknight service midweek. Then disaster struck. The church experienced a serious church split—a division over whether the church should further indebt itself to construct a new worship center or reduce its existing indebtedness before embarking on such a project. Church splits over the future direction of a church are more common than we might like to admit. They can do considerable harm to a church.. This split cost St. Michael’s a third of its households and marked the beginning of a seven year decline that eventually led to it becoming a mission again.

The second new church, the Church of Beloved (Episcopal) was launched in 2002 or shortly before. I am not sure of the date that the bishop officially gave his permission for the launch. The group who would form the nucleus of the start-up had been petitioning him for permission, but he had initially withheld permission, fearing that the start-up might draw attendees from St. Michael’s, further weakening it after the church split. The bishop would change his mind when the Anglican Mission in America informed him of its plans to launch a new church at the west end of St Tammany Parish.

The bishop, the late Right Rev. Charles Jenkins, when he first took office, had launched a new church planting initiative in the diocese, following in the footsteps of his predecessor, the Right Rev. James Brown. This initiative resulted in a start-up in East Baton Rouge Parish, an area of the state whose population was also growing rapidly.

Bishop Jenkins had wanted to start a new work at the east end of St. Tammany Parish but the new rector of the existing church there, Christ Episcopal Church, Slidell, begged him not to go ahead with this plan because the new church might not only attract newcomers to the area which was growing rapidly but also attendees of his own church. He was hoping to reverse the decline of that church. He, however, had his work cut out because the vestry and other leadership positions in the church were reportedly dominated by former members of a Bayou Lacombe Unitarian Universalist church that had closed its door due to declining attendance. Their attitude was that the church did not need to advertise its presence in the community. Newcomers to the community who wanted to attend an Episcopal church would eventually find their way to the church. They did not see any need to make it easy for newcomers.  The church had one small listing in the Yellow Pages and not even a modest ad like most of the churches in Slidell.

The church was not easy to find. I attended a meeting at the church and had first-hand experience of how difficult it was to find. It was on cul-de-sac at the end of a side road, and the only sign was a small one hanging from a pole in front of the church.   

The Church of the Beloved began as a midweek evening gathering in a private home. This gathering consisted of a meal and a home Eucharist. The president at the Eucharist was sometimes a priest from Bishop Jenkin’s old deanery in Baton Rouge and sometimes a Continuing Anglican priest, who later became a bishop of his jurisdiction. The core group consisted of former and existing members of St. Michael’s.  What united the group was a common interest in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, prayer, and healing.

I became involved in the Church of the Beloved largely as an observer as I was already involved in two other church plants, neither of which were Episcopal. For a time, the Church of the Beloved would gather on Sunday afternoons in an empty house owned by the spouse of one of the core group’s members and eventually, as it grew, moved its gatherings to Sunday mornings in the conference room of a local hotel. It would start a number of Alpha groups and was enjoying some success with these groups until Jean Robinson’s election, confirmation, and consecration as a bishop of the Episcopal Church in 2003. Robinson was openly gay and at the time was married to his same sex partner. While the Episcopal Church’ progressive wing hailed the development as a victory for LBTQ inclusivity in the Episcopal Church, it would prove to be a pyrrhic victory. 

Both St. Tammany Parish and East Baton Rouge Parish are fairly conservative parts of the state of Louisiana. The election, confirmation, and consecration of Bishop Robinson would seriously damage the Episcopal Church’s public image In the state. Church attendance dropped across the Diocese of Louisiana. The new work in East Baton Rouge Parish lost so many people that it was abandoned.  The Church of the Beloved did not fare much better. It maintained a shadow existence as a preaching station for a number of years. When I last attended one of its gatherings, it was meeting on Sunday afternoons in the sanctuary of a local Lutheran church. It would eventually disband, and a number of the core group’s remaining members would migrate to the Anglican Church in North America.

According to reports, the Church of the Beloved did not enjoy the support of the clergy of the deanery in which it was located even though it enjoyed the support of Bishop Jenkins. The sole involvement of clergy from the Baton Rouge Deanery in the new work appeared to support these reports.

It is to the clergy of the deanery that the bishop would later delegate responsibility for planting new churches in the deanery. It was not a task to which they appeared to be inclined or for which they appeared to be well suited, a description which fits a number of clergy in the Episcopal Church. 

Since relocating to the Jackson Purchase, the westernmost region of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, I have noticed a similar pattern of church planting in the Purchase to that in the Florida Parishes, the region of Louisiana of which the North Shore and St. Tammany Parish are a part. The Florida Parishes are so named because they once were a part of British Florida. The earliest churches were planted in communities that were accessible by water. They are the pre-America Civil War churches. The churches that were planted in the years following the Civil War were planted in communities accessible by railroad. Both regions experienced a period of church planting in the 1950s and the 1980s. While the Florida Parishes experienced a brief period of church planting at the beginning of this century, nothing like it occurred in the Purchase. What did occur was a church closure and a church split and the formation of two breakaway churches, one of which disbanded 15 years later.

I have not been able to determine the current status of the oldest Episcopal Church in the Purchase, St. Paul’s in Hickman, on the Mississippi River. The last time I visited the church a number of years ago, it had been reduced to one service a month, a Sunday Eucharist over which a priest from Grace Church in Paducah presided.  I was saddened to see the state of disrepair into which this fine old church had fallen, its proud spire rising above the surrounding buildings. Only a short distance from the church was what appeared to be a thriving Roman Catholic parish.

One thing that I have noticed about Episcopal churches in the Purchase is that are all located in a community that has a Roman Catholic church in the community or in a nearby community.  Two of them are located in older subdivisions. One church, Trinity in Fulton, relocated to what was a new subdivision on the edge of town from its original location at the town's center. That subdivision appears to be undergoing demographic change that will impact the church. 

The building of the other church, St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, in Mayfield, closed in 2005, sits at the end of a cul-de-sac in an older subdivision and must be reached by a labyrinthine maze of roads from a main artery into Mayfield. While demographic changes have been blamed for the church’s closure, what may have been a nail in its coffin was the appointment as its vicar an individual who, while they were ideal from the perspective of the diocese, considering its priorities at that time, was a poor match with the community and the region, both of which are deeply conservative. 

The location of the church building also placed the church at a serious disadvantage. It lacked accessibility and visibility, something planners did not consider in locating the building where they did, believing the church would attract families from the subdivision. This apparently was a popular idea in the 1950s, considering the number of church buildings located in older subdivisions, built in those years.  

A recent visit to a local Episcopal church reminded me how much a unhealthy negative attitude toward outreach and evangelism continues to dominate the thinking of Episcopal clergy ad congregations.  During that visit a retired woman priest who on that particular Sunday was supplying the church made light of outreach and evangelism in her sermon. Based upon the reaction of the congregation to her sarcastic dismissal of outreach and evangelism, it appeared that the congregation shared her opinion of these two activities which are increasingly recognized as essential to the survival of Christianity in the United State in the twenty-first century and beyond. Churches can no longer expect to thrive and grow through transfer growth; “the circulation of the saints,” or “church hopping,” churchgoers living in the community switching churches; demographics growth, churchgoing newcomers moving to the community and looking for a new church home; or birth growth, the birth of children to churchgoing parents. 

People are dropping out of church for a variety of reasons, reducing the size of the transfer growth population. People are moving  less frequently than they used to move. The global birth rate has gone down. It is quite low in the United States and other Western countries. People are having less children and then later in life if they choose to have children at all. Countries like Japan are facing a population crisis and it is not due to overpopulation. Churches can no longer depend upon former churchgoers returning to church even if they have children as was the case in the past. Churchgoers are also  no longer choosing a church based upon denominational loyalty.  Churches that are experiencing the most growth are non-denominational and often charismatic.

The attitude of the retired priest was the same attitude that I had observed in the bulk of Episcopal clergy in the Decade of Evangelism in the 1990s. Like her, they referred to evangelism as the “E-word.” From a transactional viewpoint the retired priest and the congregation were engaging in what the late Eric Berne, a California psychiatrist who pioneered Transactional Analysis (TA) described as a “gallows’ transaction,” a reference to condemned man telling jokes at his own expense to the crowd who had come to see him hung as he ascended the steps of the gallows and the hangman put the rope around his neck. He may have gotten a laugh from the crowd, but the last laugh was on him when the hangman kicked away the stool and the noose snapped his neck, or he slowly strangled to death. 

Deriding outreach and evangelism at a time when the Episcopal Church is in dire straits with aging congregations, declining attendance, and closing churches, makes no sense.  Clergy who encourage and reinforce a negative attitude toward outreach and evangelism in Episcopal congregations do a great disservice to both the local church and the denomination. They promulgate and perpetuate misconceptions of the nature of outreach and evangelism and its importance and promote denial and passivity at a time when Episcopal congregations need to face reality and take steps to rectify their own predicament and to reverse the decline of the Episcopal Church.

Mainline Protestant churches, evangelical churches, and Roman Catholic churches can no longer rely upon a steady flow of people who identify with a particular church tradition and who will gravitate to churches in that tradition. Those days are behind us. Regrettably too many congregations do not realize that it is a thing of the past. We are no longer living in the 1950s or the 1980s. It is the third decade of the twenty-first century.  The world we live in today is different from the world that we lived in even 25 years ago. If they are to not just survive but to thrive and to grow, Episcopal congregations will need to change the way they think and act and become more mission-minded and mission-shaped.