Episcopal Press and News
St. Louis Symposium Participants Say Mission, Not Structure, is Key to Church's Renewal
Episcopal News Service. August 19, 1993 [93149]
Only days after the flooding Mississippi River crested nearby, more than a thousand Episcopalians from 96 of the church's 117 dioceses flowed into the St. Louis Convention Center for a symposium billed as "A Grassroots Forum on Episcopal Structures."
Responding to a sense of alarm and angst over the decline of the Episcopal Church's membership in the past 25 years, planners of the July 1215 symposium, sponsored by the Diocese of East Tennessee, argued that the church needed to consider significant changes in its institutional life -- and that it would benefit from "a gathering of the family where the concerns of the legislative process do not hinder the dialogue."
In the opening plenary presentation, the Rev. Loren Mead, founder and president of Washington's Alban Institute, stirred the waters with his contention that the Episcopal Church was a ship tossed on the turbulent waves of a stormy sea.
The storm, according to Mead, was the quickening pace of change loose in the world. "Structural problems are bigger than we are," he said. "They are related to something about what God is doing in the world." Citing the turmoil in the former Yugoslavia, Russia, Somalia, as well as in corporations and in a host of other institutions, Mead said that "the issue is how to be in community together."
Drawing on the story of Christ's walking on the water, Mead urged the symposium's participants to "step into the water," set their sights on the mission of the church and then adapt the structures to meet the challenges of the vision. "Structure flows from what we understand our mission to be," he said.
Mead's contention formed a kind of undercurrent throughout the rest of the meeting. Predictions that the symposium would become a "gripe session," or a "magnet for the discontented," never materialized. Nor did hopes for a tangible blueprint to redesign the church's structure. Instead, in workshops and plenaries and in conversations during the breaks, participants spoke of the need to clarify the church's mission.
In one session, noted author and family therapist, Rabbi Edwin Friedman, suggested that much of American society was "stuck" in outmoded institutional forms because it was not asking new and innovative questions. He asserted that institutions spend too much time tinkering with ways to change old structures when they should risk "a sense of adventure" and rethink basic assumptions in the light of mission. Friedman said that the most important thing for religious leaders was to concentrate on vision. "A sailor without a destination cannot distinguish a good wind from an ill wind," he said, quoting the philosopher Seneca.
Friedman added that, as society becomes more anxious, people will seek groups "that provide an easy certitude." The best advice he could give, Friedman said, was that religious leaders continue to keep their eyes fixed on the vision and not get caught up in the anxiety of losing members. "Don't worry about the future," he charged, "God will take care of it."
In nearly two dozen small-group workshops and forums, participants were challenged to think about the broad dimensions of the church's ministry and to identify where the structures support or hinder those ministries. Topics ranged from the role of bishops in the 21st century to strengthening lay ministry, improving youth ministry, supporting inclusivity in the church and altering the structure of the General Convention.
In addition, participants themselves were given an opportunity to lead sessions on subjects about which they were passionate. No fewer that 36 separate meetings were convened for such topics as "How to start new congregations," "Supporting inner-city ministries," "How can we support parish libraries?" "Does the church need deacons?" and "User-friendly eucharistic worship -- should we always use the Book of Common Prayer?"
In a session on "How to make the General Convention more representative," more than 40 participants wrangled over ideas to alter the process of presenting resolutions to the convention and the possibility of decreasing the size of the House of Deputies.
"It's an imperfect system," Bishop Gethin Hughes of San Diego said of the General Convention, "but it's the only one we've got." Hughes, one of the 33 bishops or bishops-elect who attended the symposium, said that there were many valuable suggestions about how to improve the convention -- such as streamlining the process for considering resolutions. However, he contended that his overall concern was the convention's "lack of focus on the mission of the church and it overemphasis on nonessential issues."
Some persons insisted, however, that the real problem with the church was that the General Convention adopted resolutions at odds "with the majority of people in the pews. If the convention were truly representative, that would not happen," said a layman from Texas.
In one forum, the Rev. Jon Shuler, executive director of the East Tennessee Initiative -- the organization that planned the symposium -- called for a constitutional convention to restructure the church. Among his proposals, Shuler suggested that General Convention meet no more than once every five years, bishops should be located in a specific local congregation, and the provincial structure of the church should be altered to reflect census realities rather than state boundaries. Although Shuler's suggestions and other similar proposals were aired at various points during the meeting, none of them were endorsed by the entire group.
As participants floated among the groups and sessions, mission -- not structure -- continued to surface as the compass by which to chart the future direction of the church.
"I kept hearing people express a desire to improve the ministry in their parishes and communities," said Peg Anderson of Arizona, a member of the Episcopal Church's Executive Council. Despite some initial skepticism about the meeting, she said she would leave with positive feelings and a "strong desire to find ways to support ministry at the local level."
Barry Menuez, senior executive for planning and development at the Episcopal Church Center, said that the symposium had confirmed "the value and integrity of the diocesan visitation and listening process" initiated last spring by the Executive Council. He said that symposium and the diocesan visitations pointed to a need for "a new kind of partnership or a new covenant" between parishes and the diocesan, provincial and national church. "It is clear that we need to work together to define that new partnership and the nature of the work -- that is our task for the next triennium," he said.
Those comments were underscored by East Tennessee Bishop Robert Tharp who was the official host of the symposium. "I want people to return home with a renewed commitment to work in their own parishes and dioceses for the work of the Christ," he said in an interview. In the closing plenary, Tharp said that the symposium was not about "giving a shove to the church, but a loving and compassionate nudge."
"Perhaps this is the first day of renewal for the whole Episcopal Church," Tharp said. He pleaded with participants to "have patience with the process of institutions. Love it so that we can help mold it and reform it from within," he said, reminding them that "structures are not things that give us salvation."
Tharp said he was "calm but not complacent" in the storms that surround the church. He and the organizers of the symposium will need that kind of determination in the months ahead. Before the conclusion of the meeting a member of the steering committee solicited help from participants to close a shortfall of nearly $350,000 in the $725,000 budget for the symposium.
Tharp was not the only person who challenged the church to remain calm amid the storms. In a closing sermon, Bishop Edward Salmon of South Carolina suggested that God has provided a storm as a means to a more genuine community. "Maybe the storm we are in is God's way of bringing us to our knees so that he can work out his purposes," Salmon said. The storm, he observed, might be "God's way of getting us to think again."
In obvious reference to attempts by the House of Bishops to move toward a less confrontational style, Salmon said that the church must find new ways to weather the storms over particular issues and find a sense of community that is not based on win-lose scenarios. He called on the church to focus on "the power of Christ's solidarity with victims and forgiveness of oppressors" as a means to unity and calm amid the storms.
The common refrain at the conclusion of the symposium was, "Where do we go from here?" Shuler said that participants need to be open "to where God will lead." He insisted that the symposium was successful because it had brought so many committed and faithful Episcopalians together to pray and think and talk positively and constructively about the future of their church. "I pray it will be true at home -- as it has been here -- that we have forsaken blaming or attacking."
Yet, Shuler continued to express deep concern for the declining membership of the church. "Those numbers represent real people -- parishioners, friends, parents and children of us all. I think we've lived for a long time in a kind of denial about decline," he said. And, he suggested that resistance to change in the church was evidence of that denial.
Shuler also continued to sound a call for changes in the structures of the church, contending that the "legislative process is many times manipulative and coercive. We simply must find some new ways to structure ourselves that honor diversity as we discern our mission together."
Although Shuler reported that there were no plans for a sequel to the symposium, he did not entirely rule out the possibility. He did point out, however, that six "task forces" have been organized to continue the concerns of the symposium into the future, perhaps to make suggestions to the next General Convention.
"A seed has been planted here," Shuler concluded. Let that seed do what God desires."
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