Communities are fluid. Think of the place where you grew up. Is it the same today as it was when you were a kid? Likely not. Neighborhoods and towns are always changing. So, too, are churches and faith communities.
Like anything fluid, then, the challenge – and opportunity – is to ride the wave. Growing communities will not always grow. Diminished congregations are not destined to remain so. Trends will shift. Sometimes we can be part of those changes; most of the time, the changes are so deep and seismic that we, even for our best intentions, just roll with ‘em.
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Every so often, I get an inquiry from a senior leader or search committee chair of a small congregation asking for tips on how to call a part-time rector. The reason given is often financial: the church is growing smaller and income is shrinking, part-time seems like the only possibility, and they want to know how to make it work. So I thought it might be helpful to consolidate the various ideas I’ve shared with them.
Don’t short-cut the process. Even if it seems obvious that you can’t afford a full-time rector, do not allow that to become the focal point of your search, leading you to decide what you will “settle for” before you explore the qualities your congregation needs in a rector. It may also hold you back from exploring creative options. Decide not to decide this until later in the process.
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What is a church if it’s not also a center for its community? Earlier in this series, I shared how Resurrection Parish (Church of the Ascension and St. George’s Church in St. Mary’s County, MD) started putting together the sometimes disparate concepts of community + church + center. And I followed up with an example of conceptual clarity around dilemma flipping – taking what some might see as a problem and flipping the script to find opportunities. Turns out that the leadership of Resurrection Parish was highly intrigued by Community + Center + Church, and so we’ve been on a journey in the last several years to create in downtown Lexington Park, MD the Park Community Foundation, which will reconfigure the entire mission focus of the Episcopal Church of the Ascension in that same town. What follows is a deeper dive into where we’re heading in St. Mary’s County, MD.
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Introduction
For decades, The Episcopal Diocese of Maryland has examined our history and wrestled with how we are called to repair the breach caused by slavery and racism. This post shares some insights into how our Diocese moved from research and learning to funding and action guided by our Baptismal Covenant, which calls us into becoming a beloved community of love.
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In part 1 of this series, I shared the back-story of how Resurrection Parish (Church of the Ascension and St. George’s Church in St. Mary’s County, MD) started putting together the sometimes disparate concepts of community + church + center. In this post, part 2 of 3, I want to share the conceptual clarity we strove to achieve as early as possible. What follows is a write-up a parishioner and I worked on in the Covid summer of 2020, and shared with our Vestry and other partners that fall. It’s essentially an exercise in ‘dilemma flipping’ – taking what some might see as a crisis or problem and flipping the script to find an opportunity or opportunities.
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