“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away” might work for God, but congregational leaders need to give something new whenever they take away something old.
Church of the Holy Communion recently started receiving concerning reports about the health of the iconic tree in our memorial garden – the tree under which we have buried people’s ashes for decades. (Dealing with this tree was one of several things that I had hoped to make The Next Rector’s Problem, but that I have had to address more urgently!)
Recognizing its obligation to ensure the physical safety of our campus, the vestry knew that it had no choice but to begin planning for the tree’s removal. But, the vestry also knew that taking down this particular tree and grinding its stump would be a painful sight for the families with loved ones buried in that area. So, we asked ourselves: If the tree has to go, what can we put in its place? If we have to take, what can we give? If we have to know the grief of loss, how can we also know the joy of resurrection?
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“Shock and Awe” is not a good strategy for church communications.
Some church traditions have a custom of announcing staff transitions and other timely information during Sunday morning worship. I understand the logic: Everyone is together, and everyone gets the same information at the same time. But, there are more pastoral and effective ways to share breaking news.
Any surprise announcement will evoke a diverse set of responses: Some people will be disappointed by the news while others will be pleased by it. Some people will be anxious about the future while others will be excited about new adventures. Each person needs space to process her own emotions, and each needs an appropriate outlet for her emotions. Sunday morning worship offers neither.
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A nationwide increase in violent crime has most congregations asking questions about the security of our buildings and the physical safety of the people in them. We are all struggling to balance our commitment to openness with our obligation to keep everyone safe.
The following questions have been useful guideposts for me as our congregation has sought to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves…
What are the objective risks that we face?
Fear overwhelms objectivity. When we are afraid, we can lose the capacity to assess our situation objectively and the worst-case scenario can start to seem like the most likely outcome. A church shooting anywhere can make us feel like there will be church shootings everywhere. A vehicle break-in can make us feel like no vehicle is ever safe.
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Unlocking the potential of young donors in your faith community demands a multifaceted approach. In this insightful infographic, we explore five powerful strategies proven to engage and inspire the next generation of philanthropists.
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I’m intentionally borrowing one of Peter Steinke’s titles, even though this is just a blog post and not Steinke’s really solid book. Actually, I’m only thinking about the cover image on his book, A Door Set Open. There’s this absolutely captivating picture, taken from inside a church, down near the floor level, looking out through the ‘west’ doors. The doors in this case are set wide open, and we can see outside from the perspective of the floor and the pews the blurred images of trees and a landscape.
This may be the most rudimentary blog post on hospitality ever written, as it’s so simple. Here’s the point: Open the doors of your church. Open them wide. Leave them open whenever you’re inside. Leave them open the entire time. And figure out the dynamics of heating and cooling and securing the space otherwise.
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What is it like to be in a multiethnic, multicultural marriage and raising multiethnic, multicultural children who may want to go to TEC.
The first time I visited an Episcopal parish, the sound of spirituals filled the nave, the sermon lifted up the healing ministry of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the occasion of his birthday, and a Black woman celebrated Eucharist with fierce tenderness. I was delighted. Here was a community that cared about professing and embodying racial justice, a church in which I could be in mutually supportive relationship as together we sought to live into shared values of spiritual transformation and social change. I felt hopeful and at home.
A couple years later, I was in my second year of seminary and just beginning the discernment process at that parish, when I met my husband. Unlike me, he was raised in liturgical churches, (Mar Thoma and Methodist) and has attended Episcopal parishes since college. While he is the more seasoned Episcopalian, he has, much more frequently than I, been made to feel like an outsider in this church. He has often been dealt the stereotype of the forever foreigner in Episcopal contexts. Upon meeting him, the first question many ask is, “Where are you from?” with, “So, were you raised Christian?” commonly following close behind.
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For much of my life, Jewish High Holidays, a time of reflection and quest for redemption, have always included a visit to the local Episcopal church. I can explain.
Despite only living a few miles from my family’s synagogue (Shomrei Torah in Wayne, NJ), attending Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services still proved to be a journey.
It started with the mad scramble to get my family of four all ready in time to depart for the synagogue in one car. In reality, coordinating “getting ready” rituals and requirements rarely made it possible to have fewer than two “departures”.
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A sustainable endowment depends on wise spending. Do you need to take a fresh look at how you make spending decisions at your church? In the following infographic, we clarify five common misconceptions that may affect your endowment spending decisions.
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Endowment funds are long-term funds, and they are appropriately invested in diversified portfolios of varying asset classes based on expectations about how each asset class will perform over the long term – typically, 10 years or more. Asset classes in an endowment portfolio will likely include equities and fixed income, US and international, large caps and small caps, and so on.
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Representatives of the congregation bring the people's offerings of bread and wine, and money or other gifts, to the deacon or celebrant. The people stand while the offerings are presented and placed on the Altar.
Book of Common Prayer p. 361
It’s called the Offertory.
When I was a child, my mother would hand me a quarter to drop in the plate that was passed along the pew, adults would add greenbacks, or maybe a check. We don’t see (or hear) that much anymore. Especially since Covid. Now a lot of folks pay their pledges online. Or in some churches, they use a QR code printed in the bulletin to make an offering. Other churches have a place to put checks on a Sunday morning, but don’t process them forward. Still, the Offertory often includes an anthem sung by a choir. In many churches, there is a hymn sung by the congregation in addition or instead. And in some, The Doxology still rings out.
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A few years into my priesthood, I began to realize how little I knew about the professional lives of my parishioners. Parishioners with flexible professional schedules often came to meet with me at the church building, but I hardly ever went to their offices or workplaces. I had a little more visibility on the work lives of parishioners who donated their professional services to the church, but even that didn’t feel complete or authentic.
So, I started asking people to invite me to visit them on the job, and “Take Your Priest to Work Day” was born. So far, I have visited a farm, a soap factory, a flight simulator, a grain elevator, a cotton gin, an Army Corps of Engineers construction project, and several other places. I have even petted a possum at our local nature center.
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As church leaders we are continuously thinking about communication, whether it’s the clergy pondering their sermon’s effectiveness, the wardens wondering how best to share financial news with the congregation, or the ad-hoc communication team wrestling with the complexities of a hybrid service. We have all said with some variation that The Episcopal Church is a well-kept secret. Many in our wider communities are unclear who and where we are, many life-changing programs offered from the Church Center (815 Second Ave, New York City) and other Episcopal organizations go unheard, and some dioceses are constantly struggling with proving relevance with congregations unaware of the myriad of benefits that the staff provides.
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Yesterday afternoon, my husband and I opened the door to our home to unload groceries from the car. The door was open for about 20 seconds before the fire alarms went off in the house. I looked at the security app on my phone, and it said, “excessive heat.”
The “real feel” here in Phoenix was somewhere around 119 degrees, and when the security alarm rep called, he said that having that inferno blow past the heat sensors in our alarm system was enough to set it off, because the change in temperature in the house was so rapid and so extreme, it mimicked that of a fire.
Later that evening, we stepped into the back yard to go for a swim. For the first time in the 18 years that we’ve lived here, something felt wrong. Though we’ve become accustomed to excessive heat, especially during July, this was different. It was oppressive on a level that we’ve never felt.
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A healthy diet is a balanced diet that includes a wide variety of foods in appropriate proportions. Each food group serves a different purpose – dairy products provide calcium for strong bones, carbohydrates provide energy, and fruits and vegetables provide vitamins and minerals. A body’s immediate needs may fluctuate, but over time all food groups work together to provide the nutrients that a body needs to function properly.
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On my birthday, I took our Boxer, Dustin, to the vet because he had a bad cough that had persisted for a day. He hadn’t slept the night before, wandering the house rather aimlessly. This was not in any way keeping with his usual sleep habits that we had grown accustomed to over the past 10 years.
We live in the desert, and our first thought was Valley Fever, a common illness among dogs. I left Dustin at the vet for his exam, and when I went back to pick him up, the look on the vet’s face said it all: something was terribly wrong.
His chest cavity was filled with 400 milliliters of fluid. Worse still, there were spots on his lungs that were indicative of cancer. The doctor said that it would not be inappropriate to ask him to put Dustin to sleep.
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In March of 2020, as businesses, churches, and schools began to close, and we started to grasp the gravity of the COVID-19 pandemic, our former Rector answered the call to become a Bishop in another diocese.
The grand celebration that we had planned to thank him for his 11 years of service to our parish was scrapped. On his final Sunday, after the 11 AM Mass, there were elbow bumps instead of hugs, tears of sorrow and fear instead of joy, and a sense that something ominous was descending on us.
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At first glance, parishes and banks look as different as apples and oranges. Upon a closer look, however, the differences run far deeper than superficial appearances. One institution is a collective — a cooperative—in which individuals pool their treasure, time, and talents to create a social and spiritual community that serves its members and their communities in their search for a deeper relationship with God. The other is a bank. A bank lends money for the purpose of making profit for profit’s sake. The very mission of the bank is to concentrate community wealth in its investors’ hands. Its corporate vision is to grow larger so it can lend more and concentrate more wealth. This is not to say all banks are bad, or that none of them maintain a deep commitment to their communities. But make no mistake, the bank serves the dollar above all else and worships profit.
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If you're like me, you feel like you're running around all day, every day. I wake up at 4:15am nearly every day, and then it's work and school and sports practices and cooking and housework and everything else that comes with life.
So this past week on vacation I've been learning to waste time. And if I'm right that your busyness often resembles mine, you might need some help in that area, too. Wasting time this week has helped me reorient my sense of self, build and deepen connection with loved ones, and renew my relationship with God.
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It was lunchtime on Wednesday, May 18, 2016, when I sat in cool red-brick nave of Trinity Episcopal Church in Baytown, Texas. It wasn’t my church, but I found myself desperately in need of a sanctuary—someplace quiet to grieve the United Methodist Church I loved and to pray for its leaders. At the time, I served on the board for Reconciling Ministries in the Texas Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, and we were facing an uphill battle. Again. It was General Conference—the every-four-year meeting to set the governance of the global Church, and we were in trouble. Conservative factions had managed to pass bills that took the Church back 70+ years to a time before women’s rights. It wasn’t just about the gays this time; the Church was after women. Only a few months into the discernment process, I felt something inside me break that day. I still felt called to ministry, but I knew it could no longer be in the UMC. I remember saying that, even if the Church did want me, I no longer wanted it back.
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An endowment is a powerful tool for churches to use to achieve long-term financial stability. An endowment is money designated for the long term to serve both current and future needs. A portion of the endowment can be used each year to support the church’s mission while the remaining amount helps ensure its long-term sustainability. In this post, we will discuss three critical aspects of structuring an effective endowment fund: organizing, investing, and growing.
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