Yet we immediately ran
into a roadblock, and that was the very nature of our mandate. Pay attention
here, Restructure Task Force Players-to-be-Named-Later, because I heard a
similar frustration coming from members of at least four other CCABs. That
frustration is this: CCABs are not actually supposed to DO anything. All we are supposed to do is think up ideas
and draft legislation for the next General Convention to approve or
reject. Here is the stated mandate of
the SCME:
CANON
I.1.2(n) (4) A Standing Commission on the Mission and Evangelism of The
Episcopal Church. It shall be the duty of the Commission to identify, study and consider policies, priorities and concerns
as to the effectiveness of The Episcopal Church in advancing, within this
Church’s jurisdictions, God’s mission to restore all people to unity with God
and each other in Christ, including patterns and directions for evangelism,
Church planting, leadership development, and ministries that engage the
diversity of the Church’s membership and the communities it serves, and to make recommendations to General
Convention. (emphasis mine)
Get it? You gather a group
of bright, talented leaders in the church, experts in their various fields,
representing the diversity of the church in age, ethnicity, ordination status,
etc., get them excited about a particular area of mission, and then tell them
they can't actually DO anything. You pay $1,100 per person for an in-person
meeting of hundreds of people, to be repeated at least once and maybe more
during the triennium, and the end product of all this work is ... The Blue
Book?
Look, I am a General
Convention nerd, and I like the Blue Book (whatever color it happens to be) as
much as anyone. But is legislation really the appropriate work product for such
an amazing and talented group of leaders spending that much time and that much
money?
If so, let's follow a
chain of events through to their natural conclusion. Last triennium, at the end
of its three years together, the SCME proposed several resolutions, including
A072, (to see the resolution, click here and scroll down to A072, then click “English current” on the right-hand side). A072 adds a canonical requirement that new
ordained and lay pastoral leaders be trained as missional leaders in
evangelism, cross-cultural competency, non-profit leadership, empowering lay
leadership, etc. Terrific, right? Such training could provide great hope for a
new generation of leaders now emerging.
But how are dioceses and
seminaries supposed to provide such training? Should each one reinvent the
wheel in its own way? Under our polity, they certainly have the right to do so
(and some will choose simply to ignore the new rules). But maybe it would be
helpful to overworked leaders to have some common resources to draw from should
they choose to do so. And in fact, there
are a number of groups working on missional leadership development across the
church. Wouldn't it be a great idea to get them together and encourage them to
share or even create a set of common resources, even possibly a curriculum, in
missional leadership training, that dioceses and seminaries could draw from?
When this idea was
proposed, it got a lot of energy. Yet then someone reminded us of our mandate:
we're not supposed to DO stuff (like gather people together to follow up on
A072 and share resources), we're just supposed to write a Blue Book report. The only time a CCAB is allowed to DO
something is if past GC legislation specifically directed them to do it (and
there were no specific directions in A072).
So if the SCME thinks a
leadership development gathering should happen and a curriculum should be
developed, we should, I guess, write a resolution, hope it passes in 2015, hope
it gets funded sometime, hope it gets put at the top of some 815 staff person's
priority list (should there still be an 815 staff person at that time), and
hope the gathering happens by 2018 so we can start training the post-Millennial
generation to be missional leaders by about 2022.
It was at this point in
our group's discussion that I made the following point, which I subsequently
tweeted: We are not over-burdened in The
Episcopal Church with too many people doing evangelism. Let's go ahead and do
it now.
(For the benefit of those
who are concerned about the "rules," we found a way to make our
gathering fit within our mandate. It could be possible if we get grant funding
from outside the TEC budget, which we will apply for. And the end product of the gathering can
certainly be "advice" to General Convention. I'm sure we will write a
resolution of some sort. But how silly, really, that a proposed resolution is
the only acceptable outcome of our work.)
Here's the point: if we
are appointing members of CCABs to talk about a subject, and they have some
helpful ideas and the energy to accomplish them, why not use this set of
talented and passionate leaders to take action right now?
I'll tell you why not.
Because we have somehow gotten ourselves to the point where we think that
legislation is an effective form of ministry.
That if something is important, it should be decided by a cumbersome and
expensive legislative process, complete with officially sanctioned committees,
proposals, amendments, rules of order, and majority votes. That the proper
function of General Convention is to micro-manage every aspect of our common
life, and that nothing can be done until General Convention agrees to do it.
(Which
is why, for instance, Convention had to vote last year on many supplemental but
unnecessary liturgical resources created by the Standing Commission on Liturgy
and Music, which some 1,000 deputies and bishops had to read, critique, and
vote on. The SCLM couldn’t just create
lovely resources and submit them to Forward Movement or Church Publishing for people to
use if they wished. Their work could ONLY result in
legislation of “official” resources.)
There ARE things that
legislation is vital to achieve. Ordination of women, a process for Title IV
disciplinary proceedings, ordination requirements, blessing of same-sex unions,
revision of the prayer book (but please God, not anytime soon!), funding and
budgets - all these are vital issues of church policy that our legislature
should decide. Legislation is necessary to decide what the rules are, what the
boundaries are, how much money we have, and what we are NOT allowed to do.
But the belief that
legislation is necessary before anyone can do any actual ministry is, I
believe, a sign of high anxiety in our church.
If we don’t believe the Holy Spirit is calling us to do something, or if
we have no idea what God is calling us to do, we fall back on administrative
permission-giving, rules and procedures.
Don’t know how to do evangelism?
Let’s write legislation about it!
Until the legislation is passed, though, no one better take an
unauthorized step to empower evangelism!
It might be against the rules! (Which
was not a concern of Philip’s in Acts Chapter 8, I might add.)
Of course that is
absurd. Legislation is not necessary to
accomplish ministry. What is necessary to accomplish ministry is the Holy
Spirit's call and the human being's answer.
Restructure Task Force,
pay attention. Let's restructure ourselves to encourage ministry, not limit it
and frustrate it and shut it down when it threatens to appear, like in the
CCABs that are yearning to take action, not write legislation. Let's limit the
legislative work of General Convention to matters that require it, such as
finances and boundaries. (Hey, maybe we
could even reduce General Convention's length!) Let's gather leaders in CCABs,
yes, but let's empower them to do non-legislative ministry. Especially as we
move away from a strong-staff structure (because budget cuts will mean more
staff cuts are coming), let's let the volunteers who are passionate about the
work of the church DO the work of the church. Let's let the Holy Spirit blow. Because this time in our church is a time for
the Holy Spirit. Not a time for legislation.
