“At the 77th General Convention, the Holy Spirit called The Episcopal Church to reimagine itself and how it can more deeply live into its identity in our rapidly changing world.”

This will be news to some, if not most, Episcopalians. Some may wonder what it means to more deeply live into one’s identity.

Be that as it may, a little Episcopal re-imagining would certainly be welcome. And the national church leaders have come up with a task force to do just that; the quotation above trumpets the initial meeting of the group.

The members are now working out an “engagement strategy.” As someone who recently became engaged myself, I couldn’t help but applaud this idea. A little strategy would help, too. And although few members of the Task Force appear to be prominent theologians or church leaders, we may be grateful that they are invoking the help of the Holy Spirit. 

As we re-imagine ourselves, we might also employ another invocation, from the Great Litany: “Good Lord, deliver us.” –J. Douglas Ousley

I have not been able to comment on the just-concluded General Convention as much as I hoped; a summary of the resolutions passed can be found here. More comments in the weeks ahead.

An initial reflection would be that the results were entirely predictable. Traditionalists will be dismayed by the same-sex blessing rites, even though these have been coming for years–and will be regarded by the larger culture as the least we could do. The budget worries seemed to have been pushed on into the future, rather like the National Debt. The membership decline seems to have been ignored as past conventions have ignored it.

That said, media attacks on the progressive drift of our church have been equally predictable, and they are getting tiresome to Episcopalians on both sides of the fence. In thousands of churches, people are fed spiritually and enabled to serve God, whatever Conventions do or don’t do. That fact is also worth remembering, and giving thanks for. –J. Douglas Ousley

Actually, that’s an exaggerated headline. The House of Deputies has only voted to sell the Church Headquarters on 815 Second Avenue.

But there is an anti-establishment undertone in this vote, as seen in this comment from a delegate from New Jersey: “815 Second Avenue is the relic of our delusions of being an established church from an imperial era. Constantine has left the building. Unfortunately, Constantine has left us the building.”

Others might argue that instead of acting like the establishment, we have been real estate neophytes. This huge, grossly under-used building in prime real estate a block from the UN actually costs us $7,000,000 a year–whereas it should be making us money or at least breaking even.

In any case, speaking as someone from a parish church that is among the closest to the Church Center geographically, I have to say that I can’t see it would make much different to New York if the bureaucrats left. We hardly see them, nor does anything they do seem to touch our lives. –J. Douglas Ousley