Stewardship: The Divine Economy: Make our Life the Vision of Thee

Summer is coming to an end. I have just returned from some time off. I fished, worked on some genealogy, listened, read, and listened some more. I also enjoyed listening to a lot of music while I was relaxing. As I prepared for this talk on stewardship I was reminded of a hymn that is somewhat like a summer prayer. The song is by Rascal Flatts and it is called, “Backwards.”

You get your house back

You get your dog back

You get your best friend Jack back

You get your truck back

You get your hair back

You get your first and second wives back

Your front porch swing

your pretty little thing

Your bling bling bling and a diamond ring

Your get your farm and the barn and the boat and the Harley

That old black cat named Charlie

You get your mind back

And your nerves back

Your achy breaky heart back

You get your pride back

You get your life back

You get your first real love back

ohh big screen TV, DVD and a washing machine

You get the pond and the lawn and the rake and the mower

You go back when life was slower

It sounds a little crazy, a little scattered and absurd

But that's what you get

When you play a country song backwards

The economic culture that we live in is economy based upon the loosing of things and the gaining of things; the selling and the purchasing of things.

Sometimes, our church economy is based upon the increase or the decrease of things as well: people, pledges, and plate.

So I thought we should begin at the beginning. We must begin with a sense of the “Divine Economy.”

The poet, author, and Dean of York beginning in 1941, Eric Milner-White, wrote a poem called Thy God, Thy Glory. Here is the last stanza:

O God, most glorious,

Make our life the vision of thee

To the praise of thy glory;

that we all as a mirror may reflect it,

and be transformed into the same image

from glory to glory,

world without end.



Excerpt from: Thy God, Thy Glory


Eric Milner-White, 1884-1963

So we begin as our ancient texts tell us, in the beginning was the Word and the word was with God. (John 1.1)

God looks upon God, and in this looking has a perfect image of God’s self, the perfect and beautiful idea of God’s self. God looks and sees God perfectly, wholly, and corporately. And, in this looking in this perfect beholding of God’s self God is both Father and Son. There is God and there is God’s perfect self the Son.

Our human language cannot incorporate or speak adequately of the eternal, whole, and incorruptible nature of God and God’s self; so we say in our Creed, “God is Father, almighty,” and we also say, “God is Lord, Christ, only Son of God, eternally begotten,” and we say: “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father.”

God looks upon God and perfectly sees God’s self.

In seeing God, God perfectly loves God’s self. God perfectly is bound to God the son. So perfect, so unblemished is God’s love for God’s self that it, too, is actualized and repeats the perfect and beautiful and manifest glory which is God…This perfect love is that than which no greater can be thought.

Once again our human language fails to capture the movement and work of God or the perfection of God who we proclaim as love, so we say in our Creed that we believe in God who is “Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” And, we recognize this God of three and three in one as eternally present in community one to another.

So perfect is God’s love for God, the Father for the Son, that God’s beauty and perfection and glory overflows, spilling out in the action of creation. God is creator of heaven and earth, God creates through God’s self (the son), through him all things were made. And the creative power and force is itself the very spirit of God, the hands of God at work in the world about us, the Holy Spirit. So it is that all things come to be and are given shape and form. Out of nothing they were created, but for the pleasure of God they were created and God saw all of God’s creation and the reflection of God’s image in its watery forms and green canopies, and creatures and saw that it was “good.”

All of creation is formed out of the divine imagination reflecting to God the glory of God’s self eternally united in a Holy Community we call the Trinity.

This is our sacred Truth.

This community of mutual affection and perfected friendship and undivided unity by its very nature, its very being creates all that we see, all that we have, all that we are for the pleasure and enjoyment and reflection that it provides. It’s as if to say, God creates out of the love for the Son and offers it to God saying, you are my son, see the love I have for you and I give to you in this creation which I hold in the palm of my hand, and offer to you. See in this creation formed out of nothing and given life by me the reflection of our beauty.

This is what we are made for. This is the purpose of all creation. We are made, formed, and given the breath of life for the purpose of glorifying God.

This is what we are made for…this is the divine economy.

We are created out of nothing as a gift to the Son from God the Father so that we might as a whole creation, not just human beings, not just one individual, not just the human self – the whole of humanity in conjunction with all of creation, reflect the dignity of God.

The glory of God is the ultimate purpose of creation.

Our story of beginnings, our heritage of community tells us of our all-to-human and all-to-imperfect attempts to do this work, to make this our ultimate concern. In fact, not only is God’s glory not our ultimate concern or our primary undertaking, it is the opposite of our human willfulness. Through all of history we have perpetrated the primary work of self-glorification, self-preservation, and self-manifestation making us the Gods of creation. This is the lie we live.

So tragic, so pervasive, so broken is this understanding of creation that we – on our own – outside of community only see imperfectly the shape of the world intended by God. So it is God who comes into the world, to possess the world which is a gift, to participate, to undo the powers of this world, by reorienting, refocusing, and drawing our eyes to the greater work of God. They asked Jesus, “Why did you come into this world?” He answers us clearly, “To glorify God.” This is his answer and he is our teacher in the life of holiness – in the divine economy.

Jesus’ death on the cross purchases, redeems for us the freedom from the bonds of self-service that we may follow him along the way, imitating our teacher, and undertaking the glorification of God. We are given by the cross freedom from sin which is nothing less than freedom from avarice, the insatiable desire of a God like self-preservation above all else – the root of all sinful desires and actions.

God not only enters and claims creation as God’s own, but also redeems it, providing a missional map to the work of creation, and breathing, loosing on all creation the ever present Holy Spirit, God with us, to strengthen us for the work of glorifying and magnifying God. The lens is polished that we may see more clearly, with the help of the Holy Spirit, our work and the work of community.

The Holy Spirit, the empowering agent of Godly life, transforms and binds individual sinners into virtuous community. This is the family of God, the community called the Church, with the primary working outwardly, on a daily basis, the inner life of the Holy Trinity. The mission of true virtue, co-creating with God, the community of God, the reign of God, the kingdom of God, on earth and in this moment.

We are as the family of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit, enlarging and actualizing God’s Holy vision in creation.

If these themes of “glorification of God” and “building virtuous community” are our work, what then? (And it is most certainly the orthodox view of creation and redemption rooted deeply in our Anglican theology and tradition.) If this glorification of God is our ultimate created purpose as community and our penultimate work is the perfecting of human relationships one to another in undivided unity – the building of the virtuous community at work in the world -- then stewardship is at the center of our life and our ministry. In fact, we might say, our life and our ministry is stewardship.

Virtuous life, a life lived to benefit God, is a life of stewardship the essential ingredient in the divine economy.

We are created for stewardship of the eternal.

We cannot look upon creation, our use or abuse of it, without the knowledge of its ultimate purpose and our fallen desire to manage it for our own benefit rather than for God’s glory.

We cannot look upon our communities, our towns our cities, without acknowledging the brokenness of human interrelations, and the collateral casualties of economy of wealth, power, and authority which benefit human aggrandizement and not the divine economy.

We cannot look upon our families, our mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, and children and not acknowledge how we live out our relationships into horizontal alignment along competing self-indulging sibling relationships. The cost of this economy is broken families, record divorces, bankruptcy, astronomical debt, and abuse. God rather intends the family of God to be one of caring and support with roles ordered out of virtuous care for the “other” in our midst.

We cannot look upon our church without recognizing the result of ego driven communities, with mob mentalities, conflicted loyalties, political maneuvering, and argument measured in electronic sound bytes, followers, and power rather than in discerned corporate stewardship of the divine economy.

When we stop, when we pause, when we take a moment to recalibrate and measure our journey along the way – we see clearly that our priorities may indeed be out of sync.

Our ultimate concern may not be God’s. Our primary interest may not be what has been intended all along.

All of this is to say that what we intend to do when we say we are engaged in stewardship is of the most radical transformative work before the church.

Christian stewardship, which is Anglican and uniquely Episcopalian, recognizes the radical work of creature-li-ness: to glorify God and co-create a virtuous community in mission.

And, when we speak of being stewards we are speaking of a radical faith in God who is Trinity, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who is at work in the world as creator, redeemer, and prophetic missioner. We are saying that “we believe in God,” a particular kind of God -- a God who has brought into being creation for the purpose of his glory and his beauty.

We are saying that we care about the earth and its health in reflecting God’s glory.

We are saying we care about our farms, and communities, and towns, and cities and neighbors and how we are relating and care taking of the land, resources, and our relationships.

We are saying that we believe and so we act in our lives, private and public, for the good and in a way revealing and reflecting the goodness of the one who gives us form and breath.

We are saying we believe and as a community we give in accordance with our thanksgivings. We give not 10%, because we know God has given us all that we have, all that we are, our friends, our family, our neighbors, our gifts for ministry, our vocations, our work, our lives, our very lives God has given. We give out of the abundance of what we receive – God in Jesus yes, but moreover, out of the glorious generosity of beauty which is God’s creation all around us. We give, we make a difference, we restore, we co-create, and we design.

As Christian stewards, we understand that we are artists who are intimately engaged in the beautiful things, the beatitudes, in the blessings of neighbors and creatures and creation.

To be a Christian steward at work within the economy of God is a most life changing, and mission altering notion. To glorify God as our primary witness and concern in our lives, with one another, in our relationships, and in our affiliation to God and God’s community is life’s work of stewardship.  So we pray:

O God, most glorious,

Make our life the vision of thee

To the praise of thy glory;

that we all as a mirror may reflect it,

and be transformed into the same image

from glory to glory,

world without end. Amen.

Stewardship: The Divine Economy

Stewardship Conference
Episcopal Diocese of Texas 2010
by the Rt. Rev. C. Andrew Doyle

Address at the 2011 Episcopal Diocese of Texas 162nd Council

Lemhi (LEMhigh) Pass is at the boarder of Montana and Idaho. There is a wooden fence there, a cattle guard crossing, and a logging road. The exact spot is today as “pristine” as you can get. One arrives there by way of the Missouri River from Fort Benton to Fort Peck Lake along the Lolo trail. And, when you stand there it looks as in many ways it looked when he stood there on the morning of August 12, 1805.

With friends nearby he made his way to the top. He described that moment clearly in his journal. He wrote: “We proceeded on the top of the dividing ridge from which I discovered immense ranges of high mountains still to the West of us with their tops partially covered with snow.”

Meriwether Lewis was the first white American to look on the great northwestern range; the first to take a step out of the Louisiana territory onto the western side of the Continental Divide.

One might wonder what he felt in that moment. We don’t know of course. Lewis was silent about his feelings on this and on most things. However, in that moment one can imagine two great worlds colliding. Two thoughts happening at the same time; neither one fully formed.

The first thought had to be the disheartening sight. Imagine “the shock, the surprise,” John Logan Allen (historiographer and author) muses, “for from the top of that ridge were to be seen neither the great river that had been promised nor the open plains extending to the shores of the South Sea…the geography of hope [gave way] to the geography of reality.” The whole journey to find a western portage that one might travel from East to West across the United States by boat was a failure. Everything he was sure of finding was not only not there it was never to be. The dream that had framed one year of study and preparation then two years of travel across wild country to this moment was over.

The second thought was the sight of the great empire of the Americas. In that look he took in with one measure from the east and all that lay behind him to the west and all that lay ahead a wealth and abundance of a new territory and the even greater spectacle of fertile land and spirit that was becoming the United States. In an age where transportation, energy, and food had not much changed since the Greeks, Meriwether Lewis saw in its rawest form the bounty of a quickly forming nation that we were to become.

Two thoughts not fully formed, which forever changed who we were and were to become and as Americans.

Two thoughts not fully formed. Today we, the Diocese of Texas, are becoming something new but are not sure what yet. We are being transformed and forged in a fiery furnace of sweeping change.

Not unlike Meriwether Lewis that morning, this morning, our geography is giving way beneath our feet. We see clearly the past and the reality of our situation. And, we see the future and all that God intends for us.

The first thought is realizing our feet are firmly planted in a stale geography where the world and church we thought would carry us forward is no longer systemically viable.

As a church we have an economy. It is like any other at its very basic level one that is dependent upon income and expenditures. Our current economy, way of doing things, doesn’t work. It is forever changed. When it happened I do not know exactly. It is probably an event that did not happen all at once but crept in and is even now more fully upon us; though we cannot yet fully comprehend its impact on our mission and ministry. We have been treating the symptoms while the system crumbles.

We have consistently believed…

…that those who are called by God to be Episcopalians will find us and come through our doors.

…that once they were inside our doors they would stay because of our awesome liturgy.

…that someday we will grow again -- then we can take care of our deferred maintenance.

…that all we need is the right clergy person. After all, we are not accountable.

…that if we just solved the issue of the day one way or the other we would surge in growth. If we were just true to the past…or if we were just true to the future….

The problem is that fewer and fewer people every year seek us out and react positively to our attempts to deal with the symptoms. Meanwhile, we are out performed by the culture around us. We no longer have the market cornered on community life, networking, social services, weddings, funerals, and care. We are out performed by others: social media, bars, gyms, sports clubs, funeral homes, JPs, hospitals and friends.

Our budgets themselves reveal that the economic reality of our ministry is not sustainable. In 1997 a congregation with 50 people could support itself with a budget of $100,000. Today it takes a congregation of more than 100 and a budget upwards of $150,000 to $180,000 a year. Without debt this congregation, depending on the health of its buildings and deferred maintenance, might be able to afford a full-time minister and the cost of keeping the facilities open. However, this congregation has very little extra money for mission or outreach.

By the end of 2011 inflation is estimated to reach 2%. So by 2012 a congregation will see its expenses jump some $3,000 dollars without doing anything. That means this church will have to add a family who begins life as an Episcopalian giving the diocesan average pledge of $3,508 just to cover the cost of keeping the lights on.

We are operating out of a model that depends upon assumptions about our culture that date to the mid-century of the last millennium.

This is a painful acknowledgement because we didn’t ask for the dream to change; didn’t have a whole lot to do with the change; and are powerless to make the change stop.

No matter how many times we blink our eyes or pretend it is not happening it remains true. We stand at the Lemhi pass like Meriwether Lewis. And, we see it clearly. The dream that has framed our very core of being, the one that we prepared our whole lives to undertake, the one we are structured and organized to run, the dream we have been supporting is over.

Continuing this church economy, doing the things we have been doing for the last three decades leads only to greater conflict and loss. Continuing to be church, simply tinkering with efficiency and symptoms leads unequivocally to closure.

However, at this very same moment we stand on the pass with a second thought not yet fully formed but forming. That thought is that you and I stand on the edge of a new missionary age – a new geography of hope. We have not been called to be lords in an age of empire but entrepreneurs in an age of mission.

Our new missionary economy must add value to the culture around us.

We must be about the missionary work of transforming the world around us – our environment, the economy itself, and the societies of our neighborhoods and cities. People’s lives must be better tomorrow because our Episcopal Church is there proclaiming the Good News of Salvation.

We must engage a new design aligning our church economy with the realities of the 21st century mission field.

We have the opportunity to rethink systematically how we will walk into this geography of hope.

The economies that will flourish in the 21st century will be ones that give life to people, their community, and the environment in which they live. We must invest in relationship oriented community and individual and environmental transformation.

We have the opportunity in this new missionary age to claim a sustainable mission deeply rooted in our values as Anglicans who are unabashedly Episcopalian.

The world around is hoping for partners who will join in providing healthy, fulfilling, life giving and dignity bound ministry to the communities in which they live.

The world is looking for partners interested in building a sustainable creation.

The world is looking for partners who will nurture relationships helping one another to have a better wholesome life.

We realize as we stand here on the edge between two different mission mindsets, two different church economic theories that our current system must change if we are to lead across the cultural divide into the new millennium.

A new church economy will serve as a system to take us into the future as a healthy community of Christians who benefit the world around us proclaiming and making real the salvation of Christ.

We must step onto the other side of the divide with all its unknowns. But we do not do that without friends or untethered. As the Episcopal Diocese of Texas we take our steps together tethered to our vision and mission. Who we are and how we understand our ministry helps us by being the bedrock and foundation of hope for every step we take in this new geography.

We are called through Jesus Christ to build the Kingdom of God together through worship, witness, and ministry.

We understand that as individuals and as a sacred community we are one Church reconciled by Jesus Christ.

We are reconciled to God and to one another through the power of Jesus Christ.

We are empowered by the Holy Spirit through worship, witness and ministry.

The Holy Spirit, the empowering agent of Godly life, transforms and binds us, individual sinners, into a divine community of virtuous citizens.

This is the family of God, the community called the Church, working outwardly, on a daily basis, the inner life of the Holy Trinity. The mission of true virtue is to create a worldly but divine community, the kingdom of God, on “earth as it is in heaven.”

We can gauge our steps into the new frontier by the following marks of the new missionary age. In the life of our diocese and in our congregations we will realize: A ministry that transforms and restores – changing the world around us in concert with Christ’s resurrection work.

o A great example of this is our renewed and collaborative partnership with Episcopal Relief and Development.

o Beginning with relief efforts focused on the Gulf Coast following Ike, we have put to work nearly a million dollars over a three year period. $400,000 from the foundations of the diocese to aid congregations with expenses and to rebuild. ERD contributed $200,000+ over the same period. And, people across the diocese and country offered another $370,000 in additional dollars. Gutting houses, rebuilding, helping our churches get started again, renewing lives and transforming the lives of the thousands who served as volunteers.

o Our coordinated restoration and management earned recognition and our leaders including Russ Oechsel and Maggie Immler have been asked to help coach and assist others in responding to emergencies across the country.

o We are also taking steps to lead with a Nets for Life campaign which you will hear about later.

Another mark of the missionary age is exceptional stewardship – stewardship of the resources of time, talent, and money entrusted to us.

o St. Mary’s West Columbia is a great example of a congregation who recently sold to the Nature Conservancy the last piece of pristine Texas coastal prairie. We were involved in restoring, caring for and ensuring for future generations a piece of Texas history and a section of land with geographical and species diversity. The impact is tremendous as the letter I received from the Houston chapter of the Audubon Society noted. The people of the diocese partnered with others in conserving and safeguarding God’s creation and in so doing makes a permanent place were God in all of God’s glory is revealed in the wonder of creation.

o This year we are partnering with The Episcopal Network for Stewardship in a collaborative leap to build connections across the country and raise our understanding of the meaning and impact exceptional stewardship can have on the church economy. The gathering will be June 3 and 4, 2011 this year at Camp Allen.

o Exceptional stewardship also means that we must rethink Mission Funding and the outreach ministries of the diocese. We can no longer fund the way we have been funding our common work for the past three decades. While the methodology changed slightly with “freedom of choice” and then “mission funding” the truth is that we continue today to fund and structure our common mission and ministry the way we did in the 1980s. No entrepreneurial mission minded organization funds the way they did in the 1980’s.

 William Isaac, former chairman of the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, wrote: “A financial system that does not take risks is a financial system that is not supporting entrepreneurship and growth.”

 We must employ in entrepreneurial fiscal leadership in this new missionary age.

o I have challenged the Church Corporation to work with David Fisher in our office to provide for the congregations of the diocese a planned giving campaign that helps congregations provide legacy giving for the future mission of the church.

The third mark of the new missionary age is excellence in mission

o

Excellence in mission means that we will embrace a culture of evangelism that is particularly our own.

o To this end we will hold an Evangelism Conference November 11 and 12 of 2011. We will look at emerging and the leading principles of greenfield evangelism, front door evangelism, and evangelism through technology.

o We hope at that time also to roll out a diocesan wide evangelism project.

o Church Planting is another place where we must engage in missionary excellence. We are going to have to become strategic in our funding for new growth. I have outlined and am working with all of the foundations on a clear strategic funding plan for grants that will support new starts, satellites, evangelism and newcomer initiatives.

o Last year I formed a Task Force on church planting that is working on a theology in sync with diocesan vision. They are looking at types of new starts, potential sites and projects that will need new development in the years to come. They are taking the initiative and looking at how to drive excellence in mission throughout our diocesan structure and offerings.

We will know we are making progress towards the vision of the kingdom transforming the world because Average Sunday Attendance will increase in the diocese but more importantly:

• week day attendance on every campus will increase

• Church and community partnership will increase in frequency.

 

We will know we are making progress when we see Baptisms, confirmations, and receptions increase in the diocese, but more importantly:

• The numbers of people who associate themselves with the Episcopal church will grow

• The numbers of people who participate in common mission with the Episcopal church will grow

• We will be known as a diocese and as a local church that welcomes, cares, and befriends

 

We will know we are making progress when the median age of the membership of our church decreases to reflect our mission context – the counties in which the diocese is located.

We will know we are making progress when our leadership (clergy and laity) is younger and more diverse ethnically – reflecting our mission context.

We will know we are making progress when existing congregations take the initiative for planting new congregations

We will know when we see our institutions show growth in numbers, finances, and in community impact

We will know we are making progress when we see:

•more churches

• more emerging communities

• more schools

• more clinics

• more outreach ministries and centers

 

We will know when we have three fully funded endowments:

• Great Commission Fund – which underwrites and supports new congregations

• Leadership Development Fund – which builds leadership formation and capacity

• Clergy Wellness Fund – which supports the health care cost and wellness initiatives for clergy and their families

 

We will know we are making our way into the new missionary age when no issue that is secondary to the basics of our faith divides us and keeps us from our mission.

No issue will keep us from our mission.

We are making progress today. Last year the resolutions committee worked to bring people together to help present legislation that united the council around a common issue of concern. We should be proud of their work.

This year in September and October our nation’s headlines were filled with stories of people who were bullied. Our resolution committee has risen to the challenge after receiving multiple resolutions and has put together one resolution which in my mind captures our willingness to work together on a common issue of a Gospel importance.

  

Now, let me tell you what I think about this…The real test for us though will be if we actually do something about bullying in our communities. Passing a resolution is good, but as Episcopalians our baptismal covenant does not ask to enact the Gospel legislatively, Jesus wants us to change people’s lives. I encourage you to not simply act here on the floor of council as your conscience dictates on these issues, but stand up and act to protect those who are bullied in your schools, workplaces, and within your families.

Another example of where I am seeing people come together is in a conversation with me around the unity and mission of the diocese as we move towards General Convention 2012. I have spent the last year preparing to call the Task Force on Unity together. Their task will be to present to Council in 2012 our plan for leading through the unfolding events of General Convention.

I did have to change the plan for the Task Force in mid-stream as it became clear that the Liturgical Commission was going to present their work in an alternative service book for the Episcopal Church. This particular approach meant thinking clearly about how I will personally approach the debate on sexuality in 2012. Instead of the role of mediator I am now in the role of leader and will be making key decisions about our future.

That being said I am working with Secretary James Baker on my leadership. He has been most gracious with his time and attention. I spent six months working on a proposal.

I have spent another six months editing with the help of individuals across every spectrum on the issue of sexuality. I have been in conversation with bishops in the House about their strategies and have listened carefully to their advice, and we have shared ideas. I have listened carefully. I am writing a text on the sacrament and theology of marriage. And, I am today half way through the very careful and intentional invitations to individuals across our diocese and across every theological spectrum to join me in this work of leadership. It is very clear we are not all of one mind, but we love the our diocese and we love the Episcopal Church and we are committed to one another as family members and are committed to listening and seeking a solution for our diocese.

So, we are making progress in our unity and respect for one another.

How do we move from where we are today, at the edge of a new era, capitalizing on our strengths and resources, to become the diocese intended by God?

We will realize the expectations of our missionary contexts through Formation, Leadership, and Connecting People.

We are making headway now in the area of Formation.

We are launching the Communion Covenant Curriculum developed by a task force with a feedback loop to the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church. The task force will report to us at next year’s council.

I have made it clear that I support the proposed Anglican Covenant and that this is a landmark moment for our communion. I believe this an important opportunity and deserves time by every congregation to understand better who we are and the changing communion and world around us.

I have heard people say that the Covenant moves us from a generous flexibility toward a brittle rigidity. The statements of faith presented are those that have for a long time been part of who we are as Episcopalians and Anglicans. There is no prescription in the Covenant that does not embrace the middle way for the sake of comprehension or require less generous flexibility within our missionary contexts.

I encourage you to take seriously this important moment in the life of our church and our communion and to engage the Covenant curriculum materials.

The focus of the curriculum helps members of our diocese better understand who we are as Anglicans and Episcopalians.

Understanding who we are as Episcopalians is the same undergirding principle I had when I put together the search committee led by the Rev. Susan Kennard to discern and find a new Canon for Life Long Formation. After doing a national search they offered to us three candidates. Your diocesan staff interviewed all three, and we together selected Mr. John Newton who until two weeks ago served as the Missioner on the college campus of the University of Texas. We are excited about the vision Canon Newton brings to this ministry and the new ideas and creativity that he will offer to the diocese.

We are making headway today in Leadership.

We are expanding our Iona School ministry and will be partnering with the dioceses of Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Northwest Texas, West Texas, and Nebraska to build communities and share our classes. This work is a leadership partnership between the Seminary of the Southwest and our diocese. We have Bishop Harrison to thank for this incredible work.

I am also very pleased with her clear leadership of the Seminary. Along with Dean Doug Travis and the faculty the Seminary is not only becoming the largest seminary west of the Mississippi but in my estimation will soon be the second largest seminary program in the country next to Virginia Seminary.

Bishop Harrison’s leadership with a number of other institutions is revealing itself as a gift not only to me but the vitality of the diocese.

Last night we had a wonderful roast and toast of Bishop High. We are grateful for his friendship and for his ministry. He has been a leader and he has truly given us, the people of the diocese his very best. He has not done that alone, and so it was right that we celebrate Pat and her ministry too. Clergy spouses know of her kindness and her love of them. You don’t get Rayford without Pat smiling next to him. It has been a pleasure.

I am asking that the Diocese of Texas raise a purse for Bishop High in gratitude for his ministry and that it be collected and given to him upon his retirement.

One of the gifts that Bishop High has given us is that he has formed and made clear an understanding of the importance and vocation of a regional bishop.

I had originally been counseled and perhaps out of my own newness as bishop thought that we should have an assisting bishop. However, the suffragan bishops of the diocese have been beloved, bishops Goddard, Cilley, Charlton, Alard, and Sterling to name only a few. I have realized in the last year that I trust the diocese in this work of discernment and that we do need to elect a suffragan.

However, as I have mentioned in the past elections are expensive and we need to save and prepare in order to do this election well. I am proposing therefore the following plan.

I am asking the diocese by way of this council to allow me to call an assisting Bishop. This will give me the canonical permission needed to hire if I indeed find one. The money is in the budget and we are ready to do so. This has already been approved by the Standing Committee.

I am also proposing that in the event I do not find someone that the monies are used to provide Episcopal presence throughout the diocese by inviting visiting bishops who are retired to help with the work load.

I will also propose saving the funds not used and placing them in an account that can grow in 2011 and 2012 into an election fund.

I will also appoint a committee to work under the direction of the Standing Committee and Executive Board for the development of a profile and description of a regional bishop for East Texas and that such a process begin immediately.

As a point of clarification, I will plan to return to the 163rd Diocesan Council in 2012 and call for the election of a Suffragan Bishop for East Texas to be held at Council in 2013.

We are making headway today in the area of building and making Connections locally and globally.

We launched our new website yesterday. The new site moves us from a site devoted to telling people what we want to a site committed to helping people find what they need, connect with others doing great work, and provide an online tool for the sharing of news and information between congregations and institutions.

This launch is part of an overall communication plan which is connected to a new magazine that will share the good news of Christ at work in and through the diocese.

This new look and new presentation of the Diocese is placed firmly within a news strategy of pushing information out through various forms of social networking, creating an ever greater web of communicators throughout the diocese.

We are reaching more and more people across our diocese and across the global church.

Carol Barnwell and LaShane Eaglin do the work of a much larger staff and have risen to the challenge of a new bishop’s ideas about communication. When given the opportunity to hire an employee to replace their secretary they developing a job description and made a strategic hire; bringing on board Luke Blount as a writer, and leader in social networking and media arts.

As your ambassador I am helping us make connections across the Episcopal Church and the global communion. One such connection is with the diocese of Haiti. Through the House of Bishops I met Bishop Zache Duracin, the bishop of the largest Diocese in the Episcopal Church, the Diocese of Haiti. He and I were at table together for my first year and a half in the house. While in England for the Compass Rose meeting I was able to spend some time with him and to hear of the miraculous work they are doing in Haiti. The Diocese has given through the Episcopal Foundation of Texas $10,000. During 2010 alone people and congregations sent more than $44,000. Leaders have over the last two years given dollars, time, and talent. Together I believe we can say that the people of our diocese have given over $100,000 dollars directly and indirectly to the rebuild effort. But we are not done yet.

There is more work. We must help them rebuild the national cathedral there which is of great historic, artistic, cultural, and communal importance. Moreover, we must help them to rebuild their country. This is a ministry we must do in partnership with them. Bishop Duracin has asked for more funding and we will make another gift this year. However, we are going to work with the Episcopal Church’s campaign. You will be hearing more about this as I have appointed my Archdeacon Russ Oechsel to head this up.

Last year the Council asked that the Executive Board look at extending the Council by one day. The Executive Board has reported in volume one of the journal that they did not believe this was a good idea. However, I have worked with Camp Allen and a few leaders in the diocese and it has been decided that JoAnne and I will host the first annual Episcopal Diocese of Texas Family Reunion and Blue Grass Festival at Camp Allen on the weekend of May 11, 2012. We hope this will be an opportunity for us to make connections within the wider family of the diocese; connections and relationships outside the work of mission and ministry and business. Please mark your calendars and plan to join us.

Conclusion

Before I conclude I wish to say that I have been gifted two incredible suffragan bishops, bishop High and Bishop Harrison. I would ask you to please show what I know is your deep and heartfelt gratitude for their service and ministry.

I am not foolish enough to lead this diocese without your wisdom and partnership.

I also am so very grateful for your diocesan staff. Will the staff in the room please rise. They labor vigorously on your behalf. It is upon their shoulders I stand more often than not. It is upon their tireless efforts that I depend. Most of all of course is my assistant Stephanie Taylor. You know, JoAnne knows, we all know I could not do it without her partnership and support.

And, there is JoAnne. I am grateful for being able to walk this ministry with you. I am grateful for your continuous support of the diocese by your support of me. I am grateful for your honesty and your love. As everyone knows who knows you…I married far above my station…thank God.

The truth is that it is us; we the people called the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Texas do this work.

We have a mission.

We have values that define how we see the world: ministry and mission that is transformational, exceptional stewardship, excellence in mission

Every congregation and every institution is continuously engaging in the work of formation, leadership, and connection for the sole purpose of realizing potential given our missionary context.

We are on the precipice of a new age of mission.

I would not want to take my steps into the wilderness before us without you, the people of the diocese, who I am proud and honored to call friends and humbled to serve as bishop.

My hope is that at the last day we will have dared, with entrepreneurial spirits, to see the glory of God and the challenge before us as an opportunity for service and mission and not a stumbling block to be feared.

And, that as President Thomas Jefferson said of Meriwether Lewis:

…That it may be said of us that we were of great courage and undaunted.

…That we were not be diverted from our task nor God’s direction.

…And that there was no hesitation but fidelity in our cause and in our mission.

May we with steadfast faith and fervent prayer ask for God’s grace and power to enliven our wills for the work that is before us. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. [Amen]



Endnote:
The basics of our faith mentioned above are:


•

our communion in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, worshipping the one true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit;

• the catholic and apostolic faith uniquely revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the catholic creeds;

• the belief that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments contain all things necessary for salvation and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith;

• that the Apostles’ Creed, as the baptismal symbol; and the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith;

• that the two sacraments ordained by Christ himself – Baptism and the Supper of the Lord – ministered with the unfailing use of Christ’s words of institution, and of the elements ordained by him;

• that the historic episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of his Church;

• that the shared patterns of our common prayer and liturgy form, sustain and nourish our worship of God and our faith and life together…

Thoughts on the Future Diocese and Future Wider Church Structure

This week I have been invited to participate in the ACTS 8 Discussion. ACTS 8 says this about itself: 

The Acts8 Moment is a Missionary Society made of lay and clergy members of the Episcopal Church. 

Vision statement: Proclaiming Resurrection in The Episcopal Church.
Mission statement: Changing the conversation in The Episcopal Church from death to resurrection; equipping The Episcopal Church to proclaim resurrection to the world.

Acts 8 Guiding Principles:

• We follow Jesus, guided by the Holy Spirit, grounded in prayer, scripture, and worship.
• We challenge The Episcopal Church to proclaim the good news of Jesus in effective ways.
• We encourage and equip local missionary communities.
• We carry out our work with hope, optimism, and good humor.
• We consistently and transparently communicate to achieve dialogue across the church.

Find out more here. This week they are asking for pieces about the nature of the structure of church. Hey have posed these questions for thought:

What is the mission of the (Domestic and Foreign) Mission Society (of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America) or whatever you currently insist on calling it? How should it be structured to serve its mission?

What follows is an excerpt from a new book due out in May called: Church: A Generous Community Amplified for the Future. It is written from the perspective of the Episcopal Church and is offered as my thoughts on the nature of structure. As a chapter it naturally depends on arguments made previously in the text but I think it gives a good sense of what I am thinking about the future structure of our organizations.

Future Diocese, Future Wider Church

“No body of knowledge needs an organizational policy. Organizational

policy can only impede the advancement of knowledge. There is a basic

incompatibility between any organization and freedom of thought.”

William S. Burroughs, Ali’s Smile

      At the core of a missionary Episcopal Church is a bishop serving God’s people and  undertaking service and evangelism for the sake of reconciliation. The only reason to have a diocese is to help organize the mission of a particular area, and to stay out of the way of a living Church making its missionary journey. The only reason to have a wider church organization is to organize the mission for a particular region. Everything else is extra. This has been the essence of our structure and it continues to be so today. Sure, we can add a lot of other things to it. Those who are the elite power brokers in the organization will tell us that their parts are also essential.  This is not true, though. It is a lie one leader tells its Church citizens in order to maintain their place in power. The Church would continue to make its way in the world without all that we pretend is necessary. Our structures have been and forever will be a utilitarian exoskeleton for the real work of God’s Holy Spirit. What we know today is that this skeleton and all its scaffolding and framework which we have so labored to construct no longer works. It no longer protects us. It no longer enables us to be agile in the culture. It no longer supports the mission efforts of our Church. The present church is organized to operate in a context that no longer exists. The same pressures that all major manufacturing companies and institutions face in this time period are the same pressures the church faces.

      Companies as large organizations for a single purpose have existed to minimize transaction cost. They were created in order to buy at quantity and buy down cost of production. Their mission was to create a smoother transaction and delivery. Their massive mechanical production lines cut down on mistakes and saved time. Every cog had a wheel, every wheel had a person to man it, and the machine was well oiled, competition was low, and life in the corporate world was good. Over the last ten years though, the corporate world has been restructuring. Vision and mission work in the boardrooms have been undertaken to rethink whole companies. Mergers and acquisitions, increased resource sharing, and building mammoth organizations, were all for the sake of increased control and decreased risk. The world of business and the machine of the company have radically changed in the new world of communication and technology. The shift from manufacturing things to an information economy, and the rise of local makers in their garages, where the hobbyist competes with the professional, has changed almost everything. The legacy of the twentieth century is the last vestige of a modern machine era with companies and organizations that look like and work like the era from which they came. They have too many interests and too much capital tied up in the wrong things to make the shift easily. So these modern companies are struggling with purpose and they are not easily finding their place in the market around them. The church organization (diocesan and church wide) is no different.

      Frederick Hayek was an Austrian born British economist who lived through most of the twentieth century. He argued that the centralized economy could not exist because of the impossible need to control things. Not unlike Nassim Taleb, he understood that the health of society was not dependent on large organizations that are actually more fragile, but on smaller ones that enable a better more disbursed economy. In part, Hayek simply believed in the freedom of individuals to create, market, sell and disburse goods in a much more efficient and free manner. The centralized organization and economy required too many controls over the whole economic and social state. He used a term called catallaxy to describe a "self-organizing system of voluntary co-operation" as the primary means of economic vitality. The Nobel Committee used his argument for self-organizing systems in their press statement awarding him the Nobel Prize in 1974.[i] Hayek believed in a spontaneous order within economics that was not unlike the development of language within society. Centrally planning an economy is impossible because society itself is inherently decentralized, and would need to be brought under control. While Hayek was looked at as having missed the boom in large corporations and the economic entanglement of government and business in the middle of the last century, he is now being turned to again as the new information economy and maker movements are beginning to mimic his catallaxy theory.[ii] What Hayek intrinsically knew is that the power of innovation in the hands of the people will beat the centralized organization.[iii]

      We are today departing the mechanistic age that brought with it huge complicated bureaucracies.[iv] Margaret Wheatley writes, “We now speak in earnest of more fluid, organic structures, of boundary-less and seamless organizations.”[v] The Church is a whole system. It is a network of individuals who are seeking and learning – it is a learning organism. People in their basic nature are self-organizing.[vi] They do it in different ways but they connect and create society naturally because we are meant to live in community with one another. The foundations of the new infrastructure for the Church will be built upon the self-organizing, self-learning, socially structured mission context in which we find ourselves.[vii] The reorganization will be a catallaxy.

      The reorganization will be brought about by a mutual adjustment of the meet-ups, un-conferences, community websites, and crowds that make up the future Church.[viii] Because of our innate ability to have our own biases within the structure, it is difficult to see this self-organizing as anything other than fringe movements. However, they are quickly becoming the mainstream. The Church will have to make a conscious shift to engage at the many levels where it finds its citizenry. The mission organization of the future no longer outsources to a structure or bureaucracy the work that individuals can do for themselves. The professional elite mission organization is now in the hands of a new citizenship that is eager to innovate for the sake of the Gospel of love and reconciliation.[ix]

      The present church is just now taking its first messy steps upon the new journey that is leading to the future organization. Everyone has a part in the change. The change is happening, and as the reorganization begins the question is: how will each person act and react in the midst of variation from the norm, chaos, information overload, entrenched behaviors, and new ways of doing Church?  The Church is a vessel of a wily Holy Spirit that is moving and creating. The Church is an organism characterized by probabilities and potential.  It is an organization to be sure, but organizational thinking in the past has tended towards a mechanistic and deterministic strategy. In today’s culture such organizations are fragile and failing. It is weakened by the VUCA world around it. The future Church will be a Church that possesses tremendous tensile strength, a capacity to grow, to be autopoietic, and to adapt to its new mission context. It must do this because it is always and everywhere made up of people who are not living in a diaspora, but in the midst of the mission context itself.[x]

      The Episcopal Church is organized by diocese, and it also has a church-wide structure. We have a way of doing mission together – an economy. Aristotle was the first to use  the word economy. He used it to describe “the art of household management.”[xi] Aristotle was trying to explain the way markets worked and drew parallels between the smallest organization and the largest. Originally the term diocese itself (Gr. dioikesis) meant the economy or management of a household.[xii] In Roman law, a diocese was a geographic region dependent upon a city for its administration.[xiii] We might remember here how Ambrose was the governor of the area that included Liguria and Emilia, but he lived in Milan. This is an example of how a diocese is dependent upon its city for administration in the Roman system. Circa the end of the third century, Emperor Diocletian designed twelve dioceses, twelve great divisions, and established them in the empire, and over each he placed a vicarious or vicar.[xiv] It was into this Roman society and form of government that Christianity grew – adopting its terms and organization.

      In the beginning there were no particular rules for the organization of the church. It was autopoietic in nature. It was in fact a self-organizing system of communities that were created by the movement of the Holy Spirit, and the spreading of the good news of God in Christ Jesus. The first organization we see deference to the Apostles and their successors. As the Church grew there seems to be some further deference given to the local apostles or apostolic connections. For instance, we see early on James, the brother of Jesus, who is connected with the church in Jerusalem. Most likely the first communities were connected with Jewish communities and synagogues in the cities. They would be organized as such until being kicked out sometime after 70 C.E. There were also societies and other rural movements, as we have previously discussed. The new gentile Christians created communities of their own. We see evidence of this throughout the New Testament. A new Christian might then join a neighborhood community nearby. Most scholars believe that during this nascent beginning of the Christian movement, there was not a lot of organization to be administered. An Apostle during this time or apostolic leader would have simply overseen the community life – this would have been his domain of authority. Like St. James in Jerusalem, we see Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Smyrna emerge by the end of the first century as having some organizational authority over the Christian community in these townships. At this time we still don’t have any formal authority over a jurisdiction or its administration. The diocese in these first years does not really exist. The mission of the Church is purely an act of an apostolic leader and growing community. The church is like a grape vine. Christ is the stem, the people are its branches and it is bearing much fruit. (John 15.1-8) There was a great dependence upon the Holy Spirit and its movement upon the Church of the day. We should not overly organize the metaphor that Christ gives us, because for over one hundred years the church quite literally was not much of an organization, and was much more an organism.

      In the Church’s second century, as we have already seen in discussions about the Didache and the Apostolic Constitutions, there is a growing set of rules and expectations about the ministry of the Church and a natural turning to the apostolic authority (the bishop) for the oversight of how people come into faith, the administration of the sacraments, and the general teaching of the Church. By the middle of the third century each Christian community of any means had a bishop at its center. At least in the East, these places with Bishops in residence were called the diocese.[xv]

      We also know that these bishops and their dioceses seem to have grown up around communities of size and in urban areas. There were bishops in the country districts as well and in smaller towns. These were rural bishops called Chorepiscopi.[xvi]  They would eventually be merged into the then more formalized diocese as time passed.[xvii] In Egypt alone by the fourth century there were over one hundred bishops and jurisdictions. This was seen by the list of bishops attending the Council of Alexandria.[xviii] At the same time, the western and northern regions had fewer bishops, and they were more spread out with wider dioceses to oversee.[xix] By the fourth century (about the same time as the Diocletian changes) the diocese and its supervision more closely resembled the Roman government structure. Most cities had a bishop and a territory with boundaries. Not everyone thought this was how it should be. St. Innocent, in 415, did not share the idea that the Church should follow the exact boundaries of the state. Nevertheless by the Council of Chalcedon in 451, the local bishop operated within a diocese that closely resembled the same boundaries defined by the state. The bishop was responsible for the economy of the church for that region. When it was changed by the Roman state, the Church would respond by making modification.[xx]

      After settling into this habit of mimicking state geography and organization, it (dioceses?) remained largely unchanged. The bishop was supported by a host of presbyters/priests and deacons. New churches were founded and bishops were put in place to oversee their growth and ministry. The evolution moved from every church having a bishop to the bishop having oversight of priests and deacons, overseeing the local work at the church where the bishop was not present. The role of the bishop shifted from being a leader of a single church to being a geographic apostolic representative.[xxi] It is clear, throughout the writings of the pre-Reformation period, that the purpose of the bishop and the diocesan organization were for the mission of the Gospel.

      When the Roman Empire fell at the feet of the invading armies, much of the society turned to the organized Church for support. Bishops Leo I in the fifth century, and Gregory I in the fifth century, were statesmen and public administrators, raising armies, taxing, and overseeing the mission and teaching of the Church. The civil society in the east was stronger politically, and so the bishops did not take on the same powers as in the west. In the west this trend of bishops as a mix of religious and civic authority continued. In many western states the bishops served as chancellors and heads of the court. When we think of the theological education throughout this time period, it is not surprising that the clergy tended to be well educated. The Lord Chancellor of England was almost always a bishop up until the dismissal of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey by Henry VIII.

      How a diocese was created, the purpose of the diocesan structure, and the administrative work of the bishop were in large part the same throughout the time of the Reformation and into the post-Reformation period. The Church of England, among other churches, sent clergy over to the new colonies to oversee the mission work and to serve as chaplains to the colonists.

      Prior to the American Revolution, The Church of England in the colonies was linked to the diocesan leadership of the Bishop of London. The tradition imparted to the colonies was largely one of an established Christian culture and society where the domain and control of the bishop with his clergy was seen as an ordinary part of both religious and civic society (this being an artificial boundary that they would not have understood). The work of the church was to help govern, to oversee the moral discipline of the people, and to help generally improve society.[xxii] After 1702, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) began missionary activity throughout the colonies. On the eve of the American Revolution, about 400 independent congregations were reported throughout the colonies, with over 300 clergy – most of whom were loyalists to the British Crown.[xxiii]

After the American Revolution the English Church pulled back its mission efforts and the Church looked towards other countries for support. It is important to understand that in this time period the Church of England in the Americas almost died. Because of the varying kinds of churches that had been created across the colonies, the DNA of the American Episcopal Church was not yet set. There were small conventions that met. They gathered local congregations and their leadership together to discuss the issues of mission and organization. There were no bishops. These conventions argued over the importance of having bishops, the nature of the church, and the importance of clergy. In the end, the Episcopal Church in Connecticut elected Samuel Seabury as bishop in 1783. He sought consecration in England but because of The Oath of Supremacy[xxiv], he could not be ordained. So the Church turned to Scotland, and he was ordained in Aberdeen on November 14, 1784.[xxv] Seabury was to be "the first Anglican bishop appointed to minister outside the British Isles".[xxvi] One year later, the American Episcopal Church was ordaining its own clergy.

      The fledgling Episcopal Church gathered representatives in its first General Convention in 1789, with representative clergy from nine dioceses meeting in Philadelphia to ratify the Church's initial constitution, thereby becoming the first Anglican Province outside of the British Isles.[xxvii] The Church took on governance that mimicked the new country, and ordered itself in a democratic federalist structure. The church was to be, for the purpose of mission, a constitutional confederacy of interdependent dioceses.[xxviii] It was to be called the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society and it began its first foreign mission in Texas and the West. The challenges in governance in this new era were unity in the face of major differences on liturgy, and tensions between clergy and lay authority. The new Church also struggled with the creation of a prayer book and specifically how were bishops to relate in the wider Church organization. It also faced an important goal of spreading the Gospel across the western frontier. It would resolve most of these differences becoming a strong, powerful, and influential church by the twentieth century. It was the self-organizing of the new Americans that sought to establish and continue the practices of the Church of England in this newly formed country. In the absence of a hierarchy and structure, the people gathered and organized themselves for mission.

      America grew and changed over the next century, and the Episcopal Church changed with it. The industrial revolution had a profound impact upon business and corporations. It had an impact upon the Church as well. There was a mutual shared leadership between the wider society and the Episcopal Church. Membership included J. P. Morgan, Astors, Vanderbilts, Harrimans, and Henry Ford.[xxix] These were not always the best examples of Episcopal citizenry. The Church was intermingled with the largest number of leaders in business and banking across the U.S. with its influence continuing into the twenty-first century.[xxx] The twentieth century would be the peak of the Episcopal Church’s self-confidence. It focused its governance on becoming the unofficial national church-- all the while it was engaging in mission in Haiti and all over the world. It was the height of the industrial age, and so the Episcopal Church with its industrial leaders formed itself through further governance standardization. It was concerned with the work of the modern corporation that was command and control, centralization of mission and ministry. The growth of program and administrative bureaucracies would be the hallmarks of this period of organizational change. After all, the Episcopal Church had become one of the largest protestant denominational churches. Membership grew from 1.1 million members in 1925, to a peak of over 3.4 million members in the mid-1960s.[xxxi] This included the dioceses in the U.S. and a multinational mission field that stretched across the globe. In 1930s the Church went through an organizational change, and prayer book revision. The organizational change placed within its governance structures the denominational paradigm of big church with a franchise approach to mission both domestic and foreign.[xxxii]

      By the 1960’s the Church had moved into a central Church Office and had a Presiding Bishop CEO model. While the church focused upon racial equality and social justice, the model of governance shifted, as did the governance structures of large successful corporations, and the state, to a form of regulatory agency.[xxxiii] Cultural upheavals, disagreements about women’s ordination, the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy, and continued liturgical revision marked this period. The end of the era, when the world listened to the Church, has meant a lot of time spent at every level continuing legislation in convention that goes largely unheard in wider cultural circles and social context. The new media environment has tended to keep the dysfunction and disunity of the Church on the front page, while the profound impact it is having in terms of social engagement and service is relegated to the back page, if covered at all.

      The Episcopal Church, like every large denomination, has decreased in numbers and programs, while not drastically reorganizing for the new mission context or evolving needs of the church and mission it is meant to serve. The bishops and their clergy are inundated with organizational requirements that are artifacts of a bygone industrial era. The focus on hierarchy, structure, and governance that is modeled on a corporate reality that is now over 80 years old no longer works. There is a growing disconnect between those who lead and the grass roots movements of lay mission and service. The Church is still mired in culture wars, wringing its hands over shrinking attendance, and trying to save itself by better budgeting in the wake of shrinking resources. The present past Church organization that exists today continues to look back in an attempt to sustain aging structures, force uniformity over unity, and create diversity by legislation at conventions.

      The Task Force on Reimaging the Church (TREC) was created to help guide the church through a new time of reorganization for mission. They released this statement regarding the current state of Church governance: “Yet this ‘national church’ ideal did not stand the test of time, and reductions in the centralized staff and program began in the early 1970s. Since then, The Episcopal Church (like many denominations) has sought to exert influence over congregations and dioceses through church wide regulations, even as the trust that once bound Episcopalians together across structures has eroded.”[xxxiv] TREC then posed these questions: What does a 21^st century missionary Episcopal Church need from its church-wide organization? What functions and activities should best take place at the church-wide level, rather than regional or local levels? What should be funded through a centralized budget? What should be mandated for all congregations and dioceses, and what should best be left to local discernment and discretion? Who should participate in what kinds of decisions? What primary challenges can a church wide organization help The Episcopal Church address?”[xxxv]

      The organization at the diocesan level and the church-wide level does not serve the new mission context well. In the Diocese of Texas, we recently embarked on a time of reflection and thinking through of our diocesan canons. The unified voice of the committee was summed up in the words of Bishop Harrison who said to our Executive Board, and to me, “The canons describe a Church I no longer recognize.”

      The problem with our current situation is that we can see on the one hand that our organization does not work. On the other hand we are invested in how it works now. The problem remains that what we are most afraid of is how change will affect us as individuals, our power, and our authority. Michael C. Jackson, in his text Systems Approaches to Management, writes, "The things we fear most in organizations - fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances - need not be signs of an impending disorder that will destroy us. Instead, fluctuations are the primary source of creativity."[xxxvi] With an understanding that the church-wide organization and the diocese have always found a creative way to undertake its mission, we look from the past into the future.

      Let me introduce you to the Coasean ceiling, the Coasean floor, and scalability. Every, and I mean every, organization and institution has operating costs. The church has an economy, an operating cost that is real - time, money, and energy. The Coasean ceiling is the point above which the transaction costs of managing a congregation, a diocese, or a church-wide organization prevent it from working well. The Coasean floor is the point below which the transaction costs of a particular type of activity, no matter how valuable to someone, are too high for the congregation, diocese, or church-wide organization to pursue. Nobel Prize winning economist Ronald Coase, in his 1937 paper “The Nature of the Firm” introduced the world to this key to economic viability.[xxxvii]

      The Dutch East India Company was chartered in 1602. It is truly the first organization of its type to figure out how massive scale creates an ability to work between the floor and ceiling. By keeping prices managed within the market, so they are not too high for people to actually purchase merchandise, while at the same time lowering operational cost, the institution itself can increase profits and share of the economy. The Dutch East India Company did just that. They created organizational structures that managed the operational cost between the floor and ceiling.[xxxviii]  As other companies followed suit, and their industry grew, new corporate models of the church went along too. Recently, I read the book by Simon Winchester entitled Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded. In it, he made a side comment about how the missionaries followed the trade industry. The growing corporation model influenced the Church, along with its missionary movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Accessibility, scalability, and manageability were all part of the diocesan infrastructure concerns for the church as they were with any business. Intentionally or subconsciously, the church has been, for the most part of the last two hundred years, managing to keep its diocese – its economy – within the floor and ceiling Coase describes.

      Managers manage the corporate model by helping to build scalability within the organization. Scalability is when the corporation is increasing its reach while doing so at a minimum cost, thereby increasing profits. It is the way of the corporate model. We cannot imagine a Church organization that does not think in terms of managing its economy. We are consistently managing salaries, income, and service to members and to the world. We are managing the Coasean floor and ceiling. When you sit at a vestry meeting, talking about the budget with a Starbucks coffee in your hand you are an example of how this model has affected both industry and the Church.

      In his book, Life Inc, Douglas Rushkoff makes the case that “corporatism” has colonized everything. The corporate DNA has saturated our language, our institutions, our non-profits, and our media.[xxxix] The Church in the mid-twentieth century with its mission expansion, growth in programing, growth in staffing and growth in average Sunday attendance was an era of scalability. It was a time when the Church, like every other organization, grew. While many will claim a lot of reasons for the shrinking size of the Episcopal Church in our time, the reason may be as simple as the fact that we have not changed our organization to match the changing missionary context, thereby keeping our economy operating between the floor and ceiling. Technology leader, lecturer, and consultant Clay Shirky points out that it is the same for everyone. It happens all the time. "[Every] institution lives in a kind of contradiction: it exists to take advantage of group effort, but some of its resources are drained away by directing that effort. Call this the institutional dilemma--because an institution expends resources to manage resources, there is a gap between what those institutions are capable of in theory and in practice, and the larger the institution, the greater those costs."[xl] Our dilemma came when we did not keep our focus on the mission, and instead shifted our focus to the organization itself. We have tried to manage ourselves out of the current situation by shrinking our budgets and doing less with less. We turned inward and tried to accomplish keeping everything the same but just doing it for less. Meanwhile the growing cost of doing business kept rising.

The nation’s economy affects everything from the salary of clergy, the giving of parishioners and the budget of the congregation. We looked at these economic effects in chapter two but it is important to have a quick review as we examine the interplay between local congregation and wider Church organizations. What we know is that an overall picture of inflation reveals an average annual inflation rate of 3.22%. This has essentially doubled every 20 years in the last 100. Therefore, an average congregation in the Episcopal Church operating between the Coase’s floor and ceiling has to maintain 64 people every Sunday and an average pledge of $2,491. It cannot lose any members (or their pledges) and it has to add one individual/family every January, which immediately pledges the average amount in order to keep up with the operating cost on a pure inflation model. If a pledging member dies, gets angry, or moves away, then the church must replace two pledgers. This is an impossible task given the shrinking average Sunday Attendance and budgets over the last 50 years. Now add to your mental picture of this difficulty the increase in diocesan and church-wide askings.

      Historically, the bishop and the organization have been responsible for the administration of the Church’s mission. The local diocese and church-wide organization has not paid any attention to the congregations’ operating revenues, and their floor and ceiling. Instead they have continued to increase the cost of doing business. Yes, the money has increased, but it is inflationary. The percentages of the diocesan and church wide askings have increased too. Having built program staffs, ministries, committees and commissions, the dioceses also have faced financial crises. This has affected the wider Church organization. We have seen percentages of shared giving up to as high as 21% of income from parishes. This has drained money from the local mission field and moved it up to the wider church structures. No business continues to increase its overall revenue while shrinking the cash in hand to do its work at a local level.

      Think of franchising for a minute. The franchise model works this way: You pay an upfront fee for the organization’s business strategy, marketing strategy, operations strategy, and the use of its name. That's pretty much what franchising is -- you are establishing a relationship with a successful business so you can use its systems and capitalize on its existing brand awareness in order to get a quicker return on your own investment. You are using its proven system and name, and running it by its rules. You are getting supplies with a recognizable name at a lower cost because the franchise itself manages the floor and ceiling for you. You are allowed to put your franchise in a location where the franchise believes you will do well and where  will be customers. I say all of this because it is important to understand one very basic fact: the diocese and wider church are to do everything it can to make their local churches successful given their missionary context. Any organization that continues to take more and more income in the face of less and less money with higher cost of doing business is essentially cannibalizing its own organization. Since the 1960’s the Episcopal Church, and almost every other denomination, operating in the present past, has effectively mismanaged the Coasean floor and ceiling of its economy.

      In order to do its work in the current mission context, it is the responsibility of the mission institution (the diocese and wider Church) to create a shared ministry model that is focused on the local Christian community and its efficient and effective mission work. Over the last 30 or more years, diocesan and wider church leadership have continuously abdicated their responsibility and scapegoated congregations as the primary reason for the failure of mission. In an Episcopal model, it is the responsibility of the Bishop in conversation with the wider Church, to lead the change needed to affect new mission revitalization. The future Church must understand its responsibility, theologically and historically, for the economy of the spiritual household, and must be engaged in a dynamic local partnership with its clergy and congregations/communities.

      The future Church will invest in the mission success of its congregations. It will lead with vision and build unity by understanding the shared interests and needs of the organizations under its care. It will created process and procedures that are limited to the needs and success of the local mission context. Always remembering that the local Christian community exists purely for the sake of the reconciling mission of God, the diocese and wider Church will be there to support and help. The future Church must understand that it has to support the local community by doing those things that only the local community cannot do for itself. Many diocese and church wide organizations believe that this is an additive process. The local church cannot do something, so the diocese will do it, and we can all participate. Here is an example: The local church cannot support the program of the lollipop guild, so the diocese picks it up and supports it and budgets for it by using gifts from all the churches/communities for its underwriting. This is well and good in a program model. This is how it worked in the present past Church. The future Church will ask if the lollipop guild is necessary for the success of the mission in the local context and if it is, the wider church underwrites it, and if it is not necessary for the success of local mission, the wider church will not fund it. The future Church must understand it is responsible for multiplying and spreading efforts on the ground that effectively enhance the mission of service and evangelism. If the ministry does not directly enhance the local mission, it will not be taken on by the wider diocese and not funded.

      The future Church will be fully aware of the trends we have been talking about and will focus on creating Christian communities that engage the amplified individual. The structures and the governance of the overall organization will be attuned to the trajectory of the “personal empowerment” trends.[xli] The customization that all individuals are used to will be the same customization the diocesan structure must be attentive to. There will be an expectation that a one size fits all program model is not acceptable. The future diocese is aware that interactive media (from Facebook to games like Call of Duty), conscious economic social power (online giving and tweet donations), new commons for shared experiences (foreign missionaries and flash mobs) are all key ingredients to the new amplified church citizen’s world. Just as they are constantly placing themselves and their experiences out in the world, they too expect the organizations they are part of to give them space for mass conversation that participates in organizational direction. These are qualities that are expected from the organizations they interact with - both big and small.[xlii]

      The qualities that have emerged in our discussion about the culture and mission context are: self-agency, self-customization, self-organization, and self-learning. We are clear that we are in midst of a massive shift from digital vs. physical, to the digital and physical becoming enmeshed. We know that everything will be tagged so that amplified individuals will be able to find and discover the world around them. These digital natives are our parishioners and our neighbors.[xliii] We know that The Occupy movement and the Arab Spring are only two examples of how amplified individuals and super connected communities will mobilize for the common ideals in the future. Self-organizing mobs are going to become more and more common. Whether networking for politics, to raise disaster relief funds, clean up the community, build something, or discuss a book. Such connectivity will bring with it the power to shape economic markets, politics, and relationships within real-time communities.[xliv] The future Church organization will be accustomed to dealing with how the amplified individuals meet-up and accomplish tasks and set goals. The future Church will know that regular swarms and mobs are the new teams. It will be immersed in and uses the crowd list/friend list and has discarded the Rolodex. It must be aware of how quickly “dark mobs” might emerge and move against the best interest of the organization; therefore, it will be prepared to deal with this eventuality through communication strategies that link the diocese, parishioners and their broader networks together. The Church will understand that such eventualities are an opportunity to be grasped and not something that can be prevented. These are going to happen and the Church must be ready to use these as a teaching moment. The future diocese will engage in the merger of art, gaming, and social structures across physical and digital space – using this as only one of the many mission contexts in which it dwells. It will be involved in creating navigation tools for the complex media environment, personalizing technologies of cooperation and networking, and leading/pushing communication of information and knowledge. Community commons building and connections to any place, any time, learning hubs will be part of the diocesan work.

      The church hierarchy in the present church will be challenged to understand that people are directing their own gatherings, and that they are not necessarily going to show up because a program is offered. Gathering is now an option that comes when like-minded individuals create a common space to achieve a common goal. The future church will have to grasp the idea of ministry with people instead of to people. The future diocese will aid congregations to become savvy swarm and mob builders, intimately linked to the broader community and the community conversation. With new technologies evolving, the future church will take the opportunity to better network around skill sets, gifts, and leadership traits across friend’s lists. The future church will returned to an era of being a link, a connection, and a bridge, in a society which values connecting interests with real world tasks and needs.

      The future Church must take advantage of the new networking potential of a socialstructured world in order to catapult itself forward into the new missionary age. Yes, like every other modern organization, our economy has been disrupted. The prime cause is the new advent of a self-organizing world – the same thing that is our link to the future. The socialstructured world changes everything, and it changes the possibilities - redefining floor and ceiling of our household economy. Social tools drastically reduce transaction costs. The new tools will be used by the future Church to capitalize on loosely structured groups, to build cohesive strategies where it can no longer afford to have oversight by the full-time ordained.[xlv]

      In other words the future Church will beat the Coasean floor by allowing loosely structured groups to self-organize without the transaction cost associated with the large program church of the past. By harnessing the interest of its membership, the future church must figure out that it can structure and govern itself more effectively, thereby leaving dollars in the local context for mission. It can do this by having clear boundaries around the community and the mission projects. It will make joining and participating in the work of the church easy, ensuring that the work that is being done is providing some form of personal value for the individuals involved. The future Church will use these self-organizing groups across the community, building cells of support for congregations and communities. This subdivision and multiplicity of small working mission groups increase the antifragility of the overall organization. Shirky says, "In systems where many people are free to choose between many options, a small subset of the whole will get a disproportionate amount of traffic (or attention, or income), even if no members of the system actively work towards such an outcome. This has nothing to do with moral weakness, selling out, or any other psychological explanation. The act of choosing to spread widely enough and freely enough creates a power law distribution. This explains, among other things, the dynamics (and ultimately the success) of tools like wikis where there is a disproportionate amount of participation by an extremely small percentage of the overall users, while the vast majority contribute little or nothing.”[xlvi] Essentially what the future Church will do so very well is to build an overall collective intelligence in every area of mission, such that there is energy, innovation, and collaboration across the whole network of members and neighbors, thereby harnessing the power of a large group of individuals.[xlvii]

The future Church will have, diocesan leaders, structures and a church wide support system that are essentially built upon the people’s interests and talents that it seeks to serve. The network of the baptized and their neighbors is the network that undertakes the ministry of organization. James Surowiecki points out, in his book The Wisdom of Crowds, that “large groups of non-experts are capable of coming up with wiser solutions that small groups of experts.[xlviii] We, as Episcopalians, believe in the movement of the Holy Spirit and the ministry of all people to work together to accomplish God’s mission. This is a piece of our non-negotiable understanding of what it means to be an Episcopalian. Surowiecki’s research reveals that in fact this belief is not simply a unique Episcopalian-ism but is the very nature of society. Study after study reveal that “naïve” or “unsophisticated” individuals can and will organize in order to accomplish complicated, jointly advantageous goals, though in the beginning they may not be unified or have clarity about the goals themselves. Human beings, regardless of background, can gather and self-organize and move towards a common goal adeptly and quickly.[xlix] The future Church must believe this to be true theologically and must enact it throughout its structure and governance. Holding on to one of the most essential DNA ingredients to our Episcopal way of undertaking our mission – the collaboration of the people of God, the future Church has undermined the specialist theology now gripping the church, and will free itself to once again take on the work of God’s people together.

      Did you know that over 10 billion people participate in the creation of a “living earth simulator?” The idea of Swiss scientist Dirk Helbing, the simulator uses the wealth of crowd support to understand how the world works and avert potential crisis. The project website (http://www.futurict.eu) states: “The ultimate goal of the FutureICT project is to understand and manage complex, global, socially interactive systems, with a focus on sustainability and resilience. The living earth simulator uses information from scientists, techno files, and others to build a real-time understanding of the world.”[l] This is one of the most amazing projects I have encountered in my research, and it illustrates how complexity is not limited by crowd participation. The better-known Wikipedia uses about 150 people and thousands of volunteers to build its database. Yes, as it has problems with facts, its accuracy continues to grow and its wealth of information is astonishing. These platforms are creating projects and hubs within the wider information network that engage and enable greater participation by interested people. They reach far greater numbers of people with their participatory commons. These creative commons, Gorbis writes in The Nature of the Future, enable organizations to be guided by their leadership and those who are members of the community in ever-new ways.[li]

      The future church will depend upon its leadership, and whole community, to help minimize transaction cost of planning and coordinating activities, by using crowds. These crowds will have some particular qualities to them. The crowd structure will be made up of friends of Jesus, and collectively united around the Episcopal Church vision. The future Church will be technologically savvy. It will develop a standard of quality that reflects the context standards of the day. The future Church will be engaged in helping manage supply chains. It will be collaborative in all things. The future Church structures will be an enmeshment of hardware, software, and people – it will be amplified like its users. It will be characterized by antifragility through a structure that is at once unified, but more often characterized by the diversity of networked communities. It will be focused tightly on the ability, need, and goals of the local congregation. The future Church will be reflective and continually seeking knowledge about its performance and how it can improve its mission support at the local level; and, where it is in error, it will reform itself. Finally, it will have the characteristic of affiliation rather than obligation.

      There really are only a few things that a future church will need from its diocesan or church wide structure. The local Christian community will need support for their clergy and leaders to help them lead and undertake their mission locally. The local mission will need the unifying voice of the wider Church to help produce and expand the vision and mission of the Episcopal Church, so that seekers may find representative materials that direct and connect individuals with communities. The local mission will need the purchasing power of the wider Church. The local congregations will need client support for basic business services. Local leadership will help in navigating health, wellness, and insurance in a new age of health care. The wider Church will keep resources locally by spending appropriate resources on governance and structure.

      The structures of the future will be judged based on how well they support the local leadership – clergy and laity. The wider church structures will be tasked with making formation at every level accessible, shareable, and useable. Formation is a lifelong process for every person. In the self-learner world, the church must recognize that it needs infrastructure enabling the self-learners to discover more about God, themselves, and the Episcopal community around them. The diversity of types and sizes of communities across the Church will mean that it will be the Church structure’s responsibility to help build the technological infrastructure for this work.

      Accessibility for all members and their neighbors will be essential. The information must be shared freely. The present past has certainly been characterized by an age of suspicion and a lack of desire to share widely. The future Church is not only known for its ability to find good quality information but is also known for its willingness to share with others. This will require pushing the edge of translation and provision of information about our church in multiple languages. Useable information at the local context is essential for the first two ingredients to be of any use. The present past church is consistently looking at providing information it believes is important to share. Frequently, this is not the kind of information people need and it is rarely laid out in a way that is useable. The future Church must build a useable fount of information which can be searched, sorted, and retrieved, and of a high quality so that it is desirable to share. No single church can provide this platform; therefore, it falls to the structure of the local diocese and wider church to provide it, because it is essential to everything – service, evangelism, stewardship, and connection. You can see this already at work in the LOGOS project. (http://vimeopro.com/epicentervideos/logos/) The future Church will have more of these projects built and organized for church wide use.

      The future diocese will lead in communication strategy. The present past diocese and church wide structures spent money on program ministry offices and groups, the future diocese and structure use the lion’s share of their dollars to fund communication. They will be the leaders in software and network tools. They will be the leaders in providing Internet driven means for pushing information and shaping stories. They are also watching for the cutting edge in communications. The diocese of the future is constantly testing new communication tools and seeing what will work the best for individuals. It will provide training in communication and will help the amplified members of its congregations become better communicators. Money must be spent on front facing websites and technologies that will help connect seekers to local congregations.

      The future Church will be responsible for creating training for its clergy and leadership that meets the characteristics above. It will be the leadership’s responsibility to make training available for all people in accessible languages for the raising up of a crowd of Church workers who are eager to take on the mission of God in their local community. The future diocese will be responsible for helping fund, and hold accountable the training organizations and institutions that prepare ministers. Where there are none, it will work with crowds to source and create needed training. Where it exists, the future Church will hold it accountable to producing clergy and leadership at the local level. Resources will shift quickly over the next ten years to an investment in local training of every kind. It is the future diocese and the wider church’s responsibility to provide localized clergy training, so that time and energy are not taken out of the mission field. Moreover, the training for the laity on how to do the work of the church will be essential. The future Church must have: in its tool bag videos and online classes on how to be a pastoral visitor, a lay reader, Eucharistic visitor or chalice bearer, how to run small groups of various kinds, how to serve on a vestry, vestry best practices, how to start up a service ministry, and a host of other raw materials that take the pressure off the local congregation when it comes to providing quality training. This will free up time at the local level to do ministry and allow further lay involvement in the teaching and sharing of the Gospel at every level.

      We have talked about the work of unity and having a unifying vision of the future Church and its beliefs. A key piece of the work is for the wider Church and the local diocese to construct platforms for the sharing of this information. It is the wider church’s responsibility to nurture the network nodes and hubs, for better crowd and self-organizing tendencies of the new mission context. Gorbis wrote, “Organizations are: building social production platforms to reinvent themselves, extend their capabilities…expand[ing] internal pipelines, generating engagement, reaching out to new markets and audiences”[lii] The future diocese and wider Church structures will figure out how to crowd source everything from discernment for future leaders, placement of future congregations and communities, to planting of new service ministries. The future diocese especially will use the vast wealth of energy, talent, and on-the-ground information to guide its mission strategy. No longer is it a bishop, or maybe a priest, looking out and seeing that something needs to be done. The future Church will multiply its ability to move and grow and respond by increasing participation on a grand scale. The present Church has spent the last decade building connections. The future Church must harness those connections for the purpose of God’s mission.

      The operating costs of doing present past church are far beyond the ceiling, and stewardship no longer covers much of what we can do, so we have turned inward. Outer mission of service and evangelism has all but dried up in the present past Church. Today new life and many new models of community are beginning to emerge. They are using different capital and budget processes to fund mission - bring down the cost. It is the work of the future diocese to create further an operational economy for the business side of the mission model. This means that the future diocese will build purchasing cooperatives for electricity, office products, technology, and computers. The future diocese will ensure that every parish is plugged in with touch screens and high tech cable optics to provide accessible online connection between church leaders, communities, and resources.

      The Rt. Rev. Brian Prior, of Minnesota, did just that in his diocese, working out a grant process and deal with Best Buy (a locally owned corporation) to wire the diocese. Every diocese of the future will be released from people’s cast-off 5-year-old computers, and will use the most up-to-date cloud technology and hardware to present material and resources to their people and neighbors. The diocese of the future will figure out new economic models for starting congregations, allow for bi-vocational planters, and find more diverse community start up strategy. We know what the future looks like in terms of church plants. It is the future diocese that will take those models and create easy to use plans, strategies, and step-by step manuals. Every community can begin another community. Small batch communities will spring up all around as our churches are freed to do mission. Every community can begin a service ministry with their neighbors. Every community can rethink its connection to the community. The future diocese provides the guiding support for this work. The diocese will bridge the gap for the start-up’s space needs: by negotiating for the new community public space usage, finding office space and build-to-suit leasing options, by decreasing the cost of erecting a first building (like the new model church in the Diocese of Texas which costs $500,000 and seats 190 people), and by networking diocesan-wide crowd funding. The future diocesan and church wide structures will use their collective power to buy down operating cost for the purpose of increasing mission dollars.

      The future diocese will be a clearinghouse for congregational leadership support regarding business services. The cost of doing business, and the complexity of business with banks and auditors, are expensive. Meanwhile, transparency and higher standards of reporting will increase. It is my belief that in the future, the Church will have to prove its non-profit status to the government for purposes of showing that it contributes to the community. We already see these battles taking place. On an annual basis in Texas, hospitals have to show that their community benefit is equal to or greater than their tax relief in order to maintain their nonprofit status. I think the same types of reporting will increase across the country for any organization wishing special options regarding tax status. Fraud within the non-profit community is also raising standards, and even Congress is concerned about governance issues within the non-profit sector. The future diocese will provide client services to its member churches and communities by building capacity through shared business service applications. It will build banking templates for budgeting a congregation’s finances. It will negotiate and build unified accounts with payroll companies that ensure all employees are paid through the same service at a cheaper rate. It will create unified investing co-ops, enabling larger, more complex investment strategies for large and small endowments. It will deploy a unified audit so that congregations of different sizes can have excellent governance regarding their funds. The future diocese will centralize services for banking, and deploy advocates from diocesan centers that can help run the business part of a local church’s operations. It will provide coaching that is provided online, via real-time video, and onsite that will improve the best business practices of any given congregation. This will free up time and money at the local level for mission work. Fund management is one of the most vulnerable places within the overall financial system of the Church, and the smallest congregations are some of the most vulnerable. Liability and legal counsel will be part of the service work of the wider Church, as will disaster response and crisis management. Similar to the financial client service packages, these too, will be areas where collaborative networking of resources will benefit the whole organization, if successfully underwritten by the whole and then shared.

      We already do joint health insurance coverage on a diocesan basis. The last few decades have been marked by the increase in the cost of health care. Most of the focus has been on providing inexpensive coverage to clergy and their families. This has been done, in large part, by sharing cost with the clergy, and building larger pools of the insured in order to diversify the actuarial tables and create a less vulnerable health care cost pool.  The future diocese must recognize that tinkering with formulas and money are not the only way to have a healthy and effective clergy and leadership team. Therefore, the diocesan-wide structures will work to create well communities of clergy, their families, and all individuals under their care. Church wide leadership has to help the individuals it employs to maintain a healthy lifestyle. This will mean advocating for rest, time off, and sabbaticals. It will mean working to ensure regular check-ups, exercise, and nutrition.

      The future diocese and church wide structure will also deal with the issues of governance.  The present past church is heavily invested in governance. In my opinion, too much money, energy, and time is spent on ineffective governance and outdated structures of the church.  We spend an inordinate amount of time passing resolutions created by a few people, and then voted on by a few people, which in the end has little or no effect in the halls of government. Our governance is today ineffective at bringing about social change at the highest levels of our society, and we continue the masquerade that these resolutions that impact social change. Meanwhile, we have abdicated our real work at the local level of service and evangelism. Regardless of how much we like winning legislative debates, these debates and the policies and unfunded mandates that often accompany them, do not create changed hearts. In fact they make more fragile systems with a false sense of uniformity. They don’t serve the mission of reconciliation well.

      We have the best scientifically managed system of governance that you can buy - if you live in the nineteenth century. The last reform of our governance structure was undertaken in 1930 under the leadership of Episcopalian George Thurgood Marshall - and it failed. Robert Haas, former CEO of Levi Strauss, describes the potential of our world of governance as an opportunity for change. With semblance of hope he offered, in a 1990 interview, “We are at the center of a seamless web of mutual responsibility and collaboration, a seamless partnership, with interraltionships and mutual commitments.”[liii] To do governance as a seamless partnership is to undertake the true Episcopal ideal of mutual and collaborative work on behalf of our neighbor. This is to do real justice work hand in hand with others, around shared and potentially transformative service ministry. Sir Isaac Newton’s science, and later the Industrial Revolution, created an opportunity for entrepreneurs to give birth to a governance structure that mimicked what they saw in the mechanical innovation of their time and in the science of their age.[liv] Wheatley writes, in her book The New Science,  “Marrying science with the art and craft of leadership was a way to give more credibility to this young and uncertain field. (This courtship continues today in full force, I believe from the same motivation.)”[lv] Wheatley believes that the new science of quantum theory teaches us that the self-organized system is one that is playful and free. It is a system where everyone has a chance to participate and have a voice. Self-organization is a key ingredient to all life. Yet, instead of creating chaos, organisms have a peculiar kind of life together that is mutually supportive and communal.  Humanity can work the same way – its governance structures can work the same way.[lvi] This is of course the model for an antifragile style of governance. Gorbis in The Nature of the Future writes, “Our technology infrastructure, the new levels of data and information at our disposal, and our urgent need to create new patterns of governance in line with today’s level of scientific knowledge make it possible…to restore the democratic process to ‘we the people,’ to make the policy process more deliberative, more democratic, and more transparent.”[lvii] The task for structures in the future will be less about command and control and more about invitation and making space for freedom and creativity. Success will be gauged on how well the structures return the work to the people at all levels of the organization – broadening participation. Future Church governance will have been transformed from the work of the few on behalf of the many to the work of the many.

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[i] .” Nobelprize.org. September 10, 1974.

[ii] Anderson, 143.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Wheatley, New Science, 15.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Gorbis, 210.

[viii] Gorbis, 210. Hayek’s means are listed by Gorbis in The Nature of the Future. The nature of Catallaxy used here is from Hayek’s work. Hayek, F.A. Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Vol. 2, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 108–9.

[ix] Gorbis, 210. Adapted from Gorbis’ thoughts on the new economy and organization.

[x] Wheatley, New Science, 15. Adapted.

[xi] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans J. A. K. Thomson, (New York: Penguin Classics, 2004) 32.

[xii] The Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. "Diocese,” (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909). http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05001a.htm

[xiii] Ibid.

[xiv] Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, s.v. “vicarious” (Stuttgart, 1903) V, 1, 716.

[xv] Op cit. “The Apostolic Canons (xiv, xv), and the Council of Nicæa in 325 (can. xvi) applied this latter term to the territory subject to a bishop. This term was retained in the East, where the Council of Constantinople (381) reserved the word diocese for the territory subject to a patriarch (can. ii). In the West also parochia was long used to designate an episcopal see. About 850 Leo IV, and about 1095 Urban II, still employed parochia to denote the territory subject to the jurisdiction of a bishop. Alexander III (1159-1181) designated under the name of parochiani the subjects of a bishop (c. 4, C. X, qu. 1; c. 10, C. IX, qu. 2; c. 9, X, De testibus, II, 20).”

[xvi] Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. "Chorepiscopi" (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1913).

[xvii] Ibid.

[xviii] Ibid.

[xix] Ibid.

[xx] Ibid.

[xxi] Ibid.

[xxii] Dwight Zscheile, “Episcopal Church in context, Episcopal structure in Context, Rethinking Church wide organization in a New Apostolic Era, ” doi http://www.provinceiv.org/images/customer-files/ZscheileSynod.pdf

[xxiii] David Hein and Gardiner H. Shattuck Jr., The Episcopalians (New York: Church Publishing, 2004), 52.

[xxiv] An American, Seabury was not willing to take an oath to be loyal to the king.

[xxv] Robert Prichard, History of the Episcopal Church (New York: Church Publishing, 1999), 88.

[xxvi] Arthur Carl Piepkorn, Profiles in Belief: The Religious Bodies of the United States and Canada (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 199.

[xxvii] Episcopal Ministry: The Report of the Archbishops' Group on the Episcopate, (London: Church House Publishing, 1990), 123.

[xxviii] Zscheile.

[xxix] Peter W. Williams, America’s Religions: From Their Origins to the Twenty-first century (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 264ff.

[xxx] B. Drummond Ayres Jr. "The Episcopalians: an American elite with roots going back to Jamestown,” The New York Times. December 19, 2011.

[xxxi] Prichard, 313.

[xxxii] Zscheile.

[xxxiii] Ibid.

[xxxiv] “Identity and Vision – Draft,” Reimagine The Episcopal Church Task Force, http://reimaginetec.org/identity-and-vision-draft

[xxxv] Ibid.

[xxxvi] Michael C. Jackson, Systems Approaches to Management (New York: Springer Science & Business Media, 2000), 77.

[xxxvii] Ronald Coase, “The Nature of the Firm,” Economica 4, no 16 (1927): 386-405. As quoted in Gorbis, 32.

[xxxviii] Ibid, 33.

[xxxix] Douglas Rushkoff, Life Inc: How Corporatism Conquered the World and How We Can Take It Back, (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2011). As quoted in Gorbis, 33.

[xl] Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody, (New York: Penguin, 2009), 21.

[xli] 2008-2018 Map.

[xlii] Ibid.

[xliii] Ibid.

[xliv] Ibid.

[xlv] Shirky.

[xlvi] Ibid.

[xlvii] Gorbis, 30.

[xlviii] James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds (New York: Random House, 2004). As quoted by Gorbis, 30.

[xlix] Surowiecki, 137.

[l] Gorbis, 110.

[li] Ibid, 113.

[lii] Ibid, 30.

[liii] Robert Howard, “Values Make the Company: An Interview with Robert Haas,” Harvard Business Review, Sept.-Oct. 1990, 133-144.As quoted in in Wheatley, New Science, 158.

[liv] As quoted in by Wheatley in NS, 159. Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs and Margaret C Jacob, Newton and the Culture of Newtoniansim (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1995).

[lv] Ibid.

[lvi] Ibid.

[lvii] Gorbis, 118.