“Mary is a force for the future,” said Deborah Kempson-Thompson, a member of All Saints in Carmel and a seminarian. “She’s interested in moving on, and we need to move on.”
With its new leader installed and relationships mending, the diocese is focusing on a more routine matter: how to increase falling membership. The diocese – which includes Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Benito, Monterey and San Luis Obispo counties – has only 12,000 members. Sunday attendance today is 5,200, down from 6,500 in 2000. It is projected to reach 4,400 by 2009 unless something reverses that trend. Attendance is shrinking while the surrounding population swelled.
Already, Gray-Reeves has asked each of the dioceses’s 50 parishes to think of new ideas for revitalizing the church. “We’ve got nothing to lose,” she says, “so we can try anything.”
The diocese encompasses a multitude of languages, cultures and professions ranging from farmers to software engineers. That kind of diversity can make outreach challenging, members say, but it’s also a gift.
That attitude was reflected Saturday. A Sudanese choir sang. Sherry LeBeau smudged the church with sage as her husband spoke in Lakota, a Native American language. And the day’s prayers alternated between English and Spanish, as did the congregation’s responses.
[i]How to increase falling membership?[/i]
How about:
a return to the authentic Gospel and presenting the Faith handed down from the time of the Apostles?
The link isn’t working, so I can’t read it all, but the excerpt given here is classic enough:
[blockquote]With its new leader installed and relationships mending, the diocese is focusing on a more routine matter: how to increase falling membership. [/blockquote]
Mission is “routine”?
Now, on the one hand . . .
[blockquote]The diocese – which includes Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Benito, Monterey and San Luis Obispo counties – has only 12,000 members. Sunday attendance today is 5,200, down from 6,500 in 2000. It is projected to reach 4,400 by 2009 unless something reverses that trend. Attendance is shrinking while the surrounding population swelled.[/blockquote]
On the other hand . . .
[blockquote]Already, Gray-Reeves has asked each of the dioceses’s 50 parishes to think of new ideas for revitalizing the church. “We’ve got nothing to lose,” she says, “so we can try anything.”[/blockquote]
Nothing to lose? How about the remaining 5,200 attendees?
You can “try anything”? That one’s such a fat target, I’m not even going to shoot . . .
The good new Lady Bishop and her parish priests could start by reading all or a major part of a Gospel each Sunday instead of preparing a sermon. Let her parish congregations hear our Lord Jesus preach instead of her priests and herself. And as we say in the South leave out nary a word, whether it is against revisionist doctrine or not. The Gospel readings for that Sunday will still be read as required, but let the above be Jesus preaching the sermon.
“Revitalizing the Church?” I was a member of that diocese for over twenty-eight years, and every single effort at “revitalization” was an utter falure! The membership figures for the Diocese of El Camino Real plummeted from approximately 38,000 people, when +Shimpfky was consecrated, to today’s figure of 12,000…….and it wasn’t all a result of job loss or transfers, etc.
Is she the daughter in law of an erstwhile archbishop of New Zealand?
What, no gay insurgence to membership there either? How can VGR and his supporters keep getting this so wrong in the press?
I found the article on Google News. Hopefully, this link will take you to the right place: http://tinyurl.com/23c5hz
[blockquote]A Sudanese choir sang. Sherry LeBeau smudged the church with sage as her husband spoke in Lakota, a Native American language. And the day’s prayers alternated between English and Spanish, as did the congregation’s responses.[/blockquote]
It appears that the strategy du jour is to become Unitarian.
My oh my, what a difference a year (2003) makes. From 1996 through 2002 the diocese grew about 4 percent. Since 2002 through 2006 membership has fallen about 17 percent. But the budget impact is what is really making the natives restless and willing to try anything. From 1996 through 2002 Plate & Pledge grew about 40 percent (wonderfuly higher than inflation) but from 2002 through 2006 Plate & Pledge has increased by about 6 percent (woefully less than inflation). Statmann
[blockquote]A Sudanese choir sang. Sherry LeBeau smudged the church with sage as her husband spoke in Lakota, a Native American language. And the day’s prayers alternated between English and Spanish, as did the congregation’s responses.
It appears that the strategy du jour is to become Unitarian.
[/blockquote]
I can certainly see how the first sentence applies, but not the second. What’s Unitarian about bilingual services?
# 10 (+#8 I guess), how can the singing of a Sudanese choir be described as Unitarian?
#8 I don’t understand your reference to “Unitarians.” The Rev. Hank LeBeau is a priest in the Episcopal Church, and he and Sherry are my friends. I don’t see how praying in Lakota is Unitarian, or smudging the chancel and altar is Unitarian, or having a Sudanese Choir sing is Unitarian, nor being bilingual is Unitarian. If African drumming and singing and dancing had taken place, would that be Unitarian, too?
Many of our liturgies in the Diocese of Panama are bilingual; I’m surprised to learn that we are Unitarian!
I was speaking primarily of form. Unitarian services, from my admittedly limited experience, tend to have a multiculti flavor to them that is particularly forced as it seems to be here. Of course, the substance seems to have a Unitarian bent to it, too, as rubbing with sage is part of a Lokotan coming-of-age ritual, a decidedly pagan practice.
Not that anyone at the diocese would have the slightest objection to importing such a rite into an Episcopalian liturgy.
The service flowed well and the multicultural aspects were not forced. Sage wasn’t rubbed, it was burnt and the smoke was used like incense. I’m sure you are aware of that. Of course, being of mixed heritage, I’m probably pagan or unitarian and don’t even realise it.
Actually, “to smudge” means to mark by rubbing, so no, I was not aware of that.
I stand by the rest.
Oh, and our Anglican parish is, in a large part, German. We somehow manage to refrain from incorporating lederhosen into our vestments and using auslese in the chalice. Perhaps we’re not as prone to cheap demonstrations of ethnic solidarity.
From what is no doubt a fave website of the parish, My Witch Site, I give you [url=http://mywitchshop.com/Smudge/index.shtml]sage smudges[/url]. I’m sure you are aware of that. Did you forget the raisin cakes?
Jeffersonian, smudging is the Native American way of censing an area. The clergy were vested in either cassock and surplice with red stole, and the priest who prayed in Lakota wore an alb and red stole (as did I; coming all the way from Panama I didn’t have room for so many vestments. Communion was bread and wine.
Christmas trees and advent wreaths are German in orgin, right? Those are fine, but smudging with sage is pagan.
I guess I’ll stop before some mythical creature with pointed ears chastizes me.
Dios bendiga.
I remain unpersuaded.
I’m with you, Jeffersonian.