At 759 pages and 155 resolutions, the Blue Book for the 77th General Convention addresses a broad range of topics, from blessing rites for same-sex couples to an embattled budget, from a kinder approach on clergy removal to additional Bible translations for lectionary readings.
This year’s Blue Book, like those of 2006 and 2009, is not blue. Instead, it is salmon (Pantone 169 M, to be precise)….Here is a sampling of the copious resolutions and reports from the church’s standing commissions and other bodies.
A church with affirms a baptismal theology and which only requires baptism, and not confirmation, which gives the main rite of the church to the un-baptized. And you thought Charlie Manson was schizophrenic?
One wonders what the point is of the huge sums spent by TEC every three years on General Convention; of having a meeting together of bishops and lay deputies; of the committees they form and charge with various tasks, if at the end of the day they are all bypassed by the Presiding Bishop who ignores all she has been involved with in the preparation of a budget by the GS General Convention Executive Council, and instead just declares Year Zero and presents her own made up [and pretty opaque] budget in its place. This is not in good time, but a short while before GC meets. Why bother with all the expense and effort?
I suspect the truth has something to do with:
1. Collapse of revenues as TEC marches towards 600,000 turning up on a Sunday, if that and those who do unwilling to cough up for the church hierachy to waste.
2. Severe pressure from the huge borrowing that has gone on and the risk to endowment assets, particularly stocks and securites pledged to lenders recently as spending particularly on litigation has wiped out all available cash resources.
3. Panic with a staff realising that their jobs are about to be wiped out; although no one is entirely sure what they all do and what they add to the church.
4. The self-aggrandising and power hunger of the “chief pastor to the Episcopal Church’s 2.4 million members in 16 countries and 110 dioceses, ecumenical officer, and primate”. The list of titles she has taken to herself continues to grow and it is only a few years since she was proposing new sub offices for her control in the four segments of the US. Clearly she wants to be president for life and chief inquisitor and Pope all rolled into one.
5. Complete disregard for canons, constitutional arrangements and the rule of law, the natural enemies of the despot. Much as AMiA has become the Church of Murph, so TEC is becoming the church that Kate rules.
6. An attitude that the rest of the church exists to support the Presiding Bishop and her office staff on the grounds that Katie knows best.
Why would members of the church bother with that? Why bother with the General Convention when it is being turned into the ecclesiastical equivalent of the Supreme Soviet, there just to rubber stamp whatever the Great Ruler thinks up on the spur of the moment?
From the budgeting point of view all the indications are that mission grows from dioceses rather than a central bureacracy. We know this in the UK from the CofE’s ‘Fresh Expressions’ initiative which are church and diocesan based. Similarly church planting here is an initiative of local growing churches with their own bishop or if planting in another diocese, with the other bishop such as happened with the HTB plant into St Peter’s Brighton. Frankly Church House would be the last place anyone would look to oversee and aid mission or church growth – it is the dioceses and cross church agencies such as CPAS who have the skillset and resources already developed and available. I don’t imagine things are very different in the US.
The last groups we would entrust mission and church growth to are the Archbishops’ Council and Church House, good work that they do on other things up to a point. Over here, giving 19% to the bureacracy to engage in mission and church planting would just be laughable.
The Presiding Bishop talks a lot about subsidiarity and refocussing on mission; but in proposing that her own office receives money for this she demonstrates that she hasn’t the first clue what she is talking about.
As for all the wacky ideas put in for same sex blessings at the altar, transgender clergy in the vestry, how long will it be before Ian Douglas appears in a video advocating the blessing of life-long loving inter-species relationships in the nave?
600,000 ASA – not for much longer it seems as those such as the PB and Ian Douglas drive TEC further off the edge. The only people who think apostate TEC is important are the hierachy themselves who live in La La Land.
It is quite interesting to contrast the agendas for TEC’s General Convention with the recent ACNA Assembly and even with the upcoming CofE General Synod:
TEC General Convention: extend disciplinary canons; reject Anglican Covenant; reject Canterbury removal from Ecumenical Councils; reject Confirmation; affirm Gay marriage, reject traditional marriage; affirm transgender ordination; affirm ‘inclusive language’; extend powers of PB to interfere in dioceses; spend money on the next convention; pick a budget, any budget; ignore 13.4% decline in ASA; commune the unbaptised.
ACNA Assembly: Invite 8 Global South Primates to teach you how their churches grew; be taught by Bishop of Singapore lessons from Isaiah for the church; learn about Church Planting; share lessons of church planting; equip for church planting; support the persecuted church; engage emerging Anglicanism; support relief and development; spread the faith; transform communities; empower the local congregation.
CofE General Synod: Women bishops, women bishops, women bishops; ponder what mission agencies do; ponder what fresh expressions does; consider whether it might be a good idea to ‘manifest faith in public life’; think up new Eucharistic Prayers for children; ponder Israel and Palestine; blah blah blah…
Who do you think might be preparing for mission and growth?
Good job in comment #4 PageantMaster. Very apt compare & contrast!