Like the 1968 film “The Odd Couple,” a group of liberal Episcopalians, recently divorced from Anglican former parishioners, is looking to share space with some Korean Southern Baptists.
Currently this Episcopal congregation, a small remnant of a once robust congregation that joined the Anglican Church in North America and lost its building to the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, is subsidized by the Diocese to the tune of over $6,000 per church attender.
This past autumn I blogged about how two church properties formerly the home of Anglican churches and awarded to the Diocese of Virginia in court rulings were now, somewhat ironically, being rented or sold to evangelical congregations. The rebuilding of continuing Episcopal congregations is slow work, in some cases requiring substantial financial support from the diocese in order to maintain and operate facilities. The Diocese is once again leasing space to an evangelical group, this time at Epiphany Episcopal Church in Herndon.
In an announcement to church members this past Sunday, Epiphany Episcopal Church made public that an agreement has been reached with New Hope Washington Central Baptist Korean Congregation, which will move into the property off of Fairfax County Parkway in late July.
Bringing in the dollars!
Bringing in the dollars!
Boy, our litigation, really cost some dollars!
Winning all the sheaves!
Winning all the sheaves!
Only 6 K per parishioner!
Winning all the sheaves!
Congratulations to the DioV for an updated view of Pyrrhus’ victory.
It is interesting that the church they are renting to is affiliated with the SBC. They can’t abide those evil, conservative Anglicans, but Southern Baptists are just fine. Go figure!
A very similar thing happened here, when the last evangelical parish was essentially shut down by the bishop a couple of years ago. The rector had retired, and the bishop announced that if the congregation was not ready to accept the New Episcopal Church and a rector who was fine with the New Thing, they should just leave. I guess he thought they would blink. They didn’t, and they all just walked out the door and went to other churches (including some coming to our church). Anyway, I was driving by there a few months ago, and saw a banner out front advertising services for a new Bible Church that is now meeting there (I presume renting from the diocese).
God works in mysterious ways.
I will be surprised if Epiphany Episcopal survives. The remnant is necessarily oriented more closely to TEC, and St. Anne’s (“diverse,” “welcoming,” “progressive”) of Reston is not far. They would do well to merge.
But then, I am not saddened by TEC’s use of its decreasing funds to maintain facilities – to the detriment of its message.
#4, I agree. If the TEC Dio. Virginia wants to spend large amounts of money propping up unviable congregations, let it go right ahead.
The Episcopal Property Company welcomes you.
Ring our repossessions department for the latest list.
What a scandal.
#6–Actually I think it is a good thing if the properties are picked up by real churches that can bring them back to life. What is sad is when the property is sold to build condominiums, or a sports bar, or in one infamous case, a mosque.
#7 Jim – The reasons that this is a scandal in my view are:-
1. These incoming congregations know that they are taking over churches wickedly stolen from their brethren who built and paid for them.
2. They are encouraging and funding Shannon Johnston and TEC to continue with their policy by defraying the costs of their litigation and enabling them to go after other Christians.
3. In many cases, Shannon Johnston entered the churches after taking them and deliberately desecrated the sanctuary along with other unholy rites upon the altar.
I don’t welcome those who encourage him and TEC. They have acted as collaborators and enabled the wicked to profit from persecuting their brethren. They have paid the desecrators of the sanctuaries and taken them over.
When Anglicans departed these Virginia church buildings, they prayed over the pulpits that the Gospel would continue to be proclaimed there for many years. In every case, their prayer was answered — it’s just that the Gospel is being preached by groups other than the Episcopal congregations. That’s a good thing.
As for the viability of Epiphany Episcopal, they have formally asked for five families from St. Timothy’s, Herndon, to commit to revitalizing Epiphany. I’m unsure it will happen — Epiphany basically needs an experienced and dynamic young church planter to “re-seed” the church. Some of the former clergy the diocese has assigned to lead Epiphany have not been in this category. Additionally, I discovered that the rather outsized diocesan subsidy of Epiphany is not just going to the mortgage — it is also covering operating costs and salaries. That simply can’t continue indefinitely.
#9 May I ask – is funding dio Virginia an ‘answer to prayer’?
I don’t seek some schadenfreude-bliss at watching the diocese fail. If paying rent to the diocese gets believing Christian congregations into those spaces, then that’s fine by me. I honestly don’t see much difference between that and the church plants in DC that rent space from liberal churches like Calvary Baptist or All Souls Unitarian Church.
Listen, we already know how this is going to play out: the Korean SBC congregation has more than doubled in size since the beginning of 2014. It is quite possible that they will incrementally increase their presence at the site and eventually buy out the building from DioVA in a few years. Any of us would prefer that outcome than to see the place handed over to the Dulles Area Islamic Center.
The reason why paying money to the diocese may not be ‘fine’ is that it frees money to be used by Virginia directly to go against other congregations or to service or repay the [as I recollect] $2m line of credit it had taken from funds earmarked for litigation-related expenses by the national church which will therefore indirectly now become available to use against the dioceses including Quincy and South Carolina, not to mention San Joaquin and Fort Worth. It is feeding the monster and while no one would want to see these churches used for Islamic centers or nightclubs, for other Christians to be funding this [directly or indirectly by freeing up funds] is ….. unhelpful.
The irony of what is going on (and here I am talking generally, not just TEC) is that many of these mainline churches sit virtually empty, while growing churches have nowhere to meet. In my community, because of restrictive zoning, community opposition, and lack of available land, it is pretty much cost-rohibitive for a church to find property and build a new church. So most of the growing churches in our area are put in a situation where they have to rent a movie theater Sunday mornings, or try to meet in public school cafeterias or auditoriums (however, the atheists have been very aggressive recently, although not entirely successful, in trying to shut down churches that are renting public property to meet in on the grounds that it violates separation of church and state or that they should be charged “market rent,” unlike other non-profits that use public property for meetings).
A good example is what would be my neighborhood parish if I were still in TEC (although my family belonged to another parish). I drive by it every day. The church is empty virtually the entire week. Sometimes I drive by there on Sundays when there is worship, and they have maybe 20 people there (think they were without a rector for several years). There is a school right next to the church that belongs to it. That school has sat empty for about the past 10 years (they shut it down because there were not enough kids to fill it). They did have a preschool on the neighboring property, which they sold to a for-profit childcare company.
We definitely have much to learn from the Korean Christians. Those who I have met:
– have prayer groups meeting while each service is going on to pray for the service and the pastor as he speaks;
– pray quite unlike us quiet contemplative Anglicans. They shout out their requests which just hits you and washes over like a tsunami of prayer; and
– are grateful for the Gospel being brought to Korea by our forebears and are now individually spending effort and hard earned money to bring it back to us
I believe the Koreans have now surpassed the U.S. as the number one sender of missionaries. And they are willing to go into dangerous places such as Afghanistan and other Muslim nations. But their churches are totally different from ours, they can have 50,000 people belonging to a single church. When my wife was last in Seoul, she was invited by a friend to her church (believe it was Methodist). The morning service went on, with breaks, for 3 hours, interspersed worship and Bible education. In the afternoon, there was a full-on concert put on by the church in the same space, centering on a church member that apparently is a famous Korean classical tenor.
Another example of a former PCUSA church needing a congregation:
http://www.layman.org/preserving-history-seeking-congregation-red-banks-miss/
Perhaps my responses in #12 and above were too sharp. I rejoice in the Gospel being preached and am glad these overseas churches are expanding, but there is a real cost to other believers from funding in any way entities such as the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia.
I was struck by a story I read some while ago, perhaps on these pages, of an Asian Christian lady who when helping put up Christmas lights bought to decorate the American church she now attended, noticed that they were those she used to assemble in her own country, in prison camp.
The Southern Baptist Convention has some serious heartsearching and prayerful discernment to do.