ENFIELD – Three of the four Episcopal parishes in the North Central Episcopal Regional Ministry have voted to merge and form one single parish, church officials said Monday. Parishioners of St. Mary’s and St. Andrew’s churches in Enfield and Calvary Church in Suffield voted for the merger at a special meeting on June 25.
The North Central Episcopal Ministry or NCERM, which was formed in November 1991, consists of St. Mary’s, St. Andrew’s, Calvary Church, and Grace Church in the Broad Brook section of East Windsor. Grace Church, which had decided to join the new parish in December, reversed its decision and voted not to join in the merger.
St. Andrew’s, at 28 Prospect St., had voted against the merger in December, but changed its position and decided to join.
[…]
The new parish, which has yet to be named, will temporarily be located in St. Mary’s Church at 383 Hazard Ave. while officials look for a new location, Bushnell said.
The parish will have almost 650 parishioners from Enfield, Somers, Suffield, and Windsor Locks, Bushnell said.
“The reality is that the congregations were small, independent, and struggling,” Bushnell said of the reason for the merger.
The churches were struggling in terms of finances as well as the small number of parishioners, he said.
In a letter to parishioners, Bushnell expressed his disappointment that Grace Church decided not to join the new parish.
“The joy I feel at the decision of three NCERM parishes to join together in a single new large parish is diminished by the prospect that our friends at Grace Church have declined to join us in this new venture in Christian mission,” Bushnell wrote.
Bushnell said he did not know why Grace Church declined to join the new parish.
The new parish is in the process of applying to the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut for acceptance as a single parish and if granted approval, the new parish will be admitted to the union at the Convention of the Episcopal Diocese in October.
So, all is well and ECUSA is expanding in the Diocese of Connecticut.
Great, that’s at least two properties the diocese can liquidate to fund the war chest against Trinity, Bristol and the rest of the CT dissidents. 🙁
Connectituctian: Well, that’s what the folks back in the 1700’s and 1800’s intended when they gave their money, isn’t it? To fund litigation to silence Anglican preachers of the Gospel, so that heretical Christians could take over the church and force through gay “marriage.” I mean, really! How can you not accept this? You must be some African savage who wants to invade North American episcopal turf so that you can get your hands on the vast wealth of the Vast Conservative Anglican Conspiracy that George Bush helped to collect by invading Iraq to steal the oil. Why can’t you just accept the simply truth?
I have been somewhat bothered by this series of events in the Episcopal Church in the last decade. As a newly ordained person who has a heart for rural/small town ministry, I am discouraged at the complete lack of enthusiasm for non-urban parishes. When I was in seminary, other seminarians would look at me like I had lobsters crawling out of my ears if I suggested I wanted to do such ministry. The national church has become so urban/suburban centric that the Anglican presence in small town America may be dead in about a decade or two.
Cheers to these parishes for merging. This sort of thing is inevitable in the face of ‘competition’ from independent churches, with thousands of members and all sorts of programs. Two hundred members per parish really isn’t enough to run quality youth programs, because Episcopalians don’t have many kids. 650 might be enough. I’m cheered whenever parishes realize the need to gain critical masses to sustain the church community at all levels. As a younger person I only wish the churches my parents attended had more people to hang out with.
With the advent of the automobile, Connecticut now probably has too many parishes anyway (177, I think.)
Reply to #4.
Archer, you said,
“The national church has become so urban/suburban centric that the Anglican presence in small town America may be dead in about a decade or two.”
The reality is that the urban/suburban centric environment has almost totally detached itself from the Judeo-Christian values and democratic traditions that have given us the America that we have inherited.
Instead, that environment has firmly attached itself to the neo-Hegelian philosophy of Europe. It’s an anti-Christian and anti-British American philosophy. Any serious student of the transition of American philosophy from about 1875 to the present can see ‘proof perfect’ proof of them penetration of anti-religious and anti-American philosphy into our major educational institutions and our urban/suburban centers.
Those people no longer believe in the pre-American Revolution British concept of the ‘common weal’ as much as they welcome with open arms the European philosophy of political utopianism and the welcomed interference of minions of the ‘state’ at every level of our daily life.
Of course, that Europe proclivity toward obedience to the state had it’s origins in the pre-Rennaissance tendency of Europeans to be totally obedient to the admixture of both church obedience and state obedience.
Today, in Europe, the state has totally supplanted the church and all trust and obedience is given to the state.
But the good news is that this radical departure from traditional America only has only taken root and gained real strength in the urban/suburban centric environment.
Inthe rest of the country, those areas described (curiously) as the ‘red states” and counties, about one half of the country, there is still a strong sense of the ‘common weal’ and extremely strong support of the great traditions of America.
I think that the urban/centric people are going to ‘burn out’ as they come to realize the failure the new progressive American utopianism. It promises and never delievers. Things just become progressively worse.