A few years back I was told about an incident that happened at one of our larger Salt Lake churches. A new couple had attended the main service one day, and at the coffee hour following, asked the parish administrator what were the expectations of members of this congregation? The administrator who told me this story said she was flabbergasted””no one had ever raised that question before and she didn’t know what to say.
This report stayed with me because I wondered what it would say about us if the reply was “We have no expectations of our people.” I am sure the administrator in question found something to say, other than that, but the question remains interesting to me.
Do we in fact have expectations and just hope that people will pick them up by osmosis? Or, are we so anxious for new members that we fear any articulation of expectations might put them off our church?
Or, do we use the gentler word, ‘norms,’ and reserve the occasion of speaking to them to vestries or other smaller groups?
Or are they to be found in the mission/ vision or hopes/plans category.
Perhaps our expectations are just ‘there,’ embedded in our life together, but they only show up as we quietly reject people who don’t live up to them?
Could the comments on this thread, please, only focus on the issue of expectations and parish ministry? Thanks.
You could turn the expectations question into another question – one more frequently asked, IMHO, ie ‘How can I get involved in this parish?’ To my shame, the question has always been hard to answer – and I think that Rick Warren would say that it is very important to have a clear strategy as to how to answer the question. In my experience people of goodwill and commitment usually find a way to get involved in parish life quite quickly. ‘Read the bulletin’ is usually enough for that. There are always more tasks than there are willing hands. An added complication is matching skills and interests to needs. And yet: thinking about expectations, or about ways of involvement, perhaps we expect too little of God’s people.
One ought to have to sign a pledge to worship God with all of one’s heart and soul before being allowed to join a group, club, or committee at church.
It was quite possible for me to stay really busy at my old parish and only have a passing relationship with God.
Even before the ’79 BCP and the disastrous (for catechesis) “baptismal covenant” theology, Confirmation was being eroded as a rite of serious expectation. It had devolved into a kind of Christian bar mitzvah, a rite of passage for teens to placate grandma.
When you look at the worthwhile Offices of Instruction in the ’28 BCP, it is striking that they were not rendered in a contemporary form or even stuck in the “historical documents” in the ’79 Book.
About the only expectation on which TEC seems intent anymore is “give more money up to the bureaucracy.”
There’s a thread over at Stand Firm on some TEC event about “listening to your inner voice.” How is a church to have expectations when every member is a god?
Were I a Rector/Vicar/Priest in Charge (and I am not, by the Grace of God), I would say that the expectations are
1. Weekly attendance at worship when possible (not convenient)
2. Participation in one or more intra parish ministries (choir, fellowship groups, Sunday School teacher, acolytes, LEV, Lay reader, etc.)
3. Participation in one or more extra parish ministries (homeless shelter, mission trips, prison ministry, etc.)
4. Participation in Christian Education on a regular basis
5. Tithing (or working towards the tithe) – giving 10% of what you earn back to God.
Not everyone meets these expectations, but I would hold them up as what we expect each of us to work towards.
When asked what the “minimum” is for parish membership, I would ask what the minimum is that the parishoner wants from God.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
Phil,
You are right on track, your list is the minimum expectations of a ‘practicing Christian’. Scripture tells us that without a vision, the people perish, and without a vision, a congregation, or deanery, or diocese, or denomination has absolutely NO JUSTIFICATION for existance.
Our expectation should at least be to make Heaven or goal, and live our lives here accordingly; even though that is not defined in many parishes and diocesan offices presently.
Heaven help the Church, she is unable to help herself!.
It is another of those “Godincidences” that this come up today when the daily reading was from 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 where Paul discusses spiritual gifts. Perhaps Phil could add an expectation to make a gift of your spiritual gifts to this congregation.
There are at least two categories of expectations, the spoken and the unspoken. It is usually the latter which is the most elusive to define. I submit the following list of unspoken expectations for newcomers to the Diocese of Utah, and, (except for #3) to almost every diocese in TEC these days:
#1 (Above all): You are expected to celebrate (not simply tolerate, but celebrate) and promulgate the Christian ‘correctness’ of behavior that Scripture, Reason & Tradition have always and everywhere described as Sin, i.e., the practice of homosexuality. #2, Expect to be vaguely Unitarian Universalist in theology, with a ‘gussied up’ Sunday show, i.e., folks in fancy dress and lovely liturgy and music; #3, Expect your local mission (there are roughly 22 congregations in the overwhelmingly Mormon and conservative Utah, several are joint with ELCA; 17 with ASA of 50 or less per Sunday) to be supported by an enormous trust fund, rather than the sacrificial giving which is supposed to be characteristic of Christians. UT is very probably the wealthiest per capita diocese in the Church, because of the trust set up with proceeds from the sale of St. Mark’s Hospital years ago. #4, expect the word ‘inclusive’ to be your hope, your conviction and your doom.
I think one expectation might be that church attendance is to be regarded as the norm rather than something you do when you don’t have anything else to do. Parents should not be allowing their children to have jobs or sports which conflict with church.
Kendall, the headline is a little misleading – it looks like you are imputing the assertion ‘we have no expectations’ to Bishop of Utah, and that’s not accurate. How about: The Bishop of Utah: what do we expect of our people?
#2 Terry Tee:
I’m fortunate to be part of a very active parish, and I’m convinced that one of the big reasons for that is that our previous full-time rector had a great gift for fostering lay leadership. He was really good at figuring out where someone’s talents and passions were, putting them in charge of that area, and then getting out of the way and letting them drive it.
He left such a strong leadership structure behind him when he retired that we cruised through two years of search and an interim priest and barely lost momentum.
(The other reason we’re doing so well, I believe, is that he threw a lot of very good people at our Sunday School program, and that’s brought in lots of families with children. You have to watch where you step during coffee hour, to avoid tripping over a little kid.)
People who come and sit in the pews on Sunday make your ASA look good, and people who give money make your bottom line look good and keep the lights on and pay for your programs. But it’s people who give time that make the church into a living community of God’s people.
So in a roundabout way, that would be my “expectation.”
This part of the bishops thoughts, is just to me, an oxymoron.
“Clear exceptions to this are our baptismal and ordination vows, which do lay out expectations in their distinctive ways. The creeds being part of these vows, they are ‘doctrinal’ in a sense, but a further requirement of shared belief, would be unhelpful in building community—and indeed would run counter to what most of us like about the Episcopal Church.”
If we do NOT as a church body, hold to a shared belief, what are we about then? If a church does not have shared beliefs and an expectation from its members to share those beliefs, then IMO, it becomes a social club, or a debating society, or a marching band & chowder society.
There is great potential value in social clubs, debating societies and marching band & chowder societies, but, they are secular in nature and IMO, cannot in any real, recognizable way, be called a church.
maybe I’m just dense, but if there are no expecatations for the people how can the people reasonably have expectations of God?
How about “meet together regularly (i.e. every Lord’s Day/Sunday) continuing in the teaching of the apostles and in fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers.”
Phil, you left out the one that Bp Tanner-Irish mentions: The most sacred Millenium Development Goals. What were you thinking? (Just kidding, your list was great.)
Pretend for the moment this was an evangelical community of Christian believers:
There would be the expectation by the body that the indiv’l would want to [ or already had ] commit their lives toward a process of sanctification to be more and more Christ-like, would live according to Christian principles, would indicate that they has been or were interested in a becoming ‘born again spirit-filled’ Christian. [ a biblical concept, if I’m not mistaken ]. The Episcopal Church would view this concept as ‘judgmental’ and on it goes.