After the Diocese of Quincy left the Episcopal Church and joined the Anglican Church in North America, those few who remained in the Episcopal Church attempted to establish an Episcopal “Diocese of Quincy.”

Being unsuccessful, they voted to be junctured into the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, becoming the “Peoria Deanery” of that Diocese, with about 300 members. More junctures are expected.

There were hints by year's end that the Diocese of Easton might next be on the chopping block. The dioceses of Eau Claire, Western Kansas, Northwestern Pennsylvania, and Northern Michigan are not indefinitely sustainable. They stubbornly hold on, more out of pride than anything else. Northern Michigan has only a handful of paid priests. The last person to run for bishop there made it known that he had strong Buddhist tendencies, which miraculously got him nixed from the job.

The latest overall figures showed the denomination is continuing to decline though at a slower pace. A new generation of bishops coming in show they are more moderate than the old hard line ideologues like Spong, Bennison, Gepert, Shaw, Douglas, Jefferts Schori, et al; even though it is clear the new bishops will toe the party line under the watchful and stern eye of the Presiding Bishop and her attorney David Booth Beers. On the plus side, the National Church came out ahead by $1.5 million owing to the continued renting of 815 2nd Ave., the National Church's headquarters, courtesy of Bishop Stacy Sauls, the new COO. It is still an open question if and when 815 will be sold outright.

PENNSYLVANIA

A case study is the Diocese of Pennsylvania. At the most recent convention of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, the diocese was informed that the albatross Camp Wapiti bought by Bishop Charles Bennison for about $8 million was sold at a loss of $1.5 million. On the plus side, they sold Church House for $4 million, another financial albatross. The diocese will move its headquarters to the nearby Lutheran Center. The diocesan cathedral in the heart of the city will undergo a major two-pronged construction project with an estimated price tag of $110 million. The costs are nearly all financed and the risks nearly all belong with the property developer, as there is no $110 million at the disposal of the cathedral.

With the cathedral's handful of little old ladies and men meeting each week, they may just as well have sold the cathedral and bulldozed it to the ground as Jesus left a long time ago...all economic development, no gospel. The cathedral has been spiritually dead for years. Bennison spent $3 million just on a new floor for the cathedral. Both he and the cathedral were a waste of time, space and money. The inside of the cathedral no longer has a cross and it could easily be sold off for a Muslim mosque.

The one positive note is that the diocesan convention this year was held at the evangelical Church of the Good Samaritan in Paoli where things went fairly well. The absence of Bennison was a healing moment.

LEGAL BATTLES

On the legal front, recent court rulings nationwide did not bode well for The Episcopal Church.

In the Diocese of Ft. Worth, Bishop Jack Iker tenaciously held onto his parishes and was rewarded for his efforts when the Texas Supreme Court overturned a previous ruling awarding properties back to him. The case will now be determined over neutral principles of law rather than the Episcopal Church's demagogic Dennis Canon. This past week, they filed a legal response before the State Supreme Court arguing TEC's lawsuit over the property should be dismissed.

In the Diocese of Chicago, Bishop Jeffrey Lee filed a new lawsuit pleading with the 10th Judicial Circuit Court in Peoria, Illinois, to force the ACNA Diocese of Quincy to "relinquish control of buildings and other assets that belong to the diocese (of Chicago) and the (Episcopal) church."

His efforts were to financially cripple the Anglican Diocese of Quincy so that it would eventually have to capitulate because it can no longer afford to keep battling The Episcopal Church (The Missionary Society) and the former Episcopal Diocese of Quincy - now the Peoria Deanery in the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago - in its continued dance through the Illinois courts.

When the Episcopal Diocese of Quincy reverted back to its parent Diocese of Chicago, Chicago's total 2011 operating revenue was $33,626,908. Bishop Lee could easily assimilate the smaller diocese and mount an aggressive legal battle against the smaller cash-strapped Anglican diocese.

In the Diocese of South Carolina, efforts by the handful of parishes led by Bishop Charles von Rosenberg to move property disputes into federal courts failed. The case will now play out in the State courts where the precedent has been for fleeing congregations to retain their properties. At one point, in order to generate more money to continue its legal battle against Bishop Mark Lawrence, The Episcopal Church in South Carolina (TECinSC) attempted to generate finances needed to pay its mounting legal bills in its ongoing battle against The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina by suing its own church insurance company: the Church Insurance Company of Vermont, a part of the Church Pension Group.

In the hotly contested parish of Falls Church (Anglican) where some $20 million dollars worth of property is at stake, the parish announced that it will seek a hearing before the U.S. Supreme court over who owns the property which has now been awarded to the Episcopal Church (Diocese of Virginia). In the short time the Diocese of Virginia owned the property, Bishop Shannon Johnston ordained an avowed lesbian, Jo J. Belser, to the priesthood even as he talked up "reconciliation" with ACNA priest the Rev. Tory Baucam in front of Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby in Coventry cathedral.

CHURCH CLOSINGS

A sampling of church closings reveals the depth of TEC's problems in keeping churches open in the face of growing militant secularism a post-modern rejection of the gospel, pansexual acceptance and Nones who have no denominational ties.

In the Diocese of Connecticut, financial woes have caught up to Norwalk's Grace Episcopal Church on Union Park, which is to close at the end of the month after 123 years. Christ Episcopal Church in Avon announced it would close its doors for good. In recent years, the "Ct. Six", those faithful parishes in the Diocese of Connecticut, have left the diocese and the Episcopal Church. More recently, Fr. Ron Gauss and Bishop Seabury Church, Groton, CT, also departed. The Rev. Christopher Leighton of St. Paul's in Darien is weighing his parish's options. Bishop Ian Douglas is on record as saying that "One of the best things that has happened for The Episcopal Church, with respect to our engagement in the Anglican Communion, has been the election and ordination of [the openly gay] Gene Robinson." One of his parishes was recently sold for use as a mosque in the name of "interfaith" cooperation.

The silver lining has been that some of the parishes sold by liberal and revisionist Episcopal bishops have been bought by orthodox Christian groups who have a high view of Scripture and strong evangelistic outreach.

The former property of the Church of the Apostles (COA) Anglican in Fairfax, VA was sold to DC Metro Church, a Bible believing church that upholds the authority of Scripture. The continuing Falls Church Episcopal parish is now sharing space with The Rock Christian Center which meets in the main sanctuary.

The irony should not be missed. In suing to take these parishes back from the clutches of evangelical Anglicans (formerly Episcopalians), the parish properties are now being owned and or filled by evangelical Christians - the very Christians that Bishop Johnston despises. The properties will go on being used as a witness for the Lord even as Johnston and his diocese promotes "another gospel" that saves no one and nothing. (He recently allowed former Newark Bishop Jack Spong to preach a heretical Easter sermon in the Richmond, VA cathedral).

THE FUTURE

What can TEC expect in 2014?

The Episcopal Church Task Force on the Study of Marriage affirmed by the 77th General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 2012 to study and consult broadly on the subject of marriage, will go ahead and affirm it. They were asked to explore historical, biblical, theological, liturgical, and canonical dimensions of marriage, and to do so in consideration of the "changing societal and cultural norms and legal structures" of our time. This commission will undoubtedly endorse and embrace same sex marriages as rites are already in place and a number of bishops already allow it in their dioceses.

Churches will continue to wither and die. Smaller churches are unsustainable financially; two or three families who are aging and dying run many. Cathedrals will continue to close across the country as will diocesan retreat centers like Camp Wapiti in the Diocese of Pennsylvania. They are financial albatrosses.

The Task Force for Re-imagining the Episcopal Church (TREC) released its first draft on making The Episcopal Church grow. It reveals that "edgy ideas will shake things up, hopefully" and gives suggestions for the future shape of the organization church wide. Will it? The Decade of Evangelism, designed to double the church by 2020, flopped. There is little evidence that this will work without a vigorous gospel proclamation, an understanding of gospel demands and Christian discipleship. There is little evidence that Katharine Jefferts Schori will heed the evangelical witness of the Anglican Communion's new Archbishop Justin Welby who believes almost everything she doesn't.

Young couples are not pouring into Episcopal churches and neither are Millenials, the next generation needed to sustain and make churches viable.

ACNA

The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) will continue to plant churches along with its 25 dioceses. About one in seven Anglicans in North America belongs to ACNA and to the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC). Orthodox Anglicanism is slowly but surely replacing the Episcopal Church, but there are still bumps in the road, the chief of which is who will replace Archbishop Robert Duncan and the thorny issue of Women's Ordination.

American culture is in free fall on nearly all moral fronts. With the Episcopal Church's embrace of homosexuality, gay marriage and its continued capitulation to the culture in the area of abortion (under the slogan women's rights), there is little to distinguish it from the world around it. Playing up social activism will not work, as there are unnumbered organizations that actively support the poor, many of which are evangelical in ethos.

There seems little evidence at the time of this writing that a spiritual turn-around for the aging denomination is likely. TEC is now an expensive boutique church with a declining but expensively catered to clientele. The push and embrace of pansexuality has not made churches grow. The Episcopal Church's desire for worldly accommodation and liberal political positions seems designed to push remaining conservatives out of the church, even in the handful of remaining orthodox dioceses struggling to stay afloat and who must now fight on two fronts - the world and The Episcopal Church.

END