Citing research done by Matthew Price, VP of Research and Data for the Church Pension Fund, Jennings said that of the congregations that had one clergy person in 2006, 30% had no clergy in 2013. "So if the old model of a dedicated building with a full-time priest is required for us to do God's mission, we're in trouble," Jennings warned.

Jennings said research shows that between 2006 and 2013, congregations experienced a 7 percent decline in operating revenue, an 8 percent decline in pledge income, and an 11 percent decline in pledge cards, but no decline in clergy compensation amounts. Spending a higher proportion of the church's resources on clergy pay than in the past is not sustainable, she warned.

She said The Episcopal Church finds itself "crossing some new threshold we had never anticipated."

The church needs "some remedial discernment work" in which it "think[s] again about God's mission for The Episcopal Church in our time," she said.

"If we think about crossing the threshold as guardians of the institution of the church, pretty much everything looks like loss and decline," she said. "It's depressing to think about change in the church this way, and I don't recommend it. And it doesn't really seem like the path to discerning God's mission."
Instead, she urged the council to stand on the threshold "as people who are secure in our identity as children of God in The Episcopal Church."

She added that "[t]he world might swirl around us, but we know who we are, and we can stretch our identity to accommodate the changes we need to make. God knows who we are as the people of God in The Episcopal Church, and God knows it's not about buildings or full-time clergy or social status or endowments. And because God knows those things, I believe God has a new mission for us."

At a press conference following the meeting, VOL asked the new presiding bishop, who has made evangelism, racial reconciliation and the Jesus Movement the cornerstone of his ministry, to name racists in The Episcopal Church. After all, he knows TEC well enough by now to be able to name the last one or two racists who haven't been outed and run off yet.

Curry replied, "General Convention spoke with remarkable clarity identifying and sharing racial reconciliation between people who have enmity with one another. Racial reconciliation and evangelism are tied together."

Jennings's hopes are just that--hopes--but the facts on the ground tell a different story and Jennings knows it. Attempts to make the church grow, such as the once proposed 20/20 campaign to double the church by 2020, have failed, and there are no signs that TREC, the latest gamble that TEC hopes will jump start the church, are not succeeding.

Two things are required for systemic change.

The first is a clear understanding of what the gospel is, and that is an uncertain trumpet sound in TEC. We must realize that two-thirds of the Episcopal Church is made up of women over 60, and along with old men and a few families who have no evangelistic zeal, they do not even understand what evangelism means. It's no secret. Evangelism is not just about listening. It has to do with proclamation, and that is not going on in TEC.

Furthermore, dumbing down the qualifications for entry into TEC and opening the red doors ever wider by allowing unbaptized persons and those of other religions to use church properties, hoping this will make them more amenable to TEC, is not going to work, either. Allowing Muslims to use TEC properties for their Friday prayer services will not win hearts and minds over to TEC, nor will endless rants about racism grow churches. If that is "stretching our identity," it clearly isn't working. Additionally, whatever Jennings means by "new mission" must have substance if it is to move forward and make sense to a generation of Nones who have abandoned liberal Protestant churches because they hear nothing they won't find through online new, through Twitter or Facebook.

TEC needs to ask and answer another question: Why is the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) growing and they are not? Spin it any way you like, but a church that preaches an "exclusionary" gospel that demands change from its listeners is making more headway among Americans than TEC.

TEC may hate evangelical and independent Bible churches and those whom they call fundamentalists (including the ACNA), but people want to hear a certain trumpet sound that says what is right and wrong, what God expects from us, how we should behave (even when we don't), and how we are being discipled into God's kingdom. Not just come as you are, stay as you are.

On evangelism: The presiding bishop says he does not believe in the traditional understanding of evangelism--bringing the Good News about Jesus into a life-changing encounter with the living Christ. His idea of evangelism is to listen to people and simply share life stories. That won't cut it unless there is a call to conversion, which Curry says he does not support. "We are all children of God," he has said. That is enough to get us into heaven.

On racial reconciliation: Somewhere between 93% and 95% of TEC is white. Less than 2 percent of congregants are black, and this group has a disproportionate number of bishops and priests. Nonetheless, we are told that racism is an issue and we should all undergo anti-racism training.

Think about that. First, the PB who is black, cannot or will not identify who these racists are. Why won't he tell us? Secondly, endlessly bashing White Privilege (which is embodied by those who pay TEC's bills and weekly fill its coffers) is not a good strategy. Without white people there would be no Episcopal Church, and raging against white upper middle class Episcopalians who have money, power and position in the hope that guilt will make them grovel before black people is not going to work. White Episcopalians don't believe they need to do that, despite what is being taught at Sewanee. Diversity can only be pushed so far. In time there will be a backlash.

The PB also said he wants to appoint a third canon in addition to the Rev. Michael Hunn and the Rev. Charles Robertson, who were appointed as Canon to the Presiding Bishop for Ministry within The Episcopal Church and Canon to the Presiding Bishop for Ministry Beyond the Episcopal Church, respectively. The third canon would be responsible for carrying out what Curry called the direct ministry of the presiding bishop in the work of evangelism and racial reconciliation and would collaborate with both the churchwide staff and the wider community.

ENS reporter Mary Schoenberg shrewdly asked what the Church will [ultimately] look like: "How do you envisage the Church getting there?" Curry said he saw evangelism going on at multiple levels: "At the larger level we can talk about church plants, forming new congregations, communities of faith, outreach and house churches. At the level of how Episcopalians get their lives nourished, this requires intentional Christian living and having the capacity to share." Starting new churches is one approach, he said. Regular Episcopalians must share their faith and their story. What is your faith story, he asked?

HOD president Jennings described it as a "hugely complicated set of issues."

By electing, overwhelmingly, a new leader with great charisma, the Church is pinning its last best hopes on a black man with the expectation that he will perform a miracle or at least pull a rabbit out of the proverbial hat to save the Church. It is the last attempt of a desperate leader in a dying denomination to jump start an old Model T--as a swift Jaguar (the ACNA) eventually passes it by.

END