Can PB Sean Rowe and his bishops turn the Episcopal Church Around?

What can be done about it? The Episcopal Church is by no means the biggest loser but a new Presiding Bishop and his bishops are talking up realignment and restructuring as they watch the numbers drop year over year hoping to reverse the trend. You can read Bishop Sean Rowe’s aspirations here: https://www.oaoa.com/people/religion/sean-rowe-wants-to-realign-the-episcopal-church/

Reading through the various options on the situation it looks very much like the bishops are rearranging the deck chairs on the SS TEC but with fewer chairs.

The bishops met at the DoubleTree Hilton Minneapolis Airport recently, and another 55 participated virtually and tried doing just that.

To get The Episcopal Church on the right footing, the newly minted Presiding Bishop Rowe hired Insight Global an international professional services and staffing company specializing in delivering talent and technical solutions to Fortune 1000 companies across the IT, Non-IT, Healthcare, and Engineering industries.

So, the question must be asked is, how can a secular company possibly know how a church runs, if its leadership is supposed to be aligned with God’s will for the church and not just the best manager for the job. Do the managers of Insight Global hear from God about how TEC should run. Do they have spiritual or biblical insights. Do they meet the requirements of leadership laid out by the Apostle Paul such as humility, servant leadership, unwavering commitment to the truth, compassion, courage, vision, passion, adaptability, and a deep care for the spiritual growth of others; essentially prioritizing the needs of the community over personal gain, while actively leading with integrity and conviction in spreading the Gospel message to all people regardless of background.

Would the deep thinkers at Insight Global know what this even means? The company talks about developing a plan for strategic realignment. But unless the plan starts and end with God’s kingdom being realized on earth then it is nothing more than rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship. Aligning itself with the culture is not a winning strategy.

Two issues did pop up; one was on Title IV – the church’s disciplinary system for clergy dominated discussion. Why am I not surprised. Anglican Watch a feisty unofficial watch dog on the sins of bishops and clergy has been kicking TEC’s butt over failed disciplinary issues.

Here are some recent headlines: Sean Rowe removes bishop Todd Ousley from all Title IV functions prior to Ousley’s departure later this year; Say farewell to a fraud: reflections on Title IV and the lies of Cayce Ramey; St. Paul’s Dayton cuts Duplicitous Dan loose; Priest faces fraud allegations at Diocese of Dallas parish, resigns from Nashotah House board; Anglican Watch urges reconsideration of Duggan Title IV case in Chicago to cite but a few stories. You can read more here: https://www.anglicanwatch.com/

The other issue was refocusing General Convention and the College for Bishops, with an educational program for newly elected bishops. How that will grow the diocese and parishes is anybody’s guess. It is dubious to say the least.

One bishop seemed to catch on that the Church might need to focus on the Christian faith! OMG. The Rt. Rev. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows of Indianapolis, vice chair of the House of Bishops concurred: “The heart of the matter is we want to have the Episcopal Church — both in the aggregate and in each diocese — be given every bit of steam it can have to make an effective witness for Jesus Christ. We talked about it being a life-and-death matter, because we believe in the dying and rising of Jesus as the core of our faith.”

Well, there is a whole lot of dying going on and not much rising…and very little witnessing. Once upon a time, the Anglican bishops at the global Lambeth Conference boldly declared the 1990s the “Decade of Evangelism.” It worked across the Global South, but not in the Global North.

Back 20 years ago The Episcopal Church created a “20/20 Vision” task force committed to doubling baptized membership by 2020. It was called the 20/20 strategy. One of its goals was to double average Sunday attendance (ASA) by the year 2020. It failed. The downward spiral continued. The 20/20 proposal totally flopped. Former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry’s “revivals” revived nothing that we could find, but he did put on a good show.

And there is evangelism, another theme the bishops discussed. But that usually means trying to bring more alternative lifestyle pursuers into the church by pushing LGBTQ+ sexualities and pushing back on anyone who disagrees with them. Opening the doors wider to the unbaptized, or making communion available to anyone who wants it is not evangelism or pasting ashes on peoples’ heads without asking if they had asked for their sins to be forgiven is not evangelism.

Therein lies the problem. Evangelism, biblically understood, is presenting the good news about Jesus, talking up repentance and confession. At its core evangelism is presenting the good news freely and trusting God to convert people.

Very few people in TEC know how to present the good news and most have never done so.

The bottom line is your average Episcopalian is going to be asked to share a faith they have not heard, bought into, or understood. If they had there would be no need for the ACNA to exist, because at the heart of the two churches there is a very different understanding of the gospel. What constitutes good news for TEC is not the same as good news promulgated by the ACNA.

TEC thinks that pushing DEI and gay marriage is good news, the ACNA does not. Railing on about racism is considered good news, but racism is not a fundamental problem in TEC with less than one percent blacks in the pews.

Pushing and advocating for LGBTQ issues is not filling churches. This crowd are not church goers. Pushing the trans cause is spiritual suicide. Switching out genitals through surgery is hardly an apologetic method to win souls for Christ.

Homosexual bishop Gene Robinson is fast becoming passe. How much more whine from pulpits about how aggrieved he is and how uninclusive the church is and how homophobic everybody is who doesn’t agree with him, will average Episcopalians tolerate?

The more sexually off the rails TEC heads the worse it is all becoming. And the new presiding bishop Sean Rowe has no intention of reversing the church’s stand on sexuality issues. He has made that abundantly clear.

So, if you violate the clear teaching of scripture on sexuality then why should anyone believe TEC bishops about any other doctrine the church should happily change its mind about or cavalierly discard.

TEC can’t have it both ways. TEC can’t proclaim a message of redemption from sin, all sin, and then give some sins a pass because the culture says so, and then hope to fill churches. It’s a nonstarter. Why do evangelical churches grow? One of the reasons is a clear-eyed understanding of what grace, redemption, justification are with no compromises.

If TEC cannot proclaim a [coherent] message of redemption, then realigning and restructuring cannot stop TEC’s decline. TEC will continue reaping the whirlwind of emptying churches.

END

Can PB Sean Rowe and his bishops turn the Episcopal Church Around?
Is aligning itself with the culture a winning strategy?

By David W. Virtue, DD
www.virtueonline.org
December 13, 2024

A lot is being made of culture, realignment and restructuring as churches look to regroup after massive losses over the past few years.

Around 40 million Americans have stopped attending church in the past 25 years, with estimates suggesting that “another 2 million Americans” could potentially be leaving the church, contributing to a growing trend of declining church attendance across the country; this is often referred to as “the great dechurching.” Mainline denominations are in free fall.