I want to suggest that Parochial Ministry does not exist. This is not to say that we do not have a cult of worshiping the stand alone parish with a "robust ministry" and many parishes "thriving" by the standards of said cult. This is the realm of the Grande Poobah Missional that replaced the man behind the curtain once traditional methods of doing church began to falter in the 1970's. A GoGo Boy with many a name, be it missional or mission shaped or radical welcome or emergent or some else... what we have to realize is that no matter how much glittered deodorant this lad applies the disco balls can only distract us for so long.
Which is not to say that all these overlapping words and books written on the many variations of these themes have not been vital. When the night is young we need the paid dancers in the club to get the fervent gyrations going to welcome the club kids onto the floor. We would not be where we are, which is a lot better place than we would be, if they had not been written and read. Many leaders and parishes are still in great need of learning the rhythms thus presented. Maybe few are ready for the next step but it is a necessary one that needs to be taken sooner rather than later if the church is going to have the mettle to be reborn from its current death.
What these books have done is provide us the base to build vital relationships with our communities that create sustainable models of church. These relationships take different forms in different contexts but are all founded on basic concepts of hospitality, community organizing, and breaking down barriers between church and community. They have given us a model of how parish ministry can continue to be in the midst of communities. There is, however, a catch.
What all of these models expect is for a parish to be surrounded by a community that is capable of providing those relationships. That any community can be a space in which this new model of parochial ministry can thrive. The reality is that there are communities unable to create such a space, where the perfect implementation of the best practices are not going to manifest a sustainable parochial ministry. Communities where parishes are going to decline to missions and missions are going to decline into nothing no matter how much they excel at best practices unless something more happens.
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One wears a zebra print vest for the purpose of dancing...
[Edge of Seventeen] |
This myth, that we can maintain robust independent parishes if only we can get them to take up best practices, is the malignant myth that must die. This is being a well dressed wall flower that refuses to dance. We have to abandon this sense of independent parochial ministries and move to a model where everyone recognizes that their work is non-parochial. We have to take the lessons we have learned about relationship building and resource sharing with our communities and begin applying them to our relationships with each other.
I live non-parochial ministry. I do not have the freedom to maintain any delusion that my ministry cannot exist without strong stable relationships with the parishes and diocesan structures that surround it. On a campus there simply is not the stability of individuals, groups, or structures for us to thrive independent of the Episcopal Church as a whole. What it also means is that I consistently encounter the competition for resources, the redundancy, and the waste inherent to parish and diocesan structures as they live out lives at various levels of isolation. This is where we need to begin building relationships for mutual sustainability and life.
This is about activating regional youth ministry programs, regional sexton services, regional assistant clergy, regional programing of church groups and organizations, regional printing, production, and web services, and mutual awareness of where collaboration can happen. The Episcopal Identity might no longer have much traction for the general populace but we who are Episcopalian need to become aware of the fullness of our identity and what is happening within it, and ensure that it is robust and thriving throughout a region not just in a single ministry point. It means a whole lot of work, a lot of repairing relationships, and a lot of overturning the status quo... but if we can do it then everyone will be in a better space to thrive and find support because we will be ministries in relationship with each other not just in proximity of each other... we will stop being wall flowers and join the gogo dancers.
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