Welcome and introduction Part One The

Welcome and introduction

Part One: • The background of Renewal. Works • How the process works

Dwelling in the Word/ Embedding scripture

11 The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. 14 We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. 15 But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love. (Ephesians 4: 11 -16)

Background on Renewal. Works: Questions that prompted this work

Brian Mc. Laren’s question: The life-and-death question for each of our churches and denominations may boil down to this: Are we a club for the elite who pretend to have arrived or a school for disciples who are still on the way? From his book, Finding Our Way

What does it mean to be a disciple in today’s world? What does it mean to be a church member? Are they the same thing? How does the shape of life in the Episcopal Church foster depth and commitment to the way of Christ and how does it undermine it? From People of the Way by Dwight Zscheile

David Hollister • American Historical Association President’s address to annual meeting in 2012 • Striking analysis of Episcopal Church

The Episcopal Church as part of a great cultural victory • With other ecumenical churches, our social vision for our culture has moved forward dramatically. • Advanced civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, environmental responsibility, resistance to misguided military action.

• • • The Episcopal Church participated in organizational defeat. Along with other ecumenical churches, we have lost nearly half our membership in 50 years. The organizational infrastructure has been neglected. We have lost grounding in faith and practice that informed our social vision.

The Mission of The Church • To restore unity with God, other people and the world around us • We live in time of deep divisions and breakdown in personal, family and social relationships. • “Where churches thrive, communities tend to thrive. ” Robert Putnam.

The vision for Renewal. Works: To make spiritual growth the priority in congregations To build cultures of discipleship in our congregations To have the conversation

AKA The Great Conversation

Why undertake this venture of change? “We move in a new direction when we cannot stay where we are. ” -Bill Hybels We need courageous recognition of the hard realities of Episcopal Church decline.

“Willow Creek CC suffered membership stagnation and a lack of enthusiasm among the faithful. Bill Hybels confesses that although Willow Creek is successful at some things, it has failed to meet the congregation’s deepest spiritual needs. A quarter of core members described themselves as spiritually stalled or dissatisfied with the role of the church in their spiritual growth. Church leaders found that 25% of the stalled segment and 63% of the churches dissatisfied segment contemplated leaving the church. A good business model brought thousands to Willow Creek. But did it work as a community of deepening connection to God and others? Maybe not. ” -Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion

A decade of research • Almost 500, 000 congregants • Over 1, 800 churches, 15 countries • Census profile: geography, type & church size • Denominations represent 68%. About 100 Episcopal Churches

Strategic questions What drives spiritual growth in an individual? What are characteristics of growing churches? Through the Eyes of Parishioners

(18) 2011 – All Rights Reserved Originate Ventures – Willow Creek Association

(18) 2011 – All Rights Reserved Originate Ventures – Willow Creek Association

What does seem to matter? Relationship with God and neighbor. 17

Spiritual Growth Continuum • Spir

And by spiritual growth we mean… Growing in relationship with God, neighbor, world and self

The relational dimension of spiritual growth Jesus said: The first commandment is this: Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is the only Lord. Love the Lord you God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other greater commandment than these. Mark 12: 29 -31

Questions?

How Renewal. Works works: An overview of the process • • • Leadership discerns and decides to participate. Most churches participate beginning in Sept. or January. Parishioners take an on-line inventory Four workshops with a selected team, meeting about two weeks apart Recommendations to vestry and parish, launching a process of long term focus on spiritual growth. Ongoing support through conferences and other gatherings

• • • Getting ready Decide to take on the process. Sign up with Forward Movement. Let Diocese know of your interest. Fall or Winter wave of churches Leaders on board: Vestry discussion Communicate with parish: You can’t communicate too much. Put together a workshop team, including selection of facilitator and administrators. Set dates for workshops!

Taking the inventory: Open for three weeks/four Sundays

Notes on the inventory • The more people, the better • An inventory, not a survey • It takes time and thought • Some folks like it. Some don’t. • Paper available

Four workshops: Four questions

Where have we been? (Workshop 1: Introducing the spiritual continuum) Where are we now? (Workshop 2: Looking at the invetory results) Where do we want to go? (Workshop 3: Best practice principles) How will we get there? (Workshop 4: Next steps)

Notes on workshops: • Facilitated by member of your congregation, but hopefully not clergy. • Clergy present as participants • Materials for each workshop provided from Renewal. Works (Facilitator’s Guide, Participants Workbook, Templates, Other handouts) Weekly conference calls • Encourage participants to commit to each of four workshops

Where have we been? Workshop 1: The spiritual continuum What is spiritual growth about, anyway? FOOTSTEPS

Trust vs. Fear • Have you grown more trusting or more fearful in recent years? • Which disposition have you been • feeding? How are you feeding your inner life?

Where are we now? Workshop 2: Survey results (Note the timing of this workshop is critical. Workshop 2 will be preceded by phone call with RW leadership team. ) What do we learn about ourselves from the inventory? From other profiles? What are the measures of spiritual vitality?

Spiritual Vitality: Looks at: 1. Church’s role 2. Personal Spiritual Practices 3. Service

Beliefs and practices: Where do you give your heart? Where would you like to grow?

Where do we want to go? Workshop 3: Looking at best practice principles How do we apply best practice principles learned from the research? What is God calling us to do and be?

Asking Why? • Ask about every activity and endeavor of the church, why are we doing this? • Are we having the results we are seeking in growing the faith of our members? • If we are like a teaching hospital, how well prepared are the people we send out to bring Christ’s reconciling presence to the people with whom they live and work.

The Best Practice Principles

1. The leader’s heart 2. Get people moving 3. Embed scripture 4. Create ownership 5. Pastor the community

How will we get there? Workshop 4: Next steps • View everything through the lens of how it contributes to spiritual growth. • Do a few things well. • Elevate expectations: Challenge

Outcome: Report to Vestry and wider parish

After the workshops: As much about a culture shift as it is about new programs. Building communities of practice, support and learning.

Questions and Comments Break for lunch

Part Two • The Best Practice Principles • What we’re learning from Renewal. Works • Next steps

The Vast Ocean Begins Just Outside our Church: The Eucharist. by Mary Oliver Something has happened to the bread and the wine They have been blessed. What now? The body leans forward to receive the gift from the priest’s hand, Then the chalice They are something else now from what they were before this began. I want to see Jesus Maybe in the clouds or on the shore, Just walking Beautiful man and clearly someone else besides. On the hard days I ask myself if ever will. Also there are times my body whispers to me That I have.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what God has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. Ephesians 2: 8 -10

Spiritual growth When have you experienced spiritual growth? What caused that to happen?

Spiritual growth When have you experienced inertia or been stalled spiritually? What caused that to happen?

The Best Practice Principles

1. The leader’s heart 2. Get people moving 3. Embed scripture 4. Create ownership 5. Pastor the community

1. The leader’s heart: It’s at the center.

A letter from Evelyn Underhill to Archbishop Lang of Canterbury (Found among her papers, c. 1930) May it please your Grace: I desire very humbly to suggest with bishops assembled at Lambeth that the greatest and most necessary work they could do at the present time for the renewal of the Anglican Church would be to call the clergy as a whole, solemnly and insistently to a greater interiority and cultivation of the personal life of prayer.

More from a letter from Evelyn Underhill to Archbishop Lang of Canterbury (Found among her papers, c. 1930) The real hunger among laity is not for halting attempts to reconcile theology and physical science but for the deep things of the Spirit. We look to the clergy to help and direct our spiritual growth. God is the interesting thing about religion and people are hungry for God.

What was learned: Four characteristics of leaders of vital congregations.

Leaders of vital congregations are. . . Disarmingly humble: Jim Collins GOOD TO GREAT: “Best leader is someone who demonstrates combination of deep personal humility with intense professional will. ”

Leaders of vital congregations. . . start with their own spiritual journey: “The journey to a spiritually vital church must begin with your own heart. You can not reproduce in others what you are not producing in yourself. ”

Leaders of vital congregations. . . model a life of discipleship: including vulnerability and transparency about the joys and challenges of the journey. “They don’t just teach the Bible. They let the Bible teach them. ”

Leaders of vital congregations. . . Focus on growing hearts, not growing attendance. They are single-minded in the objective of forming disciples.

Leaders of vital congregations are not lone rangers. • Clergy who participate in peer learning groups are more vital leaders when, • They form with peers a covenant for intentional learning, mutual vulnerability and accountability, share prayers and worshop and have fun together.

2. Get people moving

Plutos

The difference between hospitality and inclusion • Is our welcome more like a restaurant/resort, or • Like the welcome to the marine corps, where there are high expectations from both parties?

3. Embed the Bible

We are left with our question. What makes the church, your congregation and mine, different, utterly essential, without equal, unique? Let me venture a response: A congregation is Christian to the degree that it is confronted by and attempts to form its life in response to the Word of God. -Willimon, Shaped by the Bible

People will learn to love God’s Word • By observing their leader’s love for God’s Word. • Many clergy have weak engagement with the Bible outside sermon preparation.

In our tradition, we are more likely to listen to the Bible than read the Bible • Is the Bible read in our liturgies with understanding and expression? • Do people come prepared to hear the Word with understanding?

The peculiarity of the Anglican tradition is the equal emphasis which it gives to the Divine Office and the Eucharist; that is to say, to Biblical and Sacramental worship. Where this balance is disturbed, its special character is lost…It is I believe, by the balanced and instructed development of these two great instruments of Christian worship…. . that the Anglican Communion will best fulfill its liturgical office within the Body of Christ. Evelyn Underhill, Worship 1936, pp. 335 -336

4. Create ownership

I can’t read the Bible for you. -Bill Hybels

Creating that sense in worship: The liturgical leaders (musicians, readers of the scriptures, preachers and celebrants) are to be the prompters in worship. All of us, the congregation as well as the liturgical leaders are the actors in the drama of worship. God alone is the audience for the drama. -Soren Kierkegaard

5. Pastor the community

The baptismal covenant • Will you proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ? • Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? • Will you strive for justice and peace, and respect the dignity of every human

Nine tenths of the work of the Church in the world is done by Christian people fulfilling responsibilities and performing tasks which in themselves are not part of the official system of the Church at all…. the stream of redemptive power flows out from the church through the lives of its members into the society which they influence. -William Temple, quoted by Robert Gallagher.

What we’re learning so far in terms of responses from Episcopalians.

Key Conclusions • Many signs of spiritual vitality among Episcopalians: welcoming, educating children, take care of my personal/pastoral needs, prayer for others/thanks, commitment to liturgy • Embrace of beliefs and clarity around beliefs are relatively low. More about belonging than believing. • Personal spiritual practices are relatively

Conclusions continued. . . • Serving those in need / A social justice legacy is strong, but not a lot of clarity about its theological or biblical basis • Profiles suggest ‘lifestyle’ churches: either for my convenience or benefit: focus on what I get out of it • There are groups of deeply committed in all churches

Emerging Implications A distinctive and pervasive Episcopal culture Not particularly high expectations for transformation Eucharist, prayer, solitude, and service are key We are rooted and restless, but mostly rooted. Change will not be quick or easy. Need to elevate expectations for all members of the church

Importance of elevating expectations: What might that look like?

Overheard at one of the workshops: “I don’t expect anything to happen to me when I come to church. ” Do we want to grow? Do we expect to grow? Should we?

If you come here, you will grow.

If you come here, you will grow: It’s about evolving the culture: • Not necessarily about more programs, adding staff or bigger budgets • It’s about aligning everything for spiritual growth • It’s about learning from others, and reclaiming our own language: It’s often about translation. • It’s about prayer: God is the interesting thing about religion.

• When drilling for water, it is better to drill one hole 100 feet deep than 100 holes one foot deep. • It is better to do fewer things well and to ask routinely, how is this impacting the lives of our people, what are they and we learning, how are we being transformed.

Leadership: • Call the clergy to teach, model, encourage, coach. • Call the laity to be spiritual leaders.

More specifically… • Challenge people to engage with scripture • Retreats of some sort • Teach the tradition • Articulate a Rule of Life; practice one • Stress the relational dimension of service • Governance: If you have a Property, Finance, Stewardship Commission, how about a Spiritual Growth commission? • Foster accountability in leadership groups • Tend to your own spiritual resources

If you come here, you will grow. Looking at everything the church is doing, we commit to… • A vision of congregations as places of transformation • The belief that every ministry can deepen • Wherever a person may be, each

If you come here, you will grow.

Next steps

Questions and Comments