We Shall Be Changed

Questions for the Post-Pandemic Church

Mark D. W. Edington

• Publisher: Church Publishing
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781640653726
• eBook ISBN: 9781640653733
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

How will we regather the church after pandemic?

The Covid-19 pandemic is an inflection point for the church everywhere—and certainly for the Episcopal Church. The sudden flowering of creativity, connection, and collaboration is an expression of the Holy Spirit's relentless presence within the church; yet ongoing distancing creates difficulties to be overcome on the other side of the present crisis.

How will we change habits of isolation and regather the church? How will we manage the impact on church finances? How is God calling us to embrace the energy and creativity of this moment—and the longing people have felt for a return to community? What challenges will we face regathering the people of God, particularly in already weakened communities?

We Shall Be Changed is a gathering of brief essays from thought leaders around the church on pressing topics that the church needs to be considering now—in preparation for the end of this pandemic. The book is designed to spur conversation within parishes, fellowship groups, and clergy gatherings about how to embrace the gifts this time has given while anticipating and addressing the very real challenges the church will confront in its wake.

Third Conversation: Hard
Choices and Helping Hands

What questions about financial structures and sustainability will emerge from this time of isolation to confront parishes and judicatories? Is self-help the only option?

Elise Erikson Barrett, Miguel Escobar, and James Murphy

8

Working Together as the Way

Elise Erikson Barrett

IF THERE IS any generalization to be made about the ways in which this time is affecting parishes and judicatories, it is that almost no generalizations can legitimately be made. As we listen to our leaders, they are sharing a range of impressions as diverse as the organizations and bodies they serve. Some of them are finding that while giving is down, so are expenses, so the financial outcome is largely stable. Some are finding that givers are highly motivated, and that their congregations are discovering new senses of purpose and vocation, so finances are strong. Some have good reason to fear that they may not survive this time.

All of them are experiencing deep levels of fatigue as this time of crisis and uncertainty lengthens.

We have observed that the Covid-19 crisis has acted, as one grantee put it, as a “force accelerant,” turbo-charging existing trajectories by a decade or more. It has also been an agent of the apocalyptic, uncovering inequities in access to capital and resources that have been present in our structures all along. Given these impacts, we might note the following questions about financial structure and sustainability for the post-Covid church:

1. Can pastoral leaders and lay leaders work together to address finances (both the pastoral leader’s and the congregation’s) with mutual vulnerability and love for the mission of their church? Over and over, we have observed the paralyzing, resentment-building impact of what we have come to call “the culture of shame and blame” around finances. Good pastors often hide financial trouble or insecurity, knowing that their congregants are stressed and struggling; congregation members often assume that pastors have education paid for by “the church” and don’t see the complexity of taxes and housing with which pastors must work. We have seen profound transformation when pastoral leaders and lay leaders enter into this space with safety, mutual vulnerability, and commitment to one another. On the other side of the present crises, this courageous move will be more important than ever, as pressing questions about the ability of the church to support a full-time salary, the understanding of the congregation’s mission, and the nature of giving are certain to arise.

2. Can congregations and their regional or governing bodies work together to make hard decisions with open communication and mutual care? Churches and judicatories too often feel as if they are competing for scarce dollars, and pastors can feel like yet another underappreciated asset on the denomination’s balance sheet. We have watched organizations in which judicatories or denominations are investing care and time into the financial wellbeing of their clergy experience shifts, with pastoral leaders testifying, “I never thought my judicatory cared about me. This changes how I feel about ministry.” Mutual tending in systems under extreme stress is more than difficult, but judicatories that can walk with their congregations and pastors will discover more hopeful paths than those that focus exclusively on institutional preservation.

3. Can seminaries and denominations/equipping and ordaining bodies work together to care for the pastoral leaders in their respective systems? Theological schools and denominations/judicatories have both been on a trajectory of increased financial stress; this is likely to get pressurized. Nonetheless, can leaders of these institutions work in partnership with one another for the sake of the pastoral leaders in their care, and the churches those pastoral leaders serve? More pointedly, perhaps, can they work together to reimagine the training of a rising generation of pastoral leaders for a changing church?

4. Can resourced congregations and under-resourced congregations within a denomination or judicatory or community be in this work together? Pastoral leaders and congregations simply must ask themselves: “How do the existing conditions of inequity and historic under-resourcing that the pandemic has unmasked relate to our congregation/parish/judicatory?” This is, among other important changes, a concrete consequence of the rising realization of how systemic racism has shaped the distribution of resources in our churches. Our initiative’s research reminded us years ago that Black pastoral leaders and other pastoral leaders of color, pastoral leaders serving rural congregations, and female pastoral leaders were suffering most from, and are most vulnerable to, economic challenges. This is an opportunity to take a painful look at these realities and to ask God—and our neighbor—what the next right action step might be.

Self-help, then, is not a viable option. The post-Covid church will have to invest in challenging, hopeful partnerships at all levels if it is to embrace the possibilities created by this time of rupture and uncertainty.

9

Is Self-Help the Only Option?
It Must Not Be

Miguel Escobar

AN ECONOMIC TRAGEDY is unfolding across the United States. On May 6, The New York Times reported that the unemployment rate had reached 14.7 percent, the highest since the Great Depression.¹² The Pew Research Center has found that the sudden loss of jobs is especially hitting lower-income communities of color.¹³ In New York, the city where I live, soup kitchens and food banks are now reporting record numbers; a volunteer at just one site in the Bronx shared that one thousand people had showed up one weekend, and then seven hundred for two weekends in a row. There are profound disparities in terms of who is bearing the brunt of the economic fallout of Covid-19, and such differences are reflected in our congregations.

Amidst all this, I was asked to reflect on what Covid-19 is revealing about the financial structures and sustainability of congregations and judicatories in the Episcopal Church. More specifically, I am to reply to the provocative question of, Is self-help the only option?

“Self-help” is the opposite of a faithful approach in times like these.

Even as Episcopal churches struggle against the generations of systemic racism which have resulted in churches with widely varying levels of resources, we can also draw on examples from the first to fourth centuries wherein Christians saw themselves as one part of a larger church body, and pulled together to aid the hardest-hit assemblies and individuals in their communities during times of disaster.

Rather than self-help and financial isolation, financial interconnectedness is in our DNA.

Jerusalem Collections for Today

In his letters from the middle of the first century, Paul makes multiple references to a Jerusalem Collection: “At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem in a ministry to the saints; for Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to share their resources with the poor among the saints at Jerusalem.”¹⁴ This collection is understood to have been both an expression of unity among the first-century assemblies and as a concrete way of helping the “poor among the saints” of the Jerusalem assembly who were experiencing famine and food shortages at that time.

In every diocese, there are congregations that are being especially devastated by infection, mortality, and unemployment. Within New York, Episcopal churches in the Bronx have been particularly hard hit.¹⁵ In addition to emergency relief grants—such as the Diocesan Emergency Grant program launched by the Episcopal Diocese of New York—what would it look like for a diocesan-wide Jerusalem Collection to support the “poor among the saints” of the Bronx? The Navajo Nation is eclipsing other states’ infection rates and mortality.¹⁶ The partnership between Navajoland and the Diocese of Northern Michigan to establish the Covid-19 Fund and Indigi-Aid Telethon echo Paul’s first-century collection on behalf of the hungry in Jerusalem.¹⁷ Episcopal Relief and Development has created a Covid-19 Pandemic Response Fund to enable emergency aid to vulnerable communities both in the U.S. and around the world.¹⁸ These are all examples of modern-day Jerusalem Collections; there is much, much more we might do.

Presider as Guardian of All in Need

In his First Apology, written around 155 ce, Justin Martyr includes a striking outline of how second-century Christians assembled for worship. Beginning with “Those who have the means help all those who are in want,” he describes a threefold order of worship that moves from word to table to collection for the poor. This weekly collection for the poor is given to the presider who “aids orphans and widows, those who are in want through disease or through another cause, those who are in prison, and foreigners who are sojourning here. In short, the presider is a guardian to all those who are in need.”¹⁹

While many congregations in our dioceses have been inconvenienced by Covid-19, some congregations have been devastated by this pandemic. Clergy in these communities are on the frontlines of providing monies to parishioners who are struggling to pay rent, buy groceries, or avoid reliance on payday loans. We should be unafraid to dust off the tradition of a weekly collection for the poor. Well-resourced parishes can follow the example of churches like the Church of the Heavenly Rest, which created a Fund for the Not Forgotten for those who are ineligible for federal assistance (undocumented immigrants, asylum seekers, workers in the gig economy, the formerly incarcerated).²⁰ Importantly, a portion of these funds is also going to support congregations in East Harlem.

Bishop As “Lover of the Poor”

One striking development from the fourth century is that of a bishop’s public role as “lover of the poor.”²¹ Pre-Constantine, aid for the poor had focused primarily on those within the Christian assemblies. One of the earliest post-Constantinian understandings of a bishop’s public role was as one who lifted up the suffering of the poor—both Christian and non-Christian alike—to a public that was reluctant to confront these matters. This new role was particularly embraced by Basil of Caesarea who, in the wake of a devastating famine in 369 ce, preached forcefully to the wealthy of the city, laying bare the invisible suffering of the poor in vivid terms. His preaching raised money for a soup kitchen to feed the most vulnerable; later, building on this work, he founded what is considered one of the first hospitals, the Basiliad.²²

Even in our secular age, bishops and other prominent faith leaders command attention through their pulpits, pastoral letters, social media, in letters to the editor, and more. David Bailey, the bishop of Navajoland, recently said in an interview with Dean Kelly Brown Douglas of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Seminary that now is the time for faith leaders to make visible the hidden suffering of those rendered invisible.²³ It’s inspiring to see new bishops, like Bonnie Perry of the Diocese of Michigan, raising money for food aid as one of the first acts of her episcopate.²⁴ They stand in a long line of bishops like Basil of Caesarea.

Economic Alternatives

As a fourth-century contemporary of Basil, Ambrose of Milan spoke out forcefully against the money-lenders of his city for predatory lending practices, the chargi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• First Conversation: Distancing and Deepening
• Second Conversation: Liturgy and Longing
• Third Conversation: Hard Choices and Helping Hands
• Fourth Conversation: Inequality, Marginalization—and Renewal
• Fifth Conversation: Leadership—Challenge and Change
• Contributors