In reviewing the information gathered by our assessment, a fundamental question came to the surface. Is Ascension called to be:
1) A church that serves primarily Episcopalians looking for a church home and connection to religion
OR
2) A missional church that is both grounded in truth, image, symbol, liturgy and inviting to the culture or today?"
I'd like to hear your reflections on these to points of reference. Does either cause issue? Do you have a gut reaction to one over the other? Let us know!
God's peace to you always,
Fr. Jim
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10 comments:
...and just to let you know. As dedicated as I am to God's will and this church, I was not up at 5:46 am doing this! Something is not right with my time settings!LOL
FJ+
Sure, you were up at 5:46 a.m. making coffee in order to post this stimulating, mind provoking question for us to answer --- It is now 10:22 a.m. and we have the brain function to respond to your blog--
Our reflections on your two points are the following:
1) It is important that we as Episcopalians or ANY CHURCH follow the teaching of the Bible and not put our own interpretations/spin on the Word of God.
2) It is our calling as christians to keep grounded in truth, image, symbol, liturgy and to always welcome new members with different perspectives/backgrounds than those of us raised in the E church. Our main job as church members aka christians is to model behavior that Jesus calls us to do on a daily basis.
It's the google blog clock - poste in Pacific daylight time - not your clock that is messed up -- look at our post time. And we wrote it at 10:22 a.m.
FYI - Regarding Time Stamp -
Sign in to your blogspot.
Go to Dashboard.
Click on Edit Profile Hyperlink.
Click on Settings Tab.
Click on Formatting Tab.
Five Subjects down you will see - TimeZone for example:
If you are on the East Coast scroll down until you find (GMT-5:00) Eastern Time and choose this timezone or the one appropriate for your location.
Make sure you go to the bottom of the page and click on the orange "Save Settings" button to complete the change.
Now your time stamp should be correct, matching the time zone of the blogspot, when you post on the blog.
What happened to "Making Disciples Who Make Disciples"?
Jesus wasn't an Episcopalian. Besides, the majority of people don't search for a church home or religion. They search for the one true God (whether they realize it or not).
I agree with comment 2; let's be faithful to our Lord God Almighty and leave the marketing to Him.
You build it; He'll fill it.
I believe that we must acknowledge our roots in Anglicanism, giving people a safe place to be the Body of Christ, of which Jesus Christ is the Head, as we pray and worship, proclaim the Gospel, and promote justice, peace, and love. We must also honor God by fulfilling the mission of the Church which is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ through the ministry of all its members. The ministry of lay persons is to represent Christ and his Church; to bear witness to him wherever they may be; and, according to the gifts given them, to carry on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world; and to take their place in the life, worship and governance of the Church. (Paraphrase and quoted from the Catechism found in The Book of Common Prayer pages 854 and 855.)
Many of us at Church of the Ascension and other Episcopal parishes, who like the Anglican identity, wish to highlight our differentiation from the social action based agenda of The Episcopal Church and therefore put more emphasis on our bible centered, orthodox, transformational Christian faith.
To answer the question in two sentences; we must first be “missional” Biblical Christians focused on introducing people outside the (our) church to Christ and second, we must be missional by being grounded and confident in our transformational Christian faith which has an “Anglican” distinctiveness. We must be inviting to the culture of today, but we are not to be shaped or formed by the culture of today, we must be shaped and formed into the Kingdom of God by using the standards expressed in Holy Scripture.
Based on observation of the demographics of our newcomers, we are currently attracting other Episcopalians, so we are therefore called to serve those who are coming to us. However, this demographic is the result of our lack of directed effort at reaching out to any other 'target audience'. If all we do in the coummunity is advertise that we are Episcopal, who else would we expect to attract?
- View from the pew
In order for us to become a 'missional' church, we will need to do several things:
1. Clearly define what our 'mission' is (more than our mission statement - what we have now is really a vision statement), to include a clear definition of our target audience -who we wish to attract to our Church
2. Organize our ministries to focus on meeting the needs of our target audience
3. Participate in Outreach activities in our community that will put us in touch with our target audience and attract new members as a result
All of the above will require an intentional shift from our 'business as usual' approach to leadership and ministry at Ascension. Are we willing to make the effort???
- View from the pew
I like the 2 one better. The first sounds like a clanish bunch selling a religion. Who we are, is who we are. How we worship is as Angelicans.
Pam
So, as someone new to the area looking for an Episcopal church are you Jesus looking for anyone to worship with you? Or are you looking for a target audience that can only be Anglican focused? Ironically, I am a Catholic dismayed with my Catholic choices and thought the Episcopal church might be more welcoming and open minded. Really, I miss having a place to worship.
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