Implied Jesus
I'll admit it. Subtlety is not one of my stronger qualities. Most of the time I do my best to be polite and kind, but I'm not very good at leaving things unsaid. I think that's why I am so curious about the "five mission priorities" identified by the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church that are to guide the budgetary process for the 2010-2012 triennium. You can read the entire article here: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_97829_ENG_HTM.htm
First, a word of explanation to readers of this blog who aren't Episcopalians (or maybe some who are): The budget which funds our church's mission, programming and adminstrative overhead is administered from The Episcopal Church Center in New York City. That budget is developed for a period of three years and is approved at our General Convention, which meets again in 2009. You can read about General Convention here: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/gc.htm
The five priorities identified in the Executive Council Resolution were:
Doing Justice and Alleviating Poverty;
Claiming Our Identity;
Growing Congregations;
Strengthening Governance and Foundations for Mission; and
Promoting Anglican Partnerships.
Nothing wrong with those priorities, I suppose. But, is it me...or is something (or should I say Someone?) missing?
As I read them, these are all "what will be done" statements, with no mention of the "Who" we're serving by doing them.
Maybe we all know who we're serving so we don't have to mention anyone by Name.
Maybe we're all clear that these priorities naturally follow from our identity as followers of the Unnamed One.
Maybe because the budgeting process is internal to our church, we simply assume everyone knows why we're engaged in this project of "church" in the first place -- after all, You-Know-Who is known to us in the breaking of the bread, right?
Right???
I'll admit it. Subtlety is not one of my stronger qualities. Most of the time I do my best to be polite and kind, but I'm not very good at leaving things unsaid. I think that's why I am so curious about the "five mission priorities" identified by the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church that are to guide the budgetary process for the 2010-2012 triennium. You can read the entire article here: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_97829_ENG_HTM.htm
First, a word of explanation to readers of this blog who aren't Episcopalians (or maybe some who are): The budget which funds our church's mission, programming and adminstrative overhead is administered from The Episcopal Church Center in New York City. That budget is developed for a period of three years and is approved at our General Convention, which meets again in 2009. You can read about General Convention here: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/gc.htm
The five priorities identified in the Executive Council Resolution were:
Doing Justice and Alleviating Poverty;
Claiming Our Identity;
Growing Congregations;
Strengthening Governance and Foundations for Mission; and
Promoting Anglican Partnerships.
Nothing wrong with those priorities, I suppose. But, is it me...or is something (or should I say Someone?) missing?
As I read them, these are all "what will be done" statements, with no mention of the "Who" we're serving by doing them.
Maybe we all know who we're serving so we don't have to mention anyone by Name.
Maybe we're all clear that these priorities naturally follow from our identity as followers of the Unnamed One.
Maybe because the budgeting process is internal to our church, we simply assume everyone knows why we're engaged in this project of "church" in the first place -- after all, You-Know-Who is known to us in the breaking of the bread, right?
Right???
posted by FrGaryB | 5:33 AM
7 Comments:
On the one hand, that particular document is a victim of the same soulless management-speak that plagued my career in government. And yes, I wish it were not so and I am certainly not a fan of the "815 machine." But, to draw an analogy, I would not have started every document I produced in my job with something like, "...the purpose of this project is to kill people and blow things up" even though that was clearly the purpose.
This is all "inside baseball." No one is going to be led to conversion of life by a budget document of the Executive Council. Yes, it was badly written, but it was badly written with the expectation that very few people would read it and that those who did were already familiar with why we are a church at all.
Or maybe I'm such a cultural Anglican that I am completely blind to my own reluctance to mention the name of the One we are supposed to be proclaiming. Who knows?
PS I should correct myself in that not everything I did in government was intended "to kill people and blow things up." Some things were intended "to spy on unnamed people" or "to provide a vulgar display of American technological superiority." Apologies for any confusion this may have caused. :-)
I'd say cut 815 some slack...no one except elite members of the Church really like the national governance stuff.
Remember in "The Importance of Being Earnest" when Lady Bracknell says, "Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that."
Maybe I shouldn't read anything from the Episcopal News Service feed on less than 8 hours of sleep!
Perhaps the word that this essay should turn on is not subtlety, but redundancy. In rendering the mission of the church through the ('redundant'?) language of national-corporate-speak is to malign any attempts to re-describe the church's mission in any other tone other than droll of 'process' and 'justice'. I think Kant has won this one: the starry sky above and the moral law within" is often as much as we can muster in articulating that consequences of the incarnation.
Now that i have that clear, i have a vestry meeting to run!
I do not think the lack of reference to God or more directly Jesus was intentional. Isn't it a given that as a Christian organization it was ment:
Doing Justice and Alleviating Poverty in our following of Jesus' ways;
Claiming Our God given Identity;
Growing Congregations to further spread the good news of Jesus Christ ;
Etc.
Or is it just another, albeit existential, example of our Christian heritage and belief being removed from society by renaming, retelling or just deleting all together. Happy Holidays, Easter Bunny, celebrating the 4th of July with out remembering our nations Independence. Heck what about the last post and using "1st century, CE" What happened to A.D.(Anno Domini - Latin for The year of our Lord)?
On second thought maybe we need to be just a bit more intentional in what and how we say things.
In God I Trust, and I'm thankful for it.
Oops, BAD spell checker… I ment existential not existential. I’ll start sounding like Nietzsche or some on like that.
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