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Fifty Clergymen Explore New Directions for Ministry in Small Communities

Diocesan Press Service. May 29, 1974 [74161]

Isabel Baumgartner, Editor, The Tennessee Churchman

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- In what new directions shall the Episcopal Church launch out to strengthen its work in small towns and villages ? From what theological foundations do such new thrusts need to derive?

A chance to dig into these two questions drew 50 clergymen -- 23 of them bishops -- to Roanridge Conference Center here May 14-16 from 36 continental U.S. dioceses, Northern Mexico, Alaska, and Canada. Conference sponsor: the new Joint Commission on the Church in Small Communities, which Bishop William Davidson of Western Kansas chairs.

The group looked at several existing departures from the clearly impossible norm of a full-time, salaried, seminary-trained priest for every congregation.

Bishop William J. Gordon, Jr., described new strengths the Church in Alaska has found since its 1967 decision to change from "ministering to" lay people to "enabling lay people themselves to minister. "

" The key that opened the door, for us, to the total ministry of the laity, " Bishop Gordon said, " is the sacramentalist: the man chosen by and from his congregation to be trained, examined, and made priest for that community."

The Bishop said 20 non-stipendiary sacramentalists, ordained priests under Title III Canon 8, now perform sacerdotal functions in Alaska, most of them in small Indian and Eskimo villages.

" And at the same time one man prepares to preside at the altar," he went on, "others in the congregation begin to equip themselves, each to do one of the many other ministry functions: teaching, preaching, leading Bible study, visiting, and so on. Instead of using the great talents of our laity in Mickey Mouse ways, we're giving each person the chance to learn to carry on one function of ministry, well."

Sacramentalists and lay ministers receive continuing supervision and support from Alaska's 18 seminary-trained priests. In larger congregations, sacramentalists celebrate the Eucharist as they are needed, in order that the priests-in-charge can serve on travelling back-up teams.

The conference heard the Rev. William Wantland, a practicing attorney, describe the "continuity and stability" which have developed during his 10 years as non-stipendiary priest-in-charge of St. Mark's in Seminole, Oklahoma, a church served during the previous 30 years by 15 successive vicars.

Despite an area population shrinkage, Father Wantland said, the congregation has grown by more than 50 percent since 1963 -- to 47 communicants of whom about one-fifth are, like their priest, Seminole. Ten years ago the Diocese spent $3,400 to keep St. Mark's open; this year the congregation is giving $2,400 to diocesan budget support.

The people of St. Mark's offer their community a kindergarten, Seminole-speaking public school teachers' aides, and volunteer work with juvenile offenders.

Yet another approach to small community ministry -- regional structures where seasoned clergymen oversee a number of congregations -- was detailed to the conference by three priests.

The Ven Richard L. Wilson of Lubbock outlined his work in the upper panhandle of Northwest Texas and adjacent small towns in Oklahoma and Rio Grande Dioceses. Arch- deacon Wilson's task: "to help the people of seven congregations develop and share strengths and begin to see what they c:n do better together than separately. "

He has instituted a clericus, area conferences, pulpit and altar exchanges, joint church school teacher training, and a lay school of theology. Episcopalians across the area gather each year for a Rogation Day observance; a Panhandle Sunday when they "meet and greet, join in the Eucharist, then mingle at a barbecue ;" and a harvest festival when they place on the altar "objects representing their thankfulness -- everything from diapers to barbed wire. "

The Rev. Spencer R. Quick of Owensboro, head of the experimental West Kentucky Ministry Plan, said his job is "to see to what degree one full-time person can effect congregational renewal within five years in 19 churches. " Funded by a foundation grant, Father Quick began by offering training skills to the laity. "We discovered," he said, "that, helpful though group skills are, our people needed even more to be strengthened in the spiritual dimension. " Two ecumenical cursillos have been held and a third takes place shortly, all staffed by area Roman Catholics.

Rural dean the Rev. Donald L. Wright of Java, a Church Army captain, oversees nine congregations in a segment of Southern Virginia. His goal: "to enable lay persons to discover and carry out their own ministries where they live. " No longer struggling to support full-time priests, these nine churches -- of which two are black -- gave a healthy $4,000 to diocesan budget purposes this year, the Rev. Capt. Wright said. "We hope," he added, " that this plan will lead to some kind of tying together of congregations under a team ministry arrangement. " The training course for lay readers which he developed from his Church Army background has been so well received that it has been adopted for use across the whole Diocese.

A strong statement of the theology undergirding lay ministry came to the conferees from the Rev. Dr. Charles L. Winters, Jr., of the seminary faculty at Sewanee's University of the South.

" If we are to 'edify ' the Church, as our baptismal doctrine declares we are to do, " Dr. Winters said, "we must build up, inform, make aware, and expand the horizons of all our people, not only those preparing for holy orders." He insisted that "ministry in today's secular culture, if it is to be effective -- let alone true -- has got to be the ministry of laity, not simply of hierarchy. "

Dr. Winters cautioned against mistaking custom -- the custom of ministry centered in the ordained -- for dogma. He proposed a restoration of something like the ancient catechumenate which required of persons seeking Holy Baptism much the same in-depth scriptural study, examinations, and solemn public commitment to Biblical tradition which the Church now requires only of candidates for ordination. "We need what the Church had in its first few centuries : a thoroughly ordainable laity. Our seminaries must work toward this end, both on and off campus. "

Members of the conference spent some eight hours working through a learning exercise devised for diocesan leaders who set and implement policy.

Entitled Developing New Directions (DND), the intricate device is geared to give its users a better understanding of how a diocese works and how it can work more effectively than it does.

DND was created under contract from Roanridge, the Episcopal training center which since 1947 has been the hub of a widely ranging variety of thrusts toward renewal in rural and small-town ministry. As Roanridge executive director the Rev. Dr. H. Boone Porter, Jr., put it, "We've gathered a considerable body of constructive lore here for people in positions of responsibility across the Church to share."

The creators of DND, Episcopal priests Richard Tombaugh and Richard Kirk of The Center for Simulation Studies in St. Louis, spent a year and a half on its design, building in factors which demonstrate how a decision in one area of diocesan life brings often overlooked consequences: in other program, budget support, and the general feeling tone of both clergy and lay people toward the diocese of which they form a part.

Which options prove more helpful than others in setting goals and strategies? How to involve personnel, reach decisions, adjust budget, gain rather than lose constituency support? An ingenious system kept plusses and minusses in all parts of the big picture in clear sight via white and red plastic counters, as each nine-man team worked its way through the frustrating and fruitful equivalent of four years of diocesan life.

Afterward, they spelled out half a wallful of learnings which -- though not all new -- they had found thrust upon them with new urgency and vividness during the exercise.

This New Directions conference, set within the round of daily worship, pinpointed a number of ways in which the new Joint Commission and Roanridge are prepared to serve the Church at large.

The DND simulation and specially trained priest-consultants to administer it are now available, on a contract basis, via Roanridge to any diocesan council or department. Dr. Porter himself and 11 other New Directions consultants stand ready to assist dioceses in developing capabilities for ministry in small towns and rural areas, and in establishing local training programs for clergy and laity. The next proposed stage of the New Directions program will be a training course of three weeks or longer, to be offered at Roanridge Early in 1975 for archdeacons, rural deans, rectors of cluster parishes, and other people with regional responsibilities for churches in small communities.

( NOTE TO EDITORS : Check attached list for participant (s) from your Diocese. )

[Contact the Archives for the attached list of participants. --Ed.]

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