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Conference Shapes Congregational Vision For Church

Episcopal News Service. April 13, 1989 [89071]

ST. LOUIS (DPS, Apr. 13) -- From March 29 to April 2, nearly 300 people from 74 dioceses in the Episcopal Church gathered in St. Louis to help shape a vision for the Church of congregations as apostolic communities, in which members could be strengthened to take their faith into their homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces.

"Congregations as Apostolic Communities" proved to be what its designers had envisioned -- a major national conference in the life of the Church. As such, participants struggled to hear each other and to reach areas of consensus on issues that were by definition controversial.

"This is a deep and hard topic," said John Vogelsang on April 1, well into the life of the conference. "We each have to struggle with it. The only way to deal with it is to stay in the struggle." The term "struggle" seemed to sum up what had taken place up to that point in the conference.

Vogelsang, Field Officer for Education and Training at the Episcopal Church Center, New York, was part of the design team and staff for the conference, along with people from the offices of Ministry Development, Evangelism, Youth Ministries, and Congregational Development.

At the first meeting, on the evening of March 29, the Rev. Thomas A. Downs, Canon to the Ordinary in Central Florida, spoke of a "revolution in ecclesiology," returning us from an institutional to a first-century, apostolic understanding of ourselves as Church.

Downs suggested that this revolution is changing our assumptions; that apostolic ecclesiology, unlike its institutional counterpart, stresses the integration of the religious and secular worlds and the importance of the laity in taking mission into the world.

James D. Anderson, director of Washington's Cathedral College of the Laity, picked up these themes and asserted that "we are at the beginning of a 200to 300-year transformation into the apostolic Church."

The conference offered plenary addresses intended to describe the shape of our world and our society -- the context in which Christians live out their apostolate -- as well as evening workshops highlighting existing programs and success stories.

Elsa Porter, director of a project known as "Faith and Moral Development at Work," gave the plenary address on March 30; her theme was postmodern thought and the importance of moving beyond scientific materialism to a "new construction of reality that permits the reuniting of the physical and spiritual."

Manning Marable, director of the Black Studies Department at Ohio State University, addressed a plenary session the morning of March 31 on the humanity of our social policies and decisions as a nation.

Conferees also met in daily Bible study, examining texts from the prophet Micah, in diocesan and regional groups, to work out ways to develop apostolic communities locally and in network groups concerned with specific kinds of ministry represented at the conference. For many, the Bible study groups were the heart of the conference. A participant, the Rev. Walter R. Rockabrand, rector of St. Paul's Church, Sikeston, Missouri, summed up the study groups in this way: "These groups were as diverse as the Episcopal Church is.... We indeed became a very close and loving community."

Less the 48 hours into the four-day conference, dissatisfaction and frustration began surfacing; on Saturday morning, April 1, conflict came to a head. The political ideology that seemed, to some, to drive the conference was one complaint.

"We have to be careful not to let ideology become commingled with the injunctions of Jesus," cautioned the Rev. Aaron Utti of Jacksonville, Florida. "The love of God in Christ is not ideology. Ideology is 'the world view according to me.' God is shaking up all our ideologies."

Utti suggested that the task of Christians, and of the conference, was to open up all our ideological worlds so that ideology might be "transformed by the incarnation of Christ among us." He offered Kairos (prison cursillos) and Habitat for Humanity as examples of ministries that have transcended -- and transformed -- ideology.

Some critics objected to implications in the discussions that apostolic outreach was something new. "We've been engaged in social ministries for 30 years," commented one participant, the Rev. Robert Steifel of Asbury Park, New Jersey. Steifel went on to speak for many participants who felt the conference failed to acknowledge the ways in which congregations are already serving as apostolic communities.

Other conferees were enthusiastic about the gathering. For the Rev. James Brooks-McDonald of Springfield, Illinois, the evening workshops were very helpful, particularly one on cluster ministries presented by clergy and lay people from the Diocese of Oklahoma.

Hearing how Oklahoma's Green Country Episcopal Cluster uses fewer clergy and great numbers of lay ministers to strengthen Episcopalians in faith and service in its small, rural communities was particularly helpful to Brooks-McDonald, who serves in a diocese in which nearly half of the congregations are small missions, widely scattered across southern Illinois.

There were also useful workshops focused on congregations in declining communities and new church development.

The staff, for their part, seemed to welcome the candor of participants. "We were picking up a lot of dissatisfaction," Vogelsang said. "It was important to hear those voices."

Measuring the output of the diocesan/regional groups and their plans for taking up the work of developing apostolic communities at home, the staff were satisfied with the overall results, too.

The Rev. John Docker, Coordinator of the Office for Ministry Development at the Episcopal Church Center, noted that as diocesan teams considered what they might do, they came up with specific, intentional ways to foster apostolic communities, ranging from conferences to promoting the Education for Ministry program to new teaching series and new community ministries. He said the materials coming out of the conference's discussions will guide the staff at the Episcopal Church Center as they seek to support congregations in their development as apostolic communities.

The Rev. Wayne Schwab of the Office of Evangelism Ministry at the Episcopal Church Center was also enthusiastic. "An evangelized person," Schwab said, "is one who sees oneself as Christ's agent in one's daily places -- work, home, community, citizenship, leisure, and church; what excites me about this conference is that it is the clearest statement ever by the Church of the congregation's responsibility to support the individual Christian in his or her daily places."

The Rev. David Perry of the Office of Education for Mission and Ministry thought the conference was a "major example of the Detroit General Convention's urging of a more holistic and integrated approach to our ministry development." Reflecting on the past, Perry said, "We have been guilty of 'turfism'; we have been in competition for the energies of the parish."

On a very practical and personal level, Walter Rockabrand, the parish priest from Missouri quoted earlier in this article, presented an evaluation of the conference that touched its essence. "I came away with things that I will be able to share with my congregation to help us grow more fully into our baptismal vows, to live the love and life of our Lord as the early apostolic communities did."