Neal Michell offers a devastating critique of TEC leadership in The Living Church.
He quotes TEC's Presiding Bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schori:
“That’s one of the great joys I’ve had in my first six months, getting to travel and see the health and vitality that exists in this church. I know it’s not always what you read in the newspaper or hear on the news, but it’s true.’’
But Michell points out:
(The) numbers indicate that we are a denomination that is growing smaller. Say what you will about the health and vitality of various churches, the overall direction of our statistics indicates a church that is declining . . . precipitously. Evidently fewer and fewer people want what we have to offer. Since 1999 our average Sunday attendance has shrunk by 132,134 persons per Sunday, or nearly 15 percent.
And who is Neal Michell to contradict the Presiding Bishop? Well, he is the Congregational Development Officer for TEC's Diocese of Dallas, where he helped plant and grow new churches in one of the few dioceses to actually have growth.
And, he was the overwhelming choice of lay people to become the TEC Bishop of Tennessee... but his election was blocked by anti-tradtional (and seemingly pro-failure) clergy.
Michell knows something about the reality of church health and development. Such clergy are increasingly unwelcome in TEC, which seeks to create a small club for a few like minded people. Even TEC's own Congregational Development Officer told a South Dakota clergy conference that TEC insiders are hostile to growing churches.
TEC has embraced a culture of decline and death.
5 comments:
I believe you are in partial error about Canon Michell. He is the interim at St. Nicholas in Flower Mound:
http://www.stnicksonline.org/leadership.html
Fr. Rosenbery was and is the rector of Christ Church Plano:
http://www.christchurchplano.org/about/clergy.html
"Throw out the lifeline!
Throw out the lifeline!
GC is sinking in sin!
Throw out the lifeline!
Throw out the lifeline!
'Piskies are free to come in!
apbiddle - thanks! We did confuse Canon Michell with another Anglican leader in some of our earlier info...and that has been cleaned up thanks to your attentive reading!
Presiding Bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schori, came to my town in western Kansas, Hays Ks. in an unprecedented visit. However, I left the church years ago, I did not want to raise my children in a denomination ie. episcopal, that has no spiritually. We are evangelical now, however, I could return if the church was under Anglican archbishop of Nigeria, or some other Communion. My family has given generation's and dollar's to a denomination that has betrayed us. I pray for the future.
Thank you.
I hope
Bless you, anonymous... that sense of betrayal is widespread among those of us who invested time, talent and treasure in TEC over the years!
Organize, if you want an Anglican presence where you are. It takes lay people getting together and starting something. Don't wait on buildings and clergy.
Post a Comment