At church conventions, a handful gather to conduct institutional business, tackle two or three hot-button issues, vote on budgets, hold elections, and pass a few symbolic gestures. They don’t “do what Jesus did.” Rather, they lay the ground for congregations and individuals to carry on the ministries commanded by Jesus.
The all-in-one-place spectacle of a General Convention makes it possible for busy journalists to think they have “covered” the Episcopal Church. In fact, the work of this denomination — like that of any other — happens in the “villages, cities, and farms” where Jesus tells believers to go, and in the marketplaces where the people of God bring their sick for healing.
That is a difficult story to tell. It’s easier to report on winners and losers at a convention. As a result, the pulse of 2 million Episcopalians is supposedly discerned through the lens of a few decisions to remove sexuality-based barriers to ordination and human partnerships.
To be sure, those are important decisions — and to many of us, welcome and overdue — but our future as a denomination, as congregations, and as individual people of faith always lies in how we handle the marketplaces, not what we do in at a convention center.
As I write, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) gathers soon in Indianapolis for its biennial conference; it would be tempting to view it as “the denomination” gathered. Likewise with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s assembly, where some were speculating before it started that any gay-friendly policy would result in the “departing” of God’s glory.
Yet nothing is quite that simple. In fact, a focus on conventions sometimes seems a substitute for truly understanding God’s movement in our midst.
Our present moment reminds me of a cigarette ad that once ruled the airwaves: “I’d rather fight than switch,” said a Tareyton user.
The ad extolled fighting as a way to avoid changing.
The issue for Christians is transformation. Will we repent? Will we change our lives? Will we go home by another way, follow God to a new land, allow God to do a “new thing” in us? Will we accept the new “names” that Jesus gives, the new life-purpose, new attitudes toward wealth and power?
There is no harder work. Personal transformation is the stumbling block that keeps Christianity from fulfilling its purposes.
Our measure as a church, and as persons of faith, isn’t determined by the decisions we make in safe places, but rather the responses we make when our safety, equilibrium, and comfort are on the line.
When the reality around us is ugly and ambiguous, and when the sounds we hear aren’t sweet hymns of praise but cries of rage and pain and the silky smugness of power seeking more power, will we fight to avoid changing?
Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the publisher of On a Journey and the founder of the Church Wellness Project
