Friday, June 26, 2009

What do you want The Episcopal Church to look like?

The Episcopal Church is taking a survey amongst the rank-and-file about our vision for the future. What should the church look like in ten years? Should we focus on evangelism and diversity? Social justice? What should our priorities be as a denomination? The national church has an eight-question survey for you. Take it by clicking HERE. The deadline for completing the survey is July 28. You can read more about the survey at Episcopal Life on-line by clicking HERE.

1 comment:

Janice Dean said...

Thanks, Jim, for sharing this link, and thanks to Katherine for pointing out this blog entry to Shalom Group. I wanted to share my final comments on the survey:

"If the Episcopal Church does not reinvigorate itself by recognizing the presence and encouraging the participation of young people, women, people of color, and LBGTQ people, it *will* become an aged, irrelevant body. The Church is supposed to be the Body of Christ at work in the world, and we can only function as Christ's Body if we have representation from all types of people whom God has created."

I do not mean to be ageist by warning of an 'aged, irrelevant body,' but I do point out that church participation should be more representative of society as a whole than currently it is. No one ought to feel like a minority at church. Everyone ought to feel like they can belong. Our church should be so diverse that one could not assume anything about the background of parishioners of ours or any other Episcopal parish. That is how we can be followers of Christ and do God's work in this world.