The problems in TEC (and most likely in your Church, too)

The Crusty Old Dean (the Very Rev. Dr. Tom Ferguson, Dean of Bexley Hall, Columbus, OH or COD) says it better than I can.  


We are the less than 1%
-In this post, Dean Ferguson explains briefly why TEC is shedding members and sketches his "Marshall Plan for rebuilding the church".


Guns, Germs, and The Episcopal Church: Manifesto for Radical Change
-In this post, Dean Ferguson describes what may be the most fundamental problem for TEC.  Based on the work of Jared Diamond, Ferguson points out that:

So one problem is taking the blips, the anomalies, to be normative.  COD is convinced that the Episcopal Church has, in a way, done something similar.  We have taken the period from 1950-1990 (give or take a few years) as somehow a normative and determinative time period -- what it means to be the Episcopal Church is what occurred during this period -- when, in fact, it was a blip, an anomaly.  

But it may be too late.  And even worse, we realize that all teh folks and all the structures who need to get it together are a part of "blip-think":

COD finds himself thinking that restructuring is so 2011.  The past few months have convinced him that one the one hand the scope of change we are looking at in the next 50 years is so profound, and, on the other hand, how utterly incapable governing structures currently are at shaping a discussion about what is needed....
Collapse, my friends.  That's what's coming. 

The worst part, and the part that makes those of us at God and a Beer take long looks in the mirror, the COD suggests that TEC:

End parishes as clubs for members with a chaplain to minister to them, set up as Ponzi schemes for committees, which sees recruitment as getting people to serve on committees.  Would many of the towns where our Episcopal churches are located even notice, or care, if they were to close?  How many of our parishes function solely as clubs for the gathered?  How many dioceses have 10%, 15%, 20%, of their parishes on diocesan support?  How many dioceses are struggling to function?  We have to change not only the diocesan structure, but fundamentally reshape what it means to be a parish and a diocese.

[Sigh]


How do we really become a missional church?


This is why it's "God and a Beer".  After reading this stuff, we need both God and a beer.