Crusty Old Dean has offered his careful analysis of the Episcopal Church budget, pointing out those areas where funding is being slashed, like youth and young adult ministries, and those areas where, in spite of the deep decline in anticipated revenues, spending will increase. The Curate’s Desk is even more succinct in pointing out these areas.

Crusty Old Dean has also observed that this is a budget that restructures the church in some fundamental ways, whether or not there has been a conversation about that restructuring. Power is being focused more totally in the central offices (should we begin to call it the Politburo?). He also points out a deeply flawed process.

But where do we go? The budget narrative claims that certain fundamental questions have been asked including, “what ministries and programs are done more effectively on the provincial, diocesan or local level, rather than on the national level?” As I tried to point out with my example of the General Ordination Exams, the idea that assessment of ordinands is done more effectively on the diocesan rather than the national level is patently absurd. I could imagine a very different way of administering GOES making better use of technology, but that each diocese should come up with its own process is ludicrous.

So what questions should we be asking? First and foremost should be, what is the purpose of a national denominational structure? Does it exist to create a central bureaucratic repository for certain administrative functions? Should it exist to provide, develop, and express a coherent denominational strategy for mission and ministry and provide resources for carrying out that ministry and mission? Does it exist for itself, or does it exist for the dioceses, congregations, and people who make up the church, and those people whom we are trying to reach with the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

Perhaps the answers to these questions are clear. There are certain canonical requirements that seem to demand a central office–can we imagine an Episcopal Church without a Book of Common Prayer or parochial reports? Certain functions might best be done on a national level: Episcopal News Service and other communications efforts come to mind. But what about the rest? Apparently some people can imagine an Episcopal Church without youth, young adult or campus ministries.

I think we’ve got to tackle the central problem head-on. We are a hierarchical church in a culture and world that is rapidly flattening out. Precious resources are bled from local congregations to dioceses and ultimately to the national church. There’s a tacit assumption that this is the way things ought to work–largely because they’ve worked that way for much of the last century. But in a culture in which people are relating very differently to one another and to institutions than they did fifty or a hundred years ago, and a culture where the importance of religion in general continues to decline, we need to change radically.

Our national church structures are based on a hierarchical model, no matter how much we protest that they are democratic. The problem is not just that we have bishops. We are a church based in a particular model of how a church relates to society. Unfortunately, that society has changed almost beyond recognition in the last half-century. We need to reconceive ourselves and our church to adapt to a post-Christian, post-Constantinian era. We need to give up our power and privilege at the center of the nation (including, symbolically perhaps, 815), give up the power and wealth that accrues from periphery to center, and embrace a different model of being God’s people in the world.

In the end, the problem with the budget is that it pays lip-service to restructuring and to this new world in which we live, but in fact it is fundamentally shaped by that old model and worldview and seems to assume that doing things in pretty much the same way (in fact, throwing proportionally more money than before toward the centers of power in New York and Washington) will serve us well for the next three years). If this is the budget that is passed at GC this summer, I may well get on the bandwagon of those who propose motions at diocesan convention not to fund the 19% asking by the national church.

In the ongoing debate over restructuring the Episcopal Church, there has been considerable concern about whether reforming our structure and governance may lead to the bishops’ increasing their power. Some wonder if talk about restructuring is nothing more than a power grab. Outside observers opine that among the Episcopal Church’s problems is the episcopacy itself. Over in England, they are still fighting over whether women can be ordained bishop. And over every conversation about bishops in the Episcopal Church looms the model of the Roman Catholic episcopacy and hierarchy.

I’ve been thinking about bishops in the Episcopal Church for the last weeks, in part because I’ve spent considerable time with my own bishop. I’ve also been thinking about bishops because ultimately, any conversation about restructuring the church has to include careful thought about the role, purpose, and ultimately, theology of episcopacy. So here are some thoughts.

I’m a trained historian of Early Modern Christianity (formerly known as Reformation and Counter-Reformation History). The Reform Council of Trent focused its reform efforts on the office of bishop, reorienting the bishop’s role toward the praecipium munus, the teaching and preaching office. By requiring regular parish visitations, the establishment of diocesan seminaries and printing presses, among many other things, Trent fashioned a job description for a reform-minded bishop. In the persons of men like Carlo Borromeo of Milan, newly ordained bishops could look both to the decrees of the Council of Trent, and to reforming bishops as they developed their own reform programs. Taken together, this effort was remarkably successful in the course of the seventeenth century and constituted a sharp break with the medieval past.

When I began reading English Church History of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, I was shocked by the degree to which English bishops remained more medieval than their Roman Catholic counterparts on the continent. They continued to sit in the House of Lords; there were few, if any, expectations on their work in their dioceses. Visitations were relatively rare; clerical education remained largely in the universities, and often bishops had little control over clergy appointment to parishes. In other words, there was no clear understanding of what bishops were to be.

In fact, to a certain degree, the very fact that the episcopacy came to be a distinguishing mark of the Church of England (and subsequently of the American Episcopal Church) is something of an historical accident. As late as the 1590s, the great Elizabethan apologist for the Church of England, Richard Hooker, could argue that the episcopacy was not a necessary mark of the true church. It was only because of the opposition from more radical reformers, and finally the Civil War, with the cry of “No King, no Bishop!” that the episcopacy came to be seen as necessary.

I’ve never had a course in Episcopal polity, so I don’t know if there’s a coherent theology of Episcopacy in the Episcopal Church. It’s not clear to me that we’ve ever had a coherent theology of the episcopacy. So far as I know, we have bishops because early Americans decided we needed to have them in order to ordain priests (note that the Wesleys decided otherwise). I know the ordination rite makes certain assertions:

My brother, the people have chosen you and have affirmed their trust in you by acclaiming your election. A bishop in God’s holy Church is called to be one with the apostles in proclaiming Christ’s resurrection and interpreting the Gospel, and to testify to Christ’s sovereignty as Lord of lords and King of kings.

You are called to guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the Church; to celebrate and to provide for the administration of the sacraments of the New Covenant; to ordain priests and deacons and to join in ordaining bishops; and to be in all things a faithful pastor and wholesome example for the entire flock of Christ.

With your fellow bishops you will share in the leadership of the Church throughout the world. Your heritage is the faith of patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and those of every generation who have looked to God in hope. Your joy will be to follow him who came, not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.

I don’t know how bishops think about their role. I suspect that in addition to the programs for newly consecrated bishops, much of their formation as bishops takes place in the context of meetings of the House of Bishops. I suspect too, that they are shaped by their own experiences with bishops, and the particular cultures of the dioceses they serve. No doubt those who participate in Lambeth Conferences are shaped by their encounter with Anglican bishops from other provinces and nations.

But whatever their formation in their spiritual roles as bishops, they are also shaped by institutional cultures and by the American understanding of how complex institutions run, which is largely based on the corporate model. Just as I am occasionally chastised for not functioning enough like a CEO (or chastised for functioning too much like one), the same is true of bishops.

Have we left the definition of a bishop’s role too much to their own devising? Who, what, do we want our bishops to be? Too often, I suspect, many laypeople and clergy, would prefer that we not have bishops at all. We see them as power-hungry, eager to impose their will on us, on our congregations, and on our ministry, and sucking up our resources for their own use.

We are engaging in a lively and crucial debate over the structure of the church. That debate must include conversation about what the ministry of a bishop should look like in the twenty-first century. In this diocese, we make a great fuss over the work of Jackson Kemper, our great missionary bishop. I wonder what it would be like if, instead of looking to models in other Anglican churches, Roman Catholicism, or parallel denominations, we would again conceive of the episcopacy as a missionary enterprise, and bishops first and foremost as missionaries. After all, the ordination rite begins with the claim that they are the heirs of the apostles, who were sent out into all the world to preach the gospel and make disciples. To focus on that role, rather than on their succession or authority, might also go a long way toward easing people’s concerns about power grabs.

Jim Naughton asked the question over on the Episcopal Cafe. It’s a great question, that deserves careful reflection and response. And since I’m already in despair about the future of the Church, I’ll happily offer my response.

1) Structure and Governance. Now, I don’t think it’s necessarily our structure and governance that are the problem. Rather, I’m at the point where I wonder whether we are so interested in structure and governance that we lose sight of what really matters. This seems to be what’s recently taking place in debates over restructuring the church, and as Tobias Haller points out, the redefinition of “structure and governance” as “mission.” I wonder whether there’s something in the life-cycle of institutions that suggests when an institution begins debating restructuring intensely, it’s near the end of its useful life (see my previous post on GM and the Church).

2) What is our mission? This is an important question and it must be defined from within rather than over against other groups. The Episcopal Cafe recently posted something about an “elevator speech.” Here’s what the bureaucrats communicators want us to say about the Episcopal Church:

“For those looking for more meaning and deepened spirituality, The Episcopal Church offers honest and unconditional acceptance, which removes barriers to Jesus Christ and permits belonging to an authentic church community.”

I can’t imagine anyone hearing this message wanting to attend an Episcopal Church. I can’t imagine anyone who knows nothing about Christianity, wanting to learn more.

This sounds more like a recovery group than the body of Christ to me, and ignores any mention of the brokenness that I think is at the heart of human experience and which is restored by relationship with Jesus Christ.

I experience brokenness in myself, in my relationships with other humans and with God, in my embodied experience as an individual, and in my relationship with the created order. I see brokenness in the world around me and I see the pain and hurt that bring people to the altar where we encounter the broken body of Christ. We leave the table, and the liturgy, restored and empowered for mission.

If we and our churches are places where people can experience God’s grace in word and sacrament, can experience the embrace of Christ’s love, then we’ve got nothing to worry about, and there’s nothing wrong with us. But if all that we have to offer is baptized new-age gobbledygook and battles over structure and governance, we’ve got a similar future to the one awaiting Kodak.

Megan McArdle explores the first question with reference to GM. Here’s her conclusion:

Unfortunately, corporate culture is a sort of black box; from the outside, you can’t see what’s going on. You have to wait to see what emerges.

What we can say is that this time, we’re actually going to find out. GM has fixed basically every other problem that anyone could name: Instead of a $2,000-a-car cost disadvantage due in large part to legacy costs such as wages and retiree benefits, it now has a cost advantage. The eight marques that multi­plied the overhead and muddied the value propositions of its brands have been streamlined to four. The excess dealerships have been closed.

What’s left is culture. After everything, if GM begins losing market share again, we’ll know that it’s beyond saving. To paraphrase the old joke: “How many experts does it take to turn around a big company? Only one—but the company has to really want to change.”

There’s more on change in the Episcopal Church. A video featuring is subtitled “an adaptive moment” is available here.

Tobias Haller offers some insight and perspective on the video. He raises some important questions about mission–what we mean by it and says this:

It seems, therefore, odd to talk, as the presentation does, primarily about the national budget, while ignoring the billions of dollars raised and spent by the parishes — only alluded to in the presentation — when talking about the proportion of money spent on mission. The proportion of our “Gross Episcopal Product” spent on mission is substantial — as we have to include the salaries of the missioners, the maintenance of the places in which we worship, and so on. It is deadly dangerous, and verges on a kind of missionary gnosticism, to forget that the cost of running a parish is a crucial part of its mission. Seek economies, by all means, but let us not say to the foot, I have no need of you!

I’m intrigued by the comparison of the Episcopal Church with GM. We’ve already had comparisons with Kodak, but it seems to me that in the case of the auto industry the parallel is especially apt. The corporate hubris of both and the way in which people are indoctrinated in the corporate culture of each seem similar. And the way in which whenever talk about structure begins, the infighting begins as well. With GM, it was the fighting between management and the UAW; in the Episcopal Church, it’s the conflict between General Convention and the Presiding Bishop, or the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops.