TREC Report Part 1: Innovative and Helpful, or Stagnant and Gangrenous?

The Task Force for Reimagining the Episcopal Church (TREC) has issued its final report.  If you want to read about the background to TREC and its mandate from General Convention, click here.  The members of TREC were tasked with a difficult process and I am grateful to each of them for their hard work.  Their report was bound to be criticized widely, no matter what they ultimately said.

I'm going to start by offering thoughts on the first resolution (A001 - page 7 of the report) which primarily addresses theological education for clergy and encouraging bivocational ministry.

My initial thought when reading the resolution?  This is nothing new under the sun and should have been proposed in the 70's or 80's. 

Mthr. Susan Snook, one of the few successful Episcopal church planters in today's context, believes that TREC offers an appropriate assessment of where the church is today (significant decline in membership and finances, aging membership, lack of racial diversity - signs of death, in other words) but a poor prognosis:

They don’t name it specifically in the report, but many of their recommendations seem to be aimed at providing palliative care for a patient that has entered a long, slow, inevitable decline.

I think she misses the point entirely.  TREC's recommendations are not at all aimed at providing palliative care for a dying patient but are instead aimed at re-imaging the church in a way that should have been done many years ago to position it for growth, evangelism and vitality.  In a way, its recommendations are aimed at unraveling an institutional structure that hasn't functioned in a healthy way for decades and, though they didn't say this, position the church to minister to an increasingly non-Christian culture in much the same way that St. Paul did in his time.

Ordained clergy as tent-makers.  Churches, particularly church plants, meeting in homes or in other imaginative spaces.

The Rev. Rita Stockton reads the gospel during church service in the sanctuary of the church which doubles as her living room during the week. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and the Rt. Rev. Michael Milliken celebrated the service with Stockton.

Ministry, and particularly the ministry of ordained clergy, should be nimble and should be able to adapt to its context.  For the majority of church history, those who felt called to the priesthood were required to show competency in the required areas - but that didn't mean taking out student loans and uprooting the family to go get a three-year (or more) professional degree.  TREC says the following on page 4:

New Church plants in several places, experimental new communities of faith, and new models of clergy formation--both new initiatives at several traditional seminaries and in new models such as the Bishop Kemper School for Ministry--are all examples of life, creativity, and adaptation that are already emerging across the Church.

Are clergy formed in places like BKSM as competent as those formed at residential seminaries?  I'm not sure if there are any national statistics available on the subject, but members of the Board of Examining Chaplain have told me that in the Diocese of Kansas, there are some indications that BKSM students (and students of its predecessor institution) get higher scores on the GOEs than those with an MDiv.  And they are formed and educated while keeping their full-time jobs without having to incur debt.

My friend Fr. Jared Cramer offers these comments and questions:

My significant disagreement with the report was its support for bi-vocational clergy as a part of the wave of the future—this despite the fact that we've been doing it for forty years, albeit begrudgingly. I argued that this model should not simply be held up, but that it is time for a critical analysis of whether or not it actually works. Does it have a positive effect upon congregations? Does it wind up burning out clergy who are expected to work more than they are compensated? [emphasis mine]

When I think of the 4 bivocational priests that I personally know, I see a life of vital priestly ministry that engaged with the culture in a way that would never have been possible if they had not had a vocation outside the church (one was an engineer, another a hospital administrator, another a school teacher, and another an investment fund manager).  I've heard a couple of them say that they've been treated poorly by full-time clergy from time to time throughout their life because they don't have an MDiv, but I've never heard them say that they felt burnt out or that they wish they had been compensated more for their work as a priest.  Maybe I'm not seeing it, but I don't see any indication that anyone related to the institutional church allowed them to become bivocational priests begrudgingly.

The whole church, acting through General Convention via lay and ordained deputies, specifically asked this group to do their work.  The church identified that we have significant problems, asked a representative group to come up with recommendations for a solution, and here we are.  Though we should of course look at their conclusions and recommendations with a critical eye, we should also "trust the process" and lean towards accepting their recommendations. 

Don't get me wrong.  There will always be a need for full-time clergy, and there will always be a need and a place for traditional residential seminaries with ATS accreditation.  TREC is urging the church to consider re-thinking the idea that this is the norm and is encouraging us all to look at new ideas and new opportunities. It's time to restructure The Episcopal Church in such a way that we are nimble and able to do innovative ministry in the 21st century.  It's time to focus on evangelism and think outside of the box in new ways.  Will we accept this calling?  Or will there be hand-wringing and digging-in-of-the-heels as the institution fights to resist change?