Beating the Boundaries

John Spicer

Description

Explore boundaries in order to open them

Using the image of the traditional practice of “beating the bounds” of the parish, this book contrasts the desire to mark boundaries with God’s call to explore boundaries in order to open them. Building on visits to nine Episcopal and Church of England congregations, Spicer explores how they are opening the boundaries between inherited expressions of church and the unique contexts in which they find themselves. He argues that to beat the boundaries around their current expressions of church, congregations should (1) name a missional identity common to both their past expressions of congregational life and the church they hear God calling them to become; (2) identify whom they’re seeking to reach in the community and how they intend to do so; (3) identify what sort of new church expression God is calling them to create; (4) empower a missional leader and plan for governance issues their work may raise; and (5) collaboratively identify how to define success and how to understand what might be seen as failure in terms of common church metrics.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Philosophie et théologie
• Christian Church

Informations

• Publié par: Church Publishing Incorporated
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780819232946
• Langue: English

Extrait

Beating the Boundaries
The Church God Is Calling Us to Be
Copyright © 2016 by John Spicer
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
Unless otherwise noted, the Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Morehouse Publishing, 19 East 34th Street, New York, NY 10016
Morehouse Publishing is an imprint of Church Publishing Incorporated.
www.churchpublishing.org
Cover design by Jenn Kopec, 2Pug Design
Typeset by Rose Design
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A record of this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8192-3293-9 (pbk.)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8192-3294-6 (ebook)
Beating the Boundaries
The Church God Is Calling Us to Be
John Spicer
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Beating the Bounds, Beating the Boundaries
2. Nine Stories of Beating the Boundaries
St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Crossing, Boston
St. John’s Cathedral and the Wilderness, Denver
St. Andrew and All Souls, Portland, Oregon
St. Paul’s and the 5 p.m. Community, Seattle
Tewkesbury Abbey, England, and Celebrate!
St. Barnabas and Church@Five, London
St. James & Emmanuel and Abide, Manchester, England
St. Paul’s and Center, Richmond, Virginia
Three Congregations, Two New Expressions, and Shared Governance, St. Mary’s County, Maryland
3. Where’s the Mission in Your DNA?
4. Whom Are You Trying to Reach—and How?
5. What Expression of Ministry Is God Trying to Create?
6. How Will You Empower Strong Leadership and Plan for Governance?
7. How Will You Identify Success and Failure?
8. Beating the Bounds with Every Step
9. People Are the New Program
Acknowledgments
Many heads, hearts, hands, and wallets made this book possible. At the risk of forgetting someone, I want to thank the community of faithful people and institutions whose voices you will hear in the following pages and whose support enabled me to bring them together.
First are the people of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Kansas City, Missouri, and my colleagues there. The vestry was very supportive of my sabbatical time away and the focus of my study, and the church supported the project financially, too. Among the good people of St. Andrew’s, I’m particularly indebted to:
• Stephen Rock, who served as senior warden and uncompensated consultant for three years and was my partner in shifting the culture of St. Andrew’s toward collaborative leadership and missional focus. Great thanks also to Mary Heausler, who served as junior warden for two years. Their roles were taxing anyway, but both Steve and Mary shouldered additional burden during my sabbatical time.
• Gregory Bentz and Kathy Fowler, who served as senior warden and junior warden, respectively, once I returned from sabbatical and actually had to write the book. I’m grateful for their wisdom, support, and encouragement throughout this process.
• The Revs. Anne Hutcherson and Marcus Halley, my fellow priests at St. Andrew’s, and the Ven. Bruce Bower, deacon (and archdeacon of the Diocese of West Missouri). Their commitment to their work, in time and heart, is tremendous—and then I took off for four months, leaving them with even more to bear. Thanks to them, I could leave and not worry (much) about what I might find when I returned.
• Mary Sanders, administrative assistant to the clergy at St. Andrew’s, who has been tremendously patient with me as I wrote this book and found myself able to remember even less than I usually do.
• The members of my sabbatical committee at St. Andrew’s: Rock, Heausler, Bentz, John Walker, Sean Kim, and Elaine Crider, whose encouragement and good questions shaped the sabbatical project proposal.
I’m also deeply grateful to those who provided funding for the project:
• The Louisville Institute ( www.louisville-institute.org ), which awarded me a Pastoral Study Project grant in 2013.
• The M B Krupp Foundation in Lenexa, Kansas, and its president, Gary A. Smith.
• St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, which invested in the project from its operating budget.
Perhaps the greatest blessing of this study has been the opportunity to meet and hear the stories of about ninety people across the nine congregations I visited. Not every interview resulted in a quote on the following pages, but many did—and all fleshed out the stories of the Holy Spirit’s movement in their contexts. The following people are the voices of this book:
• Boston: the Very Rev. Jep Streit, the Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers, Isaac Everett, the Rev. Trisha de Beer, the Rev. Marsha Hoecker, Loren Gary, James Van Looy, Shane Montoya, Mary Beth Mills Curran, Isaac Martinez, Derek Knox, Annie Kurdzeil, and Michael Zahniser.
• Denver: the Rt. Rev. Peter Eaton, Kate Eaton, the Rev. Jadon Hartsuff, the Rev. Elizabeth Randall, Missy Bell, Amy Beeson, Priscilla Shand, Bunny Low, Suni Devitt, Andy Devitt, and Larry Kueter.
• Portland, Oregon: the Rev. Karen Ward, Nathan Keith, Rob Stoltz, Philipos Ghaly, Leo Schuman, Justin Morgan, and Edna Hoesch.
• Seattle: the Rt. Rev. Melissa Skelton, Paul Steinke, Mark Taylor, the Rev. Samuel Torvend, Laura Griffin, Daryl Schlick, Loren Peters, Karin Stevens, Martin Pommerenke, and Pam Peterson.
• Richmond, Virginia: the Rev. Wallace Adams-Riley, the Rev. Melanie Mullen, Brian Levey, Beth Burton, Nick Courtney, Sam Jackson, and Maritza Mercado Pechin.
• St. Mary’s County, Maryland: the Rev. Greg Syler, the Rev. Erin Betz-Shank, the Rev. John Ball, the Rev. Sherrill Page (posthumously), Eva Thompson, Tom McCarthy, Phil Horne, Les Taylor, and Tom DeSelms.
• Tewkesbury, England: the Rev. Paul Williams, the Rev. Wendy Ruffle, Graham Finch, Jean Day, Malcolm Gribble, Margaret Gribble, John Jeffreys, Sue Palmer, Lara Bloom, and the members of the Celebrate! Planning Group, who wish to remain anonymous.
• London: the Rev. Henry Kendal, the Rev. Helen Shannon, Sam Markey, Helen Davidson, Linda Cherry, Josie Poulter, Vivienne Chart, Liz Kovar, Lorraine Hills, and Vanessa Elsley.
• Manchester, England: the Rev. Nick Bundock, the Rev. Ben Edson, José Hacking, Jason Powell, Ann Hillier, Vicki Long, Beth Dickinson, Jon Parkin, Helen Leach, and Ben Jones.
And in London, thanks particularly to the Rev. Ian Mobsby, author and founder of the Moot Community, for making time to speak with me despite a scheduling snafu.
Thanks also to these people who provided direction and support in project planning:
• The Rev. Thomas Brackett, missioner for new church starts and missional initiatives for The Episcopal Church.
• The Rev. Canon Dr. Andrew Braddock, director of mission and ministry for the Church of England’s Diocese of Gloucester.
• The Rev. Dr. Steven R. Rottgers, canon to the ordinary for the Episcopal Diocese of West Missouri.
My greatest thanksgiving goes to my wife, Ann Spicer, who traveled with me on most of the sabbatical visits and who has traveled alongside me for twenty-six years of marriage. There is nothing better than having your best friend also be your spouse. I thank her for her incredible patience through the planning and writing process, for her proofreading of a book that probably wouldn’t have ended up on her bedside table, and for her understanding as I fell asleep on the couch more evenings than I would have liked.
And of course, in and through all of the above—thanks and glory be to God, “who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine” (Eph. 3:20).
Introduction
LET ME TELL YOU WHO I’M NOT. I am not a church-growth expert. I’m not an academic. I’m not a consultant. I’ve served as a parish priest for the past fourteen years in the Episcopal Diocese of West Missouri, a small diocese smack in the middle of fly-over country. I serve in Kansas City, which is a wonderful, interesting place but doesn’t exactly have the hip cachet of Seattle or Brooklyn. So, you might well ask, why am I writing about “the Church God is calling us to be”?
I started my career in journalism. I’m just old enough that in my first job out of college in 1987, as a copy editor with the Courier in Waterloo, Iowa, old guys in the composition room were still running paper copy through hot waxers, cutting it with Exacto knives, and pasting it up on wooden tables. But I didn’t stay in newspapers long enough to make the digital switch. Instead, I got the opportunity to be speechwriter and deputy press secretary for the governor of Missouri. Concerned I might lose my soul as well as my mind in politics, I found my way out, this time into medical writing and editing. At one point, I could spell any anesthetic agent you could name (though I’d had a total of one biology class in high school and college). From the practice-management journal of the American Academy of Family Physicians, I found God taking me to seminary (Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas). And from there, I’ve served a grand total of two congregations: a small mission in Springfield, Missouri, which I closed, and St. Andrew’s Episcopal in Kansas City. It’s not exactly a résumé that says “church guru.”
So let me tell you who I am: I’m a reporter of Good News who also gets involved in the story. I love to hear and share the experiences of real, live people who do amazing, godly things. Apparently something from my journalism classes stuck.
So, in 2014, I was blessed with a sabbatical to st