The Loose Canon

I gave the Closing Plenary Talk for the Episcopal Church’s Evangelism Matters conference with Alex Montes-Vela. I summarized the conference and then Alex brought it all home with a challenge and a blessing. Here is my summary of the conference:

Alex and I were talking on the way to our hotel last night and he told me about meeting someone here he only knew through Instagram and the person told him how great it is to be in a place where you don’t have to explain yourself. That really resonates with me. We have spent this day and a half immersed in the love of God together with Episcopalians who want to share the joy of Jesus with others in a way that is both winsome and humble.

In recent years, we have heard “The church isn’t dying. We are killing it.” And yet in this time and in this place we have heard that Anglicans are not allergic to Evangelism and we need not take Excedrin before saying the word. This is a call to go back to who we really are. Instead of saying “The ‘E’ word”, we can claim Episcopal Evangelism not as an oxymoron. Evangelism is not about growing the church, but sharing the love we have experienced with a hurting world.

And as we prepare to go back out into the world renewed by the power of the Spirit, Alex and I want to first remind you of some of what we have heard in our plenary sessions and then to challenge you to consider how you will take this conference home with you.

Our Canon for Evangelism and Reconciliation, Stephanie Spellers, let us all know as we began yesterday saying we are The Jesus Movement: We are following Jesus and growing loving, liberating and life giving relationships with God, with each other, and with creation, alleluia! This is not a program, she reminded us, but a way of life.

Beginning a theme that has threaded through our time together, Bishop George Sumner, reminded us that sharing the Good News is not about church growth. He said we might well in our Evangelism welcome people into our church, but what we are really about is getting people to join King Jesus on his way to Jerusalem. Ride on King Jesus.

In our opening Panel Discussion Mary Parmer began a second thread woven through this conference saying Evangelism is helping people fall in love with Jesus. Carrie Headington said Evangelism is an invitation to a feast that is out of this world. Marcus Halley told us that the picture of evangelism is the cross, the nexus of God and man where we see those things that were cast down are being raised up.

Alberto Cutie said many in society have given up on Jesus without having even been introduced because the people they do hear talking about Jesus are scary freaks. So, our biggest challenge as church is what will we offer to help people want to connect with this Jesus we know and love?

Marcus Halley told us that in a society filled with fear and divisiveness, we need to trust in abundance; we have enough to do what God is asking us to do. We need to overflow into our world letting people know that you are always welcome at this table, because there is always enough.

Mary Parmer quoted no less an authority than Wikipedia in a way I found moving as the entry on Evangelism says, “The New Testament urges believers to speak the Gospel clearly, fearlessly, graciously, and respectfully whenever an opportunity presents itself.”

Then when the panel discussion opened up to the nave, we were given eyes to see the larger vision with a perspective from the Dominican Republic about how this a moment for the whole world and how much this work matters. Evangelism is work for the whole church toward the whole world. A participant from Mexico said that evangelism is walking with sisters and brothers and finding out that God has arrived first and then just being present.

We started to trend on Twitter with #evangelism16 as the panel continued. Carrie said, “We need people gossiping the Gospel.” Alberto said, “Sheep make sheep. Shepherd do not make sheep. This is a biological fact.” He was reminding us that work of making sheep is not for the clergy alone or even primarily. Marcus Halley said we need a church where everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable.
Then as we told in tweet length answers of the hope that is in us, from the nave we heard, “My hope is that the world becomes on fire for Jesus. I would not have a life if not for Jesus and so many other people are broken and need Jesus in order to have life.”

After lunch Bishop Curry did not preach a sermon. No he was clear it wasn’t a sermon right before he launched into a great sermon. He said that we may be taking part in a re- evangelization of the western world. Taking his text for what was definitely not a sermon, he chose II Corinthians 5 beginning at the 14th verse: saying that the “Love of Christ Urges is on”… “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.”

Bishop Curry said, “Evangelism is about going home and helping each other find our way home.” We got the people and the brain power, he said, and we are working on the heart power. Then he opened up a real challenge.

What if we became Episcopalians without borders? My mind was blown. We could use the money from closing churches to start new ones as we steward the money entrusted to us even across diocesan boundaries. What if every person being preparing for ordained ministry learned Evangelism as we have learned Clinical Pastoral Education? We would change the culture of the church and would change the world.
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Bishop Curry added, “I have no illusion of vast numbers of Episcopalians going out two by two with Forward Day by Day and The Living Church under their arms. But we have Episcopalians on Facebook. I know, I have seen your cats and your dogs!” To this I say, I have seen your cats and your dogs, but have your friends seen Jesus through your posts. Bishop Curry said, “This may be the new Roman highway. Facebook may be the way to help our brothers and sisters to find their way home to God and to each other.”

Then our Presiding Bishop talked movingly about helping someone find his way home. He met with a drug dealer who he came to know through his parish in Baltimore engaged in its community. Over time they shared stories and it became clear that this man who wanted out really wanted to know more than just to know about Jesus intellectually. He wanted to know Jesus. Eventually, the man wanted to be baptized. A small community gathered. Bishop Curry said that he never heard the service of baptism in that way. “When that man renounced Satan and the powers that rebel against God, he took his life in his hands.” You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever. “He was out. He was free. Jesus set him free. That is the movement we are a part of and that is what is what evangelism is about, a love so profound it can call us home and set us free.”

Archbishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon spoke of the two legs of evangelism as proclamation and mission. Mission flows from first coming to experience the power of what Jesus did for us on the cross. Then the Archbishop took up the title of our Presiding Bishop as Chief Evangelism Officer and said that if we really want to have a movement, we need to add to this by getting each bishop to be the Chief evangelism officer of his or her diocese, and then each priest to be the chief evangelism officer of his or her parish, and then by getting each individual Christian to be the chief evangelism officer of his or her family. Then we would have a movement.

During the Eucharist, Bishop Curry took the Great Commission to go to all the world and make disciples and connected this to the Great Commandment “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all mind and love your neighbor as yourself.”

He gave us a song to sing “Sometimes I feel discouraged, and think my work’s in vain, but then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again.” And I don’t know about you, but I have felt my heart revived in our time together. Bishop Curry then gave us a way of Episcopal Evangelism from the old spiritual, “If you cannot preach like Peter, if you cannot pray like Paul, you can tell the love of Jesus and say, ‘He died for all.’”

Baptism is about being immersed in the life of the Trinity, which is a life of love. In sharing this love we see that the Jesus Movement is not about bigger churches; it’s about a better world. This connection to telling the love of Jesus means, “Evangelism isn’t about Christian imperialism. It’s about saturating the world in God’s love.”

This morning after Morning Prayer, we gathered in Plenary once more and Canon Stephanie Spellers asked “Why do we need a conference to proclaim that Evangelism Matters?” Proclaiming evangelism is counter-cultural to the Episcopal Church. She then noted how Episcopalians have shied away from this work and asked us to consider why. And shouting out the answers, participants said that we have a fear of rejection, a fear of looking tacky. Hurtful things have been done in the name of evangelism and people think this is for the clergy or that you have to be especially gifted in Evangelism.

Stephanie said that what we need to get out there and tell a different kind of story. We can begin this by noticing what God has done in our lives, seeing what God is doing in the lives of others and then letting people know how we see Christ in them.

Then she led us through cardboard testimonials. I don’t know about you, but I saw how readily we could identify the pain, the hurt, the loss in our lives. My partner in the exercise and I quickly got real about some deep hurts and then the great joy we found in Jesus. I heard the level of energy go up in the room as we all shared our cardboard testimonials. It turns out evangelism wasn’t as difficult as we thought. When you see the pain and the joy on inverse sides of those signs, you see that we are less interested in evangelism because it will get people to heaven one day as wonderful as that is. We share the joy of Jesus to get people out of the hell they are living in right now.

This work of evangelism is embedded within the baptismal covenant where the baptismal candidate, or his or her parents and godparents on behalf of a child, are asked, “Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?” The answer is, “I will with God’s help.”

We know that this work is not about growing our churches. Evangelism is about falling in love with Jesus and then sharing that love as naturally as we recommend a restaurant, book, or movie. Then when we really listen to others and when nudged by the Holy Spirit humbly and gently proclaim the difference knowing our triune God has made in your life.

What I have heard is that this evangelism is a work of the Holy Spirit in which we get to participate. I have no fear that Episcopalians will hear this message and go out handing out Forward Movement pamphlets in front of the 7-11 or that you will get so inspired by the Good News of God in Christ that you will beat people up with Bible passages to prod them toward heaven. That is not going to happen. Fear not.

My hope is that we will really hear the word from our brother in Christ, Archbishop Josiah who said that if we really want this to be a movement, we have to move beyond our Presiding Bishop as the Chief Evangelism Officer. As much as I love and admire Bishop Curry, he is not Jesus and we need to not leave him alone to the work of lighting a fire across our church and then the world.

What excites me most about this day and a half is the passion I have heard, the joy in this gathering, and the hope of lives transformed by the loving, liberating, and life-giving power of Jesus Christ and him crucified and risen. The bishops among us need to go proclaim they are now chief evangelism officer of their diocese. The Rectors and Vicars need to proclaim that you are now chief evangelism officers in their parish. And all the baptized need to become chief evangelism officers in their families. That, my friends, is a movement.

-Frank
The Rev. Canon Frank Logue

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In nearly two hours of training across the two days of diocesan convention, Mary Parmer brought the basics of Invite-Welcome-Connect to the Diocese of Georgia. Her work has been to gather the proven resources which are rooted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and designed to shape an authentic culture of effective newcomer ministry. This is designed for congregations of any size. Whether you were at the convention or not, the tools to begin this work are readily available. I want to lay out a plan to implement this in your congregation.

Gather a Team
While larger congregations might end up with three teams, the work begins with a group meeting at the church in three sessions. In each hour-long meeting, watch one of the half-hour videos Mary offers at www.invitewelcomeconnect.com. You will find one video for each of the three essentials. In advance of the first meeting, download the 20-page booklet found on the Resources Page of our diocesan convention website: Convention Resources Page. This provides an overview together with checklists for each of the three areas.

Map out a Plan of Action
During the three sessions, begin to pick some of the strategies that will fit your congregation well. Mary calls the three areas essentials as churches that do one or more of these well, but fail in others will not succeed as well in attracting newcomers and integrating them into the life of your congregation. The plans will vary for each congregation as this is not a cookie cutter program, because one size never fits all very well. Instead, Mary highlights concerns and offers tools. Our largest congregations will want separate teams working on Invite, Welcome, and Connect, while most of our churches will benefit from one group working together to set out a plan and then begin working through the action items.

The One Step I Recommend for Every Congregation
They patients get to interact with people who have had heart attack, stroke and learningworksca.org tadalafil price those who had recent heart attack. However, for all those individuals who are still scouting for the right solution should not take any discount viagra no prescription decision or any step which is not suggested by the doctor. Now here I am to discuss about my own personal sample of viagra life issue, which I have been gone through very hardly and have now going fine. There are good packages (HDLs) and bad boys (LDLs). online purchase of cialis Any size congregation in this diocese will benefit from a Sharing Faith Dinner, and those with fewer than 50 (or fewer than 20) in worship on Sunday may even find it more transformative than larger churches. This might sound scary, but this is the easiest option for Episcopalians. One person needs to download the full information at sharingfaithdinners.com Gather 8-12 people for a meal. Then follow the plan in which you pick a card with a question and in answering that question, those sharing a meal with you will learn more about you and how your faith in Jesus has shaped your life in some way. I guarantee that this will be eye opening even when everyone present has known each other for years (which is why smaller congregations will really enjoy this).

There are no silver bullets and no one idea will transform the world. But you will learn more about yourself and those with whom you worship in one evening than would seem possible. Discovering how faith matters also builds up deeper roots. Growth is not only about moving out, but also about deepening our connection to God and those we already know. While that is not the one solution that unlocks all the spiritual growth we need, Sharing Faith Dinners is an important tool readily available thanks to the Diocese of Texas.

As you begin this work, let me know how it goes. Nothing will help us as a diocese set about this work more than sharing stories of how it is working in our congregations. We will want to share your stories here.

Peace, Frank
The Rev. Canon Frank Logue, Canon to the Ordinary

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Staff and volunteers move the Christus Rex that hangs over the altar at Honey Creek to provide safekeeping in anticipation of Hurricane Matthew’s arrival this coming weekend.

Having a video record of church belongings is great. Securing church property and removing any items which need to leave with those evacuating is even better. But the church is the people and in any disaster, preparing to stay in touch with parishioners is paramount.

Stay in Touch
Having up to date contact lists available is critical. Following any disaster, the first impulse is to make sure that everyone is okay. To do this, you need a system. Know who will call whom and how you will share the news if assistance is needed. If a few people have hard copy and electronic copies of your contact list, you will be able to reach any potentially vulnerable persons quickly. Having cell numbers and email addresses of members will be critical if this is to work as you will otherwise not be able to reach persons who evacuated. As a disaster unfolds, no member of the church should seek to assist another directly. Venturing into a flooded area to help may double the job of first responders. If you know someone is in need, alert emergency personnel to the issue and offer to meet up with him or her at a safe location.

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Decide how existing communications channels will benefit the church in a time of disaster. If you have an active email newsletter and Facebook page, these will be more valuable than your website in getting the word out to parishioners. Let folks know in advance that an email and Facebook post will alert them if Sunday services are cancelled or moved to an alternate location. This information should also be added to the website. Before leaving the church ahead of a storm or other disaster that comes with some advanced notice, change the answering machine to let callers know where they can get the latest information on your church.

Staying in touch in the immediate aftermath and using existing communications channels well will greatly assist in caring for the people of your congregation.

Peace, Frank
The Rev. Canon Frank Logue,Canon to the Ordinary

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Sunday, September 25th has been designated Social Media Sunday–the day when Christians everywhere are encouraged to share the good news via social media. Started at Trinity Episcopal Church in Tariffville, Connecticut in 2013, Social Media Sunday has grown in the three years since to include people of faith everywhere.

Suggestions include using the hashtag #SMS16 with posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Go even further and add the hashtags #Episcopal and #DioceseofGeorgia. Instagram a selfie with the choir or congregation; tweet the sermon; update your status on Facebook to show that you’re at church; share a photo of your beautiful building and your beautiful friends.

They cialis 10 mg make use of advanced technologies which are very useful in enhancing the overall sexual activity. This is the reason learningworksca.org buy sildenafil uk for man to be sexually happy. If you want to have prescription cialis usa a successful Los Angeles prolotherapy a try before you jump the gun and decide to have drastic replacement. These are packed safely so that they can preserve their effectiveness viagra australia mastercard within the packaging. And then, at the end of the day when you check those sites do a search for the hashtags and see how social media connects us and helps us share the good news!

To print out some bulletin inserts created by Acts 8, go here.

peace, Frank
The Rev. Canon Frank Logue, Canon to the Ordinary

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The most effective means of attracting newcomers to any church is a personal invitation from a parishioner. If this makes you nervous about being turned down, know that survey after survey shows that three-quarters of people say they would go to a church if a friend, neighbor, or co-worker invites them. The question is, “Do you have a church home?” And if the answer is no, just say, “St. Swithen’s means so much to me and my family, I would love it if you would visit us sometime.” It is that simple.

In order to make the invitation even easier, Mary Parmer of Invite-Welcome-Connect recommends printing low-cost cards that church members can share with those you want to invite to worship with you. She prefers cards from moo.com as that company permit orders with up to fifty different photos on the set of cards. This means the prospective newcomer will see your church through photos of the building, or even better of worship or another parish event. Mary offers that the many images give a chance for you to fan out several cards with photos and let the person pick the image that appeals to him or her most.

On the backside of the card, offer information about the church including at least the physical location, phone number, web address, and Sunday service times. You may also want to add the web address for your congregation’s Facebook page, if that page is active.

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We readily share restaurants, movies, and books with friends and co-workers. Why not also share your church with those you love. It is easier than you think.

peace, Frank
The Rev. Canon Frank Logue, Canon to the Ordinary

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Want to get closer to Jesus? Attending church helps, but the proven ways to really connect are in your daily life rather than in weekly worship in church. I know you are busy, but the busier you are, the more you need to carve out time each day to be with God. The proven method is simply this: Read the Bible and Pray every day. That’s it.

How not to use the Bible
The reason is that when life gets tough and we need answers, the Bible is a poor guide. The text wasn’t designed to work that way. There is no chapter or book on raising children or on dealing with problems in your marriage. The Bible is not a troubleshooting guide for life. The Bible is God’s living word created to speak to your heart each day. This is the story of God’s love for us and the story is meant to be read again and again so that we see the pattern in scripture of God’s unfailing love and then see it in our lives. The people I see who weather the storms of life well are those who have been marinating their hearts in the Bible for years. Folk like that don’t need a chapter or verse to know God will be faithful when times are tough. They know that truth in their bones. The way to get there, is to begin with baby steps.

Start small and reward yourself
Building new habits takes time. Make this one easy on yourself. If you are not used to reading the Bible, try reading your way through the Gospel of Luke. Read just one chapter each day for 24 days and you can build a new habit. Build in a reward. Read the chapter for the day and then treat yourself in some small way, such as with a piece of chocolate. After 24 days, move on to another Gospel. Once you are through all four, you will have spent months following Jesus.

Daily Offices
Central to our identity as Episcopalians are Morning and Evening Prayer, which are known as the Daily Offices. These short prayer services have a pattern of scripture reading that will have you reading most of the Bible in two years. After months with the Gospels, you will be ready for Morning or Evening Prayer.

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prayer.forwardmovement.org/daily_prayer.php
or
www.missionstclare.com/english/

The Church’s Role – Teach and Model
As congregations, if we are not teaching those who attend worship some practical ways to make our Triune God part of their daily lives, then we are teaching by omission that attending church is all there is to the life of faith. This is not only untrue, it is not fair as that sort of faith will not meet the demands of the real world. We know that daily scripture reading and prayer draw us each closer to God. Let’s be honest and both teach and model that these spiritual disciplines are important to our life of faith and will add immensely to the benefits of weekly worship.

-The Rev. Canon Frank Logue, Canon to the Ordinary

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A free smart phone game has hundreds of thousands of gamers standing around in front of churches. The new geolocation game Pokemon Go is a real sensation bypassing Twitter and catching up to Facebook in time spent engaging online. The free app created by the Google spin-off company, Niantic, uses the players’ GPS in the phone to locate where the gamers is and then makes Pokemon appear on the phone screen in real-life locations giving players a chance to “catch” all 151 virtual creatures on the streets of their town. Many Episcopal Churches (including Christ Church Savannah shown at right in a games screen) have learned that they are “PokeStops” and “Gyms” where players can gather in the real world to capture and battle their virtual Pokemon. The only way to find out if you church is in the game is for someone to download the app and to visit your church.

Turning your church into a “charging station” for players is one way to engage with gamers. As it is hot across south Georgia, offering cold water or a chance to come in air conditioning during church hours can be a way to show off your church to folks who may not otherwise find you. While this fad will, no doubt, quickly fade and likely the vast majority of those playing the game will only find themselves standing near a church in their game play, not entering one, the Holy Spirit uses all kind of ways to get folks attention. Doing what you can reasonably to welcome those God brings your way is always a good idea.

Now-a-days, it has its very common use for the impotence of men. viagra uk shop The best way to manage this condition is to work on male sexual performance and used for relieving indigestion, headaches, anxiety viagra levitra online and stress. Then he must have distracted from the implementation process if they have to struggle for http://mouthsofthesouth.com/locations/personal-property-auction-items-belonged-to-the-late-rupert-cox/ viagra cipla 20mg sustaining it. After a gallbladder removal surgery, a big number of people suffer from heartburn. discount here levitra without prescription peace,
Frank
The Rev. Canon Frank Logue, Canon to the Ordinary

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Among the areas proven to be critical to growing any size church, the most important are welcoming and following up with newcomers to get them connected to the congregation.

To assist congregations in the Diocese of Georgia with a hospitality tune up, I created a 3-page checklist, which is online here: Hospitality Checklist. The checklist takes a visitor’s encounter with your church from before they arrive until after they are home. Included at the bottom of the checklist are two other ways to put your hospitality to the test:

1. Have members of your vestry or greeting teams visit other Episcopal Churches and churches in your area of other denominations. Then have these teams return to brainstorm what was learned, seeing your own church with new eyes and incorporating good ideas from other churches.
2. Ask a person with no church to be a “mystery worshipper” and make a report back on their experience. For examples of reports see: http://www.ship-of- fools.com/mystery/

Invite-Welcome-Connect
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Personal Invitation
Survey after survey shows that people most often connect to a new church after a personal invitation from a family member, friend, or co-worker invited him or her to church. There is no better time to invite someone to church than Easter. Pray who God would have you invite. Then when you feel that nudge of the Holy Spirit, don’t hold back. Just ask.

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue

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The Easter Sunday liturgies not only represent the pinnacle of our faith in Jesus Christ, that Sunday is also the best opportunity of the year for inviting your community to worship with you. We know that many people only want to be asked and they will say yes to coming to your church. The best way to ask is for parishioners to personally invite their friends, co-workers, and family members. You can prepare the way for this by advertising on Facebook where many of these connections already are linked.

I partnered with friends around the church (including our Presiding Bishop who added his voice to kick off the English language video) to create videos in English, Spanish, and many of the other languages in which Episcopalians worship. The video is free for you to share as your congregation’s own in order to advertise your Easter liturgies. The video is online here: Your Free Easter Invitation Video. You can also see our still rather anecdotal evidence suggesting increased attendance at churches that used the Ash Wednesday Ad: 7 Lessons from the Ash Wednesday Facebook Video Experiment.

Creating an Inexpensive Ad on Facebook
To support parishioners in asking their friends, try a Facebook ad starting either March 13 or Palm Sunday, March 20. We have found targeting Friends of those who like your congregation’s Facebook page who also live within the area of your church is a very effective group. The following tutorial is provided to walk you through the process of downloading the video from this post, uploading it to Facebook, and creating a Facebook ad:
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Then after Easter, share your experiences (good or bad) with trying this means of advertising.

peace, Frank
The Rev. Canon Frank Logue

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Churches in general, and the Episcopal Church in specific, are no better, and often worse, than society at large in paying women less than men. This fact is supported by good data from across the Episcopal Church collected by the Church Pension Group and reported in their 2014 Church Compensation Report and echoed in a recent editorial in the Christian Century: The Pay Gap at Church. We do not need more data. We need to address the problem.

In the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia, we have addressed this problem directly in the past six years and have achieved equal pay for equal positions, but still have work remaining. We followed a common sense approach which will close the gap in any diocese. I want to briefly outline the actions we took and challenge other dioceses to take up this important work.

1. Name the problem and decide to address it
While not every diocese has a starting point this far off the mark, we found that the relatively few women priests in the Diocese in 2010 were paid much less than men whether an assistant or in charge of a congregation. Some men were also outliers whose compensation also needed to be addressed to begin to approach equity. I think the most important step came when Bishop Benhase named this inequity as a problem and Diocesan Council, the bishop, and bishop’s staff agreed this needed to be addressed.

2. Set appropriate minimum compensation
The first step was to update the minimum compensation for all full-time priests from the then minimum of $39,000 for salary/housing/SECA which had not changed since 2003. I proposed a new system, approved by the Bishop and Council, which replaced the one-size minimum with a chart that increased the minimum by size of congregation and tenure as a priest. That chart is shown at left.

Assisting priests compensation is set as a minimum equal to the under 75 in Average Sunday Attendance column on the chart. Two years later, we added a chart making clear how this minimum applied to part time clergy with an example of quarter-time, half-time, and three-quarters time compensation. While still low compared to other parts of the country, this chart put us closer to our neighboring dioceses of Alabama and Upper South Carolina whose minimum compensation had not lagged as ours had.

Also important is that starting in 2010, the Bishop and staff moved to the High Deductible Plan for insurance with the employer also contributing the Health Savings Account. We encouraged priests to move to this plan and later set it as our standard. In the process, we lowered insurance costs initially by 11% and have kept increases lower. This assisted our congregations with lowered benefit costs as we sought to increase priests’ pay.

3. Publish an annual compensation survey
Beginning in 2011, we started publishing an annual survey of the compensation for full-time priests. This survey went into our weekly email newsletter for the diocese and is published on the diocesan website. In 2015, we added a separate full chart for assisting priests. All of these surveys remain posted at the Resource Library of the diocesan website. One will note that the priest’s name is not listed. This was for clarity rather than anonymity. Listing a priest’s name is less important for understanding the data than knowing the budget of the congregation, its average Sunday attendance, and the number of years the person has served as a priest. The chart then gives this data for easy comparison. Anyone curious can work out who is who with little effort. This survey has also been very helpful in working with search committees to set the compensation for new calls in the diocese. (click the infographic at right to see a full sized version.)
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4. Directly address outliers with vestries on behalf of the priest
This step proved vital. In 2010, we looked at the data and knew we had a problem. In consultation with the bishop, I determined the half dozen priests, both men and women, who were paid much less than their peers in a church of comparable budget and attendance. I then called the priest to let her or him know I would be addressing this. Then I called the Senior Warden, gave them the data and said we either needed a plan to work the priest toward appropriate pay or we would need to assist the priest in getting a call to a congregation where proper compensation could be offered. We would then need to assist the church in calling a priest at proper compensation. This was always done with reference to their budget and with an eye toward moving in steps.

Outcomes in Georgia
Within four years, the median priests’ compensation for men raised 8% while the median pay for women raised 20%. These percentages are based on pay adjusted for inflation to reflect constant dollars so the increase is beyond inflation. Women in comparable positions receive comparable pay. But we all know the inconvenient fact hidden in that statement. Female priests are  in charge only of congregations in our diocese with an attendance of 140 on Sunday or less. To address this last problem, I have worked with the bishop to make sure all searches have good, qualified female candidates to consider. We ask that even if they are unsure about calling a female priest, congregations include qualified female priests in their face to face interviews. In 2015, three female priests became rectors of congregations previously served only by  male rectors. We believe that as our larger congregations interview the top notch female priests interested in a call to their church that we will make progress with this more persistent issue.

Remaining Problems
Do not hear anything written above as stating that we have solved the problem of pay inequities. We have acknowledged this and taken steps to address it, but serious problems remain and I don’t have an answer to all of them. For example, we have good priests doing great work in places where the town has been stagnant or in decline in population. The budget of the church is not going up and the benefit costs are rising. We simply cannot advocate for higher pay, even though it would be right for the priest, as the church cannot pay it. The only way to get proper pay is to move and priests can decide not to leave for another call for a variety of good reasons. So we still have many priests, irrespective of gender identity and expression, making less than is fitting for their length of service to the church and faithfulness in serving. Similarly, we have some priests making well more than others and we will not advocate for less pay. Short of a national standard adjusted for cost of living, these inequities will remain.

A Challenge to the Church
We can use the excuses of not enough data, or try to explain away the problem. But we know enough to state clearly that women are paid less than their male counterparts to serve as priest of a congregation. This is not just. We can not give away what we do not have, so we have no place to stand in a advocating for justice while our house is in such disarray. I am open to other paths to closing the gap, but feel sure that the four steps named above will result in greater equity for all priests. Given the demanding work to which we are called, the church should expect nothing less.

Frank
The Rev. Can Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary, Diocese of Georgia

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For busy families, finding the practices to nurture your faith is no easy task. Two friends of mine have teamed up to create an important resource this Lent in the GrowChristians.org website. The site launched early to encourage registrations for the updates throughout Lent and the reflections at the site have been though-provoking as Ben Irwin wrote about talking to kids about hard stuff in Lent and Derek Olsen shared why he considers taking our kids to the Ash Wednesday liturgy to be so important.

The ambitious goal of GrowChristians.org is to “create an online community of discipleship focused on the practical details of life at home.” To accomplished this, they have brought together reflections, stories, images, and recipes from a diverse group of Episcopalians around the church. The group blog is a pilot project intended to inspire “generations to come together as they celebrate the presence of God through the Christian year.”

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Peace, Frank
Frank Logue, Canon to the Ordinary

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Harness the power of a friend of a friend to invite neighbors to your congregation this Easter using Facebook. With 1.4 billion users active each month, Facebook users in America alone log a collective 335,000 years per month on the site. Your community has thousands of typical Facebooker users, who each average 20 minutes per day at the site. Even with very little time and a tiny budget, you can make an impact using a Facebook ad.

One church in the Diocese of Georgia with experience in social media advertising is Christ Church Frederica, where Facebook is the foundation of all of their advertising. The Rev. Tom Purdy, Rector of Christ Church, says, “We like to use Facebook because we can target a specific demographic of person, based on age, gender, place of residence, etc. it will even let us enter keywords that a person may have used in a comment or share from another post. So that people reading our posts have already displayed some affinity for our event or our parish.”

The church uses Facebook to advertise special events, concerts, and worship services. One recent example is that Christ Church paid $75 to run their Christmas ad for four days preceding Christmas eve. The ad reached 9,201 people. The video was viewed 4,775 times, with at least half of the video watched 522 times. The video also garnered 140 likes, comments, and shares on Facebook.

Purdy notes, “We did not have a way to measure the impact on attendance as a direct result of the ad, however, we did see an increase of about 100 persons in terms of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day attendance, or about 15% over last year.”

Even $20 could get your Easter services in front of many neighbors who might not otherwise consider joining you for worship this year. Here are the three steps toward starting your congregation’s marketing campaign on Facebook:

1. Update your church’s Website and Facebook Page
Before inviting neighbors to take a look, make sure your online presence is up to date. You don’t want to encourage internet savvy folks in your community to check your church out, only to have them find the 2013 acolyte schedule posted at your website. Make sure that both the Facebook page and website have current information with good directions, current service times, and accurate contact information. Having fewer pages is fine. Just make sure what is present at your website is accurate. If you are not currently doing so, start posting 3-5 new items each week through Lent in order to keep your Facebook page active.

2. Create concise and compelling content to promote 
Make your invitation brief and crystal clear. Use an appropriate image with the text to invite your community to worship with you this Easter. In order to assist Episcopal Churches in offering eye-catching content, www.acts8movement.org offers an Ash Wednesday video you can customize and use for free now, and an Easter video will be online February 24. When posting this video on your Facebook page, be very concise:
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Celebrate the love of God this Easter at Christ Church.
Join us at 10 am and stay for the Easter egg hunt following our worship.
or
Join us for a joyful celebration of the Good News
of Jesus’s Resurrection this Easter at 8 and 10 a.m.

Then link this brief text and a photo to a webpage that gives Easter service times and directions, availability of a nursery and other information of interest to a first-time visitor.

3. Boost your post using Facebook’s ad manager
With a Facebook post now online, you can capture more attention with a $20-$50 ad. The advertising part of this is essential. Facebook bases a users feed on the people and sites he or she interacts with most often. Post on your churches Facebook page will only be seen by about 16 percent of the people who like and follow your church page. Advertising allows you to target the People who like your Page, the People who like your Page and their friends, or People you choose through targeting. Targeting is based on location, interests, age and gender. Not sure which to choose? Try a test with a $20 ad to People who like your page and their friends and a second $20 ad targeting people who live near your church.

Make sure to use Facebook’s Ad Manager to boost your post rather than clicking the “Boost Post” link on the post itself. The Ad Manager will give you additional targeting, better statistics, and the ability to make changes to how your ad is targeted while the campaign is underway.

Peace,

Frank
Frank Logue, Canon to the Ordinary

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This Opening Presentation on evangelism was given by Canon Frank Logue
to the 194th Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia

In the brief time I have this morning to open up how we might spread the Good News of Jesus in a way that fits our Episcopal way of being, I must begin by acknowledging that as your Canon to the Ordinary, or assistant to the Bishop, my life might be atypical. After all, I work in an office where everyone on the staff is an evangelist. Let me show you what I mean:

Wait! That is not what I mean. Ignore that mean man. Strike that video from the record! No, here are the evangelists I mean:

Every one on your diocesan staff has good news to share about food, a music festival, a smart phone, a book, and even a pet. Maybe you have friends and co-workers like this too—people who recommend a new restaurant, book, movie, a type of wine, diet, social cause, presidential candidate, song, coffee shop, recipe, yoga studio, art class, form of exercise, and the list goes on. These folks share their discoveries all the time. Evangelism is all around us as we share all the many experiences we enjoy.

But when we go from sharing the joy of life to sharing the joy of Jesus, it can seem like we have gone from just talking, to preaching, or worse. This is because not all of our associations with evangelism are positive. In fact, Evangelism just doesn’t seem, very, well Episcopal:

Yet, there is a way to get evangelism right. We can talk about Jesus without sounding like a televangelist. What I am advocating is a way of talking about your faith that is just as natural and no more burdensome than sharing a new favorite book or restaurant. Speaking of your faith is not something you have to get perfect. You only need be yourself. Listen as a few Episcopalians from around the Diocese of Georgia talk about evangelism. What I notice most as how each person sounds uniquely like themselves:

We can frame this lots of ways, but the end goal is the same—that you feel comfortable talking about how your faith has made a difference in your life. And for this to work, the first person to evangelize is yourself. Begin by considering, “How has my faith in Jesus made a difference in my life?”

Notice I am not talking about church. Please know that none of this convention’s emphasis on Spreading the Good News of Jesus has anything to do with church growth. We can just set that aside. Because if you share your faith with grandkids in another state or a co-worker who gets inspired to go back to their Baptist church, that is fine and Jim Dandy. We are not talking about the church, is wonderful as church can be. We are talking about Jesus, and no matter how good church is, Jesus is better.

So the first step is considering how faith in Jesus has made a difference in your life. The second step is to see the need for sharing faith.

Everywhere you go, everyone you see is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Whenever someone else falls, remember that you don’t know what they were facing, how hard they fought it, or what you would have done under the same circumstances. Each of us is surrounded every day by people anesthetizing themselves. The anesthetic has many names—binge drinking, overeating, excessive exercise, illegal drug use, prescription drug abuse, hoarding, unhealthy relationships, workaholism, compulsive spending, gambling, the list goes on, but the dynamic is the same. It doesn’t matter if the crutch is good scotch or bad coffee, self medication can only mask the pain. Behind the façade, the deep hurt remains.
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Most people sometime between the age of 5 and 25 pick up emotional wounds that will remain festering and seeping poison into their psyches unless they can find healing. Whether the source was absent parents, physical abuse, rape, bullying, or just never matching the image in the magazines, never earning the favor of those who mattered most to you, betrayal by friends, a learning disability that caused you to always fear you couldn’t measure up. The sources are legion and layered. Without bringing true healing to the deep hurts, much pain will follow and will spread out to those we love.

True healing takes forgiveness and when possible reconciliation and my friends, while there are many sources of the shame and emotional pain that plague us, there is only one Balm in Gilead, one source of healing. We have all manner of ways of being destructive, but peace, health, wholeness, the abiding Shalom of God, only comes from Jesus.

For when our rebellion took us far from the God who made us and loves us, God did not stand back as a righteous judge, a big meanie hell bent on our destruction. God entered creation. In Jesus of Nazareth, the second person of the Holy Trinity came and dwelt among us. The Incarnation means that God knows, truly knows, and understands being human. Jesus came into this world with all of our mess, all of our pain, all the ways we let one another down, hurt each other and disappoint ourselves.

God entered into that complicated and conflicted creation to bring Agape love, love more concerned about the other person than oneself. We see that love God has for us no where more clearly than when Jesus spread out his arms of love on the hard wood of the cross, took in those who were killing him and said, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” But sin is every present and so is redemption.

Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans what we know instinctively, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). But falling short is not the Gospel. The Good News of Jesus is that we can find forgiveness. Paul also writes that “since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1-2).

Or as Jesus put it, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:16-17).

We know Jesus and so we know the source of healing, the means of forgiveness, the possibility of being truly known and truly loved. We know how to repent and turn to the Lord. We know not just the distant hope of a better life after this one, but the way to find true redemption now, wholeness now, love now. And when we understand how people we work with, know, love, might be hiding their shame behind a mask and seeking healing for their hurts in self medication that can never be the cure, we can find the courage to share our faith.

The first step is considering how faith in Jesus has made a difference in your life. The second step is to see the need for sharing faith. The third step is to be prayerful about sharing your faith and, when you feel a nudge from the Holy Spirit, don’t hold back. That’s it. Consider how faith in Jesus has made a difference in your life; see the need for sharing your faith; and don’t hold back when the opportunity arises.

And the beauty of this is that mostly you won’t even need to speak. Evangelism is far more about caring and listening than about speaking. Spreading the Good News of Jesus does not mean street corner preaching or handing out religious tracts or go up to strangers and telling them about Jesus. The best way to share the Good News of Jesus is to just realize what God has done for you and to see how others you care about might never have found that same love and healing. Then when the Holy Spirit nudges you, listen differently, speak gently.

Consider how faith in Jesus has made a difference in your life; see the need for sharing your faith; and don’t hold back when the opportunity arises.

You know you don’t have it all figured out, that you don’t have all the answers. That’s just fine. You don’t need to be a theologian. You just need to care and to listen and to love. These are not strangers we are talking about here. These are folks you already know well, and at the right time, God may just use you to share the love of God with your children, grandchildren, brothers and sisters, friends and co-workers. You are already willing to tell them about a book, recipe, movie, or restaurant. Be open to telling them how God’s love has helped you.

I want to close with a brief example of how one person’s willingness to listen and be curious changed a life:

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A sermon for the feast of Deaconess Alexander
2 Timothy 3:14-4:5

Teaching was a subversive act. Teaching changes attitudes and opinions. Not everyone wanted change. So the State of Georgia punished teaching enslaved Africans to read with heavy fines and imprisonment.

“Merely teaching them to read, ‘impairs their value as slaves, for it instantly destroys their contentedness.” Fanny Kemble wrote this to a friend in an 1839 letter from Butler Plantation near Darien. She was quoting her husband Pierce Butler. She went on with his words, “A slave is ignorant; he eats, drinks, sleeps, labours, and is happy. He learns to read; he feels, thinks, reflects, and becomes miserable.”

Frances Anne Kemble had been a stage actress that could be rightly acclaimed an international star. Fanny retired from the theatre on marrying Pierce Butler in 1834. Some years later, she visited Butler Plantation and St. Simons Island in a visit her slave-owning husband hoped would rid her of her abolitionist bent. She describes less a Plantation ideal and more accurately a forced-labor camp.

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She later wrote that Aleck “takes an extreme interest in his newly acquired alphabetical lore. He is a very quick and attentive scholar, and I should think a very short time would suffice to teach him to read; but, alas! I have not even that short time.” Aleck was smart and determined. Unknown to Fanny, who would never return to Georgia, the young man did continue to teach himself to read. In a few years he became indispensable and moved from household staff to becoming his owner’s personal aid. He traveled with Mr. Butler and was not disputed in hotels in Savannah or Charleston. Just two years after Fanny’s visit, Aleck married Daphne, an enslaved house servant who was herself the product of the overseer’s rape of a woman named Minda, from the island of Madagascar.

Daphne and Aleck had 11 children who came to share their parents’ passion for education. The youngest they named Anna Ellison Butler Alexander is the woman whose feast we celebrate today.

Click here for the full text of the sermon

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