The Loose Canon

 “No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket,
but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.
In the same way, let your light shine before others,
so that they may see your good works
and give glory to your Father in heaven.”
Matthew 5:15-16

A positive article about your church in the local newspaper will do more good for the congregation than any advertisement in the paper. Getting in the paper from time to time is easier than you may think if you use a bit of creativity. A perfect example of this is a recent article in the Moultrie Observer on St. Margaret of Scotland Episcopal Church.

 The article, Church service involves children every Sunday, highlighted the role of acolytes in the liturgy. While the role of children in our worship is not uncommon in liturgical churches, it is very different from how kids worship in other churches. Most importantly, this was a positive article shared with the community. Even if a reader has a church home and so would not ever see this article and be interested in attending, the net effect remains that the visibility of the church has been raised and some bit of understanding for our worship has been conveyed.

The Rev. Walter Hobgood, Vicar of St. Margaret’s says, “The article was written by Marty Steiner, a member of St. Margaret’s, and sent to a contact of his at the newspaper.” He add that it sat there for several weeks before it ran. As for results, it may take time to appreciate what impact the article has.

Hobgood does say, “While conducting the Thursday morning Eucharist at Christ Church Valdosta the week after the article ran in Moultrie we had a guest attending from Moultrie (she is Baptist).  After church she asked me if I was the priest from Moultrie to which I said yes.  She said she had seen the article and was impressed with what the kids had to say about the service and their excitement.”

How to get noticed
A bit of serendipity is always involved in what newspapers run and how they play it. St. Patrick’s Pooler sent a note to the Savannah Morning News letting the paper know about their Trunk or Treat at Halloween one year and ended up with a front page, above the fold photo with the name of the church clearly in the caption. Anyone in Pooler, would pay special attention as the smaller town is rarely on the paper’s front page for anything but bad news.
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My wife, Victoria, and I worked for two different newspapers in the years right out of college and she later worked as a section editor at the Brunswick News. Through this work I saw how the newspaper has a seemingly insatiable need for stories about the community. I also saw how press releases get filtered based on 1) what else the newspaper already has on hand, 2) how newsworthy the information is, 3) how recently similar news ran.

Two Examples
Knowing this, you have a chance to get in your local paper a few times a year at most, so unless you haven’t been featured in some time, you will want to pick noteworthy events to highlight or give an interesting slant on a common event. For example, newspapers will be looking for stories around Holy Week and Easter. Our Easter Vigil services connect to a very ancient liturgy which is not well known and do so in ways that are very news photo friendly. A press release about the vigil, sent weeks in advance to the department or reporter you have seen featuring similar stories is likely to attract interest even in a larger market like Augusta or Savannah.

Similarly, a press release on a congregation member with an interesting ministry can get attention. Who do you have in your church that is doing good in the community? How might you share that with the newspaper. One example would be a press release on an upcoming free health clinic or a mission trip that emphasizes not the clinic or the trip, but a community members longtime commitment to a project. The news angle would be the local dentist who has faithfully volunteered time overseas or the school nurse who cares for the poor for free for many years.

The bottom line
Remember that the newspaper needs news. Create a press release that gives a human interest or news angle to something going on in your church. Send these in a from time to time, making sure not to flood the paper with releases and so making any given release easier to ignore. Be sure to mention the appropriate phone numbers and email addresses to contact for further information and provide photos or let them know when photos could be taken. The easier you make all of this on a newspaper editor, the more likely the release will succeed.

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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While I am interested in evanglism, welcoming visitors and integrating newcomers into a parish, I know that when pursued as an end in itself, these efforts will fall flat. Perhaps its just that I think we should fail when that is our goal. All of our efforts in this area from inviting a co-worker to church to advertising in thge local newspaper should be a response to God’s call rather than a response to the needs of the budget or a desire merely for increased attendance. Budgets and attendance are helpful indicators (though not the only ones that matter) of the health of a congregation, but they are not ends in themselves.

The real goal is to be hospitable as Jesus taught us his followers are to show love for the stranger. We are to welcome others as if welcoming Christ himself as Christ does come to us in others. This is a very helpful perspective as newcomers will bring new perspectives which can (and perhaps should) challenge the status quo. Knowing that God may have sent someone to us just so that we can hear this new way of looking at how we go about being the Body of Christ can help us to better listen.

In any case, our invitation, welcome, and inclusion of newcomers is not about growing the church, but about being faithful to God’s call to us. Whenever we move beyond trying to be faithful Christians to seek to grow the attendance or church budget, we move away from the Gospel and toward the business of the church. That is move God can’t bless. But when we seek merely to be the Body of Christ and to welcome others as we if welcoming Christ, then this act of Christian hospitality is something that will bear fruit.
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When working with vestries, I like to delve beyond what we are doing to ask why as I think that understanding this dynamic matters. For when we are merely looking for more pledging units or more attenders for sake of numbers, this attitude infuses our welcome. But when we move to consider these actions as who we are to be as Christ followers, then I think that this allows us to see those our Lord sends us not as dollars or as bottoms in the pews, but as Children of God in need of hospitality. That difference comes through in everything we do.

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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In December and January each year, congregations across the Diocese elect new members of vestry. Each new vestry year offers an opportunity for a fresh look at how the group goes about its work of working together with the clergy to lead the congregation. I recommend reading together Canon Neal O. Michell’s book, Beyond Business as Usual: Vestry Leadership Development (ISBN 978-0-89869-569-4) The 132-page book from Church Publishing is a quick read that offers rich food for thought about church leadership.

Michell advocates for clergy and vestries to continualy learn together as they lead a congregation as he has found that knowledgable disciples open to learning more are needed to lead a church in the mission God has for us. His approach is to foster church development rather than growth as the goal is forming “a faithful community of disciples rather than just getting more people to church.”

In order to move toward that ideal, Michell sees it as essential that a vestry get away from debating issues of spending and building maintenance. While these matter and need time and attention, the church needs its leaders to move beyond just these maintenance issues.

In Part One of the book he sets out a new way of thinking about the roles of the clergy and vestry. Then in Part Two he gives some exercises a vestry can use in working through the ideas from the first part of the book. Between the two sections, the author gives a good cookbook vestries can use to work from including Bible Studies, teachings, mental exercises and reflective readings.
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Here is a small sample (in my words from an exercise in his book): If you were beamed into your church as if sent down from the deck of the Enterprise in Star Trek, what year would you think you found yourself? Don’t concern yourself with the sanctuary and nave, but look at your Sunday School materials, office equipment, furniture and especially at your church communications. What time period do they suggest? 1950s or 2010s? This may not seem to matter until you look at your nursery with the eyes of a new young couple deciding whether to trust their infant to your care while they worship. What will they see?

If you think all this sounds like a little much for this year, consider that Michell feels it best to have a vestry do this sort of work after they get a few meetings, or even half of the year behind them.

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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Every Episcopal Church faces decisions about how we can best ease the anxiety common to newcomers who are unfamiliar with our liturgy. As someone who came to The Episcopal Church just after college, I remember well the learning curve and I had the benefit of a cradle Episcopalian as a fiancé to assist me in learning how to juggle a Prayer Book, hymnal and bulletin while trying to sit, stand and kneel at the proper times.

At St. John’s, Savannah, the Rector, the Rev. Gavin Dunbar, found the problem even more acute. As one of several congregations in the Diocese routinely worshipping with the 1928 Prayer Book, he found that even seasoned Episcopalians could zig when the rest of the congregation zagged. For example, when the bell rings to announce the start of the liturgy, St. John’s members would kneel, while many visitors would stand, look around awkwardly then join the kneelers. Wanting to live into the hospitality to which Christ calls us, the church created two attractive cards which sit up out of the Prayer Books throughout the church. One is marked Holy Communion (the early service each Sunday), the other Morning Prayer (the principal Sunday liturgy at St. John’s on many Sundays). The height of the Morning Prayer card is shorter than the one for Communion, so both are equally visible.

Dunbar notes the response of members has not been all positive, “Some people find them just another piece of paper to deal with – Parish Paper and Prayer Book and Hymnbook.” Though he observes that comment has been from people already familiar with St. John’s worship. He adds, “One further idea, which came in hindsight – we should have made cards sized to fit in standard library pocket, so that keeping them tidily in place would be easier. They are slightly too wide.” The cards in pockets in Prayer Books would have prevented them from falling out, getting set on the pews and otherwise wandering around the nave.

Take a look at some of the highest viagra for women uk quality when you buy from our web site. Storage: Sildenafil Citrate is to be kept in its unique holder. vardenafil price Look at it this way for generico cialis on line a long time. Vimax is a natural supplement to discount viagra uk enlarge penis size. In my experience as a worshipper, I found the directions on the cards simply stated, easy to understand and follow. While I preside at 1928 Prayer Book liturgies from time to time each year, I was still comforted by text of the card and imagine other visitors will be as well. I share this innovation as, while it won’t be the right solution for every church, it does raise the question, “How do we assist those not familiar with the Prayer Book in participating in worship?” This is one possible response, as are all-inclusive bulletins, or even having someone nearby assist a visitor in worship if they see the newcomer is having some difficulty.

How your congregation goes about welcoming visitors will have much to do with your context and so there is no one-size-fits-all solution. No Episcopal Church, however, gets a pass on considering the problem and thinking through an appropriate response.

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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On December 18, Bishop Benhase and I met the Rev. Joshua Varner at St. Patrick’s, Pooler. We each took a stack of door hangers inviting folks to the Christmas worship services and the Epiphany Burning of the Greens. I took a neighborhood across the road from the church, the other two went to a neighborhood on land adjacent to the east side of the church’s 10 acres.

In an hour and a half of knocking on doors, we found people home in about a quarter of the house, and touched base with close to 150 homes. For those with no answer, we left the door hanger on the front door knob. For the others, I said, “Hi, I’m Frank and I don’t want to bother you, but I just want to share Christmas service times with people who don’t have a church home.” More than half said they did have a church home, but the person answering the door at all but three houses asked to take the flyer (pictured below) anyway. If someone said they didn’t have a church, I borrowed a line I learned from Christ Church Frederica’s Interim Rector, the Rev. Stephen McWhorter, “Why would a nice, together person like yourself not be in church on Sunday?”   For St. Patrick’s newsletter, Joshua wrote the next day,

“In reflecting on yesterday’s adventures, I particularly remember one person. This person was on her way out the door, and our conversation was brief, but it quickly came around to the fact that she and the others in her household do not go to any church. I asked why that was, and she responded, ‘it’s just not something we do.’ But her tone of voice was not offended or dismissive, but reflective, as if perhaps she was thinking more deeply about the question than I could see.”

“My own thought is that perhaps this household does not go to church because no one has ever invited them. Too often we get some impression of what ‘church’ is and if we think we don’t fit in with that group, we are reluctant to risk being rejected, and so we never show up. But once invited, things may change, including our perceptions of what ‘church’ is anyway. The invitation, however, is the first, and most important step in that process.”

The dosage should be proper enough that is you need levitra 20 mg to take this medicine under guidance of the doctor. So, absent LLLT certifications or licenses, how would a potential laser therapy patient identify a competent laser hair therapist? What follows is a checklist of things to consider. prescription free levitra online cialis https://pdxcommercial.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/1705-N-Willamette-Falls-Dr.-Brochure.pdf Out of these men, 30% men had vitamin D deficiency. These medicines are rendered much effective approach cialis price to treat the critical condition of men. I spent years at King of Peace sowing these door hanger seeds on houses near the church in the week leading up to Christmas and Easter. I have found it easy to do with everyone being very polite and at least not seeming to mind the low key approach. While I some people did show up at King of Peace after meeting me at their door, this was admittedly rare and it never occurred on the Christmas or Easter after I met them. Mostly these are brief encounters, with the occasional longer conversation. In Pooler this time, a recent immigrant from Vietnam invited me in to sit down and to meet his wife and granddaughter. He was thankful to have a guest. With his poor English and my lack of Vietnamese, I didn’t stay long, but he seemed delighted.    I have found that if knocking on doors is combined with other methods of getting the word out, including advertising, but most importantly invitations from parishioners to their friends, co-workers and family, it is a low-cost way to raise awareness about your church. Everyone I spoke to knew right where St. Patrick’s is located as one entrance to the neighborhood hits the main road across the street from the church, but not one person I spoke with knew anything about the church.

Whether they come to the church or not, they now know that they are invited to worship, and as Joshua notes above, that is no small thing to accomplish. We marked a map to keep up with the houses we contacted this time. We’ll take up the work again later. I look forward to going out with Joshua again just ahead of Easter.

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

Click on the door hanger image pictured here to see the item for sale at Outreach Marketing website alongside other relatively inexpensive designs.

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A common pattern for vestries has the group spending a fair percentage of meeting time in going over the financial reports of the congregation. While oversight of the finances is critical, spending more time in meetings discussing the report may not make for better oversight. I suggest three changes to how and when your congregation reports on its finances that can improve the quality of vestry discussion of the church’s revenue and expenses.

The first is simply to time the vestry meetings so that every member can receive the previous month’s statement one week before the meeting. Then add the expectation that any questions about the statement will be addressed to the treasurer in the week prior to the meeting. This means that you won’t need to waste time asking why insurance expenses are down only to discover that this is paid quarterly and the report is merely reflecting that the May statement shows five months budgeted and only the one quarterly payment made. It looks like the expense is down, but the next month’s report will show insurance exactly in line with the budget. This is easily cleared up in advance and need not sidetrack the vestries larger work with the picture of the congregation’s financial health.

The remaining two suggestions are based on getting monthly financial reporting in line with the lived experience of running the church. Rather than budgeting a total number for every line item and then dividing by twelve to create the monthly reports, use knowledge of when the revenue is anticipated and expenses are due in creating the monthly reports.

For example, the reports can show $0 for insurance in January and February and then $867.36 for March if your quarterly insurance payment is due that month. By taking the few line items which spend in such predictable ways and reflecting that knowledge in the reports, you will give a clearer picture of where expenses stand year to date in any given month. It is not necessary to spend a lot of time on this as it will only matter for large line item expenses which follow a pattern other than spending 1/12 each month. This is a relatively quick fix to make your expense budget more transparent.
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Likewise, churches have predictable patterns of revenue which can enter into the calculations. Prior to seminary, I served on the vestry of St. Peter’s Church in Rome, Georgia. That church, like most congregations found a predictable pattern of lower giving in the summer and a larger amount coming in each December, nearly double most of the months of the year. A previous vestry member had analyzed five years worth of monthly revenue reports and discovered a predictable trend. This was used to generate a monthly target figure based on that pattern of giving. This kept the vestry less anxious in the summer (as long as we held to previous summer experiences and didn’t do worse). It also meant that we could communicate with the members directly about the need to give at the year end as they had in previous years.

Whether you follow these suggestions or not, vestry members should try to find ways to encourage their conversations away from the details of the budget when meeting together and to keep on the big picture. The more time spent on each tree, the less time there will be to manage the forest. The goal of the clergy and vestry should be to always be able to keep the bigger picture in view in when providing oversight to a very detailed task.

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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Churches have a well-documented tendancy to say the seven last words for an organization, “We never did it that way before.” What is less appreciated is the trouble with saying, “We tried that once and it didn’t work for us.”

If your congregation tried something that didn’t work, it may well be that whatever it is is not for your group. But sometimes I hear from a congregation that they tried a second service or some outreach ministry that failed only to learn that this was twenty years ago, or that it was tried with no real leadership and little buy in from the congregation. There can be all sorts of reasons why some great idea fails to get off the ground. And in the church we can be more than a little risk averse. Suceeding always means that there will be failures along the way. Understanding why something didn’t work is an important part of the learning.

The Need for a Postmortem
Following any new event or months into the launch of a new program, it’s time to step back from the doing of the event or program to assess how well it met objectives and why. For example, following the first Trunk or Treat at King of Peace, all of us knew the turnout wasn’t what we hoped for, but it took a little work to think about why that happened and to plan for how to improve things for the next year. If we had just done the event, without stopping to reflect on what happened and why, it would have been easy to simply say that we had tried it and it didn’t work for us. Nine years later, the event thrives in part because of the assessment and the changes made which more closely involved the preschool and the Scout troops and transformed the event.

Expressing online cialis http://appalachianmagazine.com/navy/ love is most stunning factor to complete. The implementation and adoption of the generic cialis online significant issues. Drug addiction: Getting addicted to drugs also is a reason for erectile dysfunction in male and you india viagra for sale don t have to worry much. Natural supplements can also give them the best administration in the ordine cialis on line business helps to achieve a top level contrasted with other kamagra dropshipper. No matter whether a program or event is a clear winner or fails to work in the way you hoped, assessing what happened, how it met your objectives and what you can learn from it is vital. Here in the diocesan office, we accomplish this by surveying after events to collect data on how we did. We then use that input to shape future events. This way we have been able to improve Clergy Conferences, Diocesan Conventions and our Wardens and Treasurer’s Workshop to name a few.

Trying Old Things Anew
Whether its adding a worship service, a ministry or an event, any time you hear others saying, “We tried that and it didn’t work for us” pay attention. It may well be that this is an idea that won’t work in your context. It may also be an opportunity to spend time figuring out what went wrong last time and whether the context has changed, or any other key dynamic is different. It may well be hidden within the things your congregation has done before is a great idea that needs nurturing rather than tossing out. In any case, you’ll be better served by not just moving on, but by stopping to ask some questions, understand what happened, and discuss what you can learn from the past experience.

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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It is difficult to imagine something further from what someone thinks of when asked to describe “The Episcopal Church” than knocking on doors. This hit home for me when planting King of Peace in Kingsland. One homeowner opened the door of his impressive home on a golf course, saw me in my clerical collar and laughed out loud. He was a Church of God pastor who saw an Episcopal priest knocking on his door as the surest sign of the End of Times.

To be sure, this work is not for everyone, but before you dismiss the idea of going up to neighbors houses to talk about Jesus, it might be best to discover what you are missing. I recommend the Rev. George Martin’s field tested, highly practical guide Door-to-Door Ministry: The Easy Way to Make Friends for Your Church which is available as a Kindle book from Amazon.com for $4.99.

Martin is an Episcopal priest, best known for having created the Church Ad Project which created such classics as “Jesus Died to Take Away Your Sins, Not Your Mind” or the image of a stuffed bunny with the text “Has the True Meaning of Easter Gotten a Bit Fuzzy?”
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George has spent decades working on conversational evangelism and he distills his advice into this one slim volume. Bishop Benhase and I are taking this work seriously enough that we’ve scheduled to spend a December day knocking on doors in Pooler together with the Rev. Joshua Varner, the vicar of St. Patrick’s. We’ll split up, and put shoe leather to payment to see if we can make friends for our mission in that city. We’ll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, don’t wait for us. Download Martin’s book, put it into practice and let us know your results. Comparing our growth trends with those of our neighboring Mormon churhes suggests Martin is on to something.

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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Vestry elections are coming up for all our churches between first Advent and the end of January, which is the time set aside for annual meetings of a parish. This makes this the perfect time to consider vestries, what they are for and how to support them in their work. Last week I wrote What’s a Vestry to do? on the role of vestries. in The Episcopal Church. This week, I want to consider your role as a church member as concerns the vestry.

The Ministry of Lay Persons
The catechism lays out the ministry of lay persons as, “The ministry of lay persons is to represent Christ and his Church; to bear witness to him wherever they may be; and, according to the gifts given them, to carry on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world; and to take their place in the life, worship, and governance of the Church.”

As a church member, you are to take your place in the governance as well as the life and worship of your church. Obviously, not every member can serve on the vestry, but that doesn’t let you off the hook from discerning whether this is something God has for you and if not for you, than who should you encourage to stand for election?

Discerning Who Should Run for Vestry
Every congregation needs new persons to step forward to stand for election. This is particularly true with younger members. Our canons permit vestry members to be as young as 18, but seldom does a vestry have anyone under 30, and more often the bulk of vestry are retirees. Each congregation needs a variety of people and perspectives working faithfully in leadership alongside their priest to make decisions which impact both the business and spiritual side of church life. You should prayerfully consider the mix of gifts and experience which would make your vestry most representative and productive. As a congregation will have difficulty in being better than its vestry and so who is selected matters more than first meets the eye.

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The Priests and Vestry We Deserve
We get the priests and vestries we deserve in that if we pray for and support them, the priest and vestry will be better able to do the work to which they are called. If we undermine or ignore them and then complain about the results, we’ll also get what we deserve. I encourage prayer and support as well as discernment about who to call, not just because it makes for a healthy congregation life, but because prayerful, encouraging people is who we are called to be as Christians. This is just how that plays itself out in the governance of our congregtations.

Bishop Benhase has offered a useful Vestry Job Description which I commend to your reading and then to your prayers and discernment. This file is also available as a Word document to be tailored by your vestry to its particular situation: vestryjobdescription.doc

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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A Vestry Meeting – Something Wrong with the Accounts by  John Ritchie, Royal Academy, 1867

I’ve heard it said that nine out of ten Episcopalians don’t understand what a vestry does and that the number goes up to ten out of ten if one only polls former members of vestry. And yet we are not a congregational church and in our representative form of church governance, the Rector, Wardens, and Vestry acting together is the group with the authority to make decisions for a congregation. The vestry matters and, as I noted in a recent column (Vestries must be the church they wish to lead), it is difficult for a congregation to be better than its vestry in most areas.

Origins
The history of church vestries begins with a 1598 decision to have groups of lay leaders in each English church charged with overseeing care for the poor of the parish (meaning the geographic area and not just those who attended their parish church). That met where and as needed, but traditionally in the vestry of the church. While a 24-person self-perpetuating vestry was common, so also were open vestries made up of all householders in the parish and so some women.

Puritans saw the vestry system as a way for lay persons to acquire church authority. Because of the indifference of the king, vestries began selecting rectors by 1630. And in 1643, Virginia legislature abdicated its involvement in rector searches in favor of vestries. This was not a uniform practice. The colonial trustees selected rectors in the Colony of Georgia. Vestries pushed for more authority and by 1804 the life tenure of rectors, who could only otherwise be removed for grievous offense, was replaced with a canon that allowed vestries to appeal to the bishop for removal for cause.

The founders of The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America believed in representative government rather than pure democracy. They gave the authority to the Rector, Wardens and Vestry acting together on behalf of the congregation.

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The Canons (or regulations) of The Episcopal Church state, “The vestry shall be agents and legal representatives of the Parish in all matters concerning its corporate property and the relations of the Parish to its clergy.”

It is best not to overread this canon to limit the role of a vestry as priests are not in charge of only spiritual matters and vestry responsible for business alone. The priest in charge of a congregation has a responsibility to oversee the business side of church life and likewise the vestry are called by the Holy Spirit through the election process to assist in the oversight of the ministry of the church. A priest not concerned with finances is not being faithful to the charge entrusted to her or him and a vestry that only does business, with no reference to the spiritual life of the congregation, is likewise abdicating a significant part of its task of leadership. (at right, the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost)

While a mission congregation’s vestry acts as a council of advice with less authority in some matters than a parish vestry, for most decisions about the congregation’s life, their authority is the same and so the above applies equally. In every congregation, we should appreciate that vestries came about not by accident, but in response to a need for the laity of the church to have voice and decision making authority in their church.

Next week, I will complete this two-part article on church vestries with a challenge to make sure your vestry represents the people and perspectives of the congregation.

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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Anyone who has followed the church in the news knows that stories of funds given by the faithful to the glory of God being embezzled or misused are a staple. This news breeds distrust, especially among those who are already concerned that the church just wants them for their money. Breaking down the wall of excuses that keeps someone from getting involved in a church means building up their trust about the way finances are handled. Keeping all the processes around money open and transparent is not only something we should all expect of the church, doing so will also help build this trust and can remove an obstacle to growth.

A congregation should have in place proper controls about how money is handled from the offering to the bank and out from the bank to pay for expenses. The basic rules are two unrelated people count the money who are not otherwise involved in the finances. Deposits are recorded by someone other than the person who writes the checks. Someone other than the treasurer sees the banks statements each month and verifies the statements on all accounts using the church’s Employer ID Number, which functions like a Social Security number for your congregation. Good practice also means publishing this periodically so all who are interested may know the policies. Monthly financial reports should be posted where anyone interested can see them. The Diocese practices this by posting all quarterly reports online about 30 days after the close of the quarter.

A good, but daunting, guide to best practices is published by The Episcopal Church and available online free at this link: Business Manual of Church Affairs This lengthy tome covers everything and should not be read cover to cover so much as used as a reference. Reading the whole thing word for word is known to induce nightmare, while using the manual as a reference brings order.

Ensure no damage or dysfunction of the men who are healthy enough to attempt sex. viagra free sample For example the kids might enjoy tadalafil 20mg india seeing the Becky Adams Workshop. Don’t hesitate to discuss your erectile dysfunction problem downtownsault.org viagra no prescription uk and this helps the aged people but even young can use this medicine as well. How Is Andropause Defined?Wikipedia is an online sort of dictionary where all soft cialis pills click description now terms and definitions can be found and it stated that Adropause is a phenomenon similar to the female menopause “Men-O-Pause” funny isn’t it? Here we go again and no real definition. Letting everyone know how the money is counted and deposited and how expenses are approved and paid may seem like something only vestry need to know, but it is difficult to build trust if everything seems to be handled by a few who know everything. Publishing the policies and building confidence that they are followed matters to all who give to the church.

As stewardship season is drawing to a close and annual meetings are approving budgets, now is a good time to publish in your newsletter a brief overview of how the church handles its funds. While this may seem to have nothing to do with evangelism, making sure someone finding their way back to God knows that they can trust the church with the money entrusted to them may be exactly what is needed to break down that last barrier keeping them out of church.

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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Alongside of our Diocesan Office on Bay Street in Savannah, a couple of rangy mulberry trees thrive despite frequent cutting by the power company. The mulberry is a tree with roots in Savannah going back to the arrival of the Anglican experiment that founded the colony in 1733, and its story points toward how we might picture the church today.

The Rev. Thomas Bray served only two and a half months as a priest in Maryland before returning to England. Back in England, Bray ministered in prisons by offering beef and beer dinners to prisoners on Sundays. Young James Oglethorpe helped with the ministry and went on to create a Christian utopia in Georgia with the ideal of no slaves or lawyers, and no accumulation of land beyond 150 acres per family.

On arrival, the Trustees Garden was created as a deomnstration garden to experiment with crops and farming methods. The mulberry was grown in hopes of establishing a silk trade from the new colony. The demonstration plot proved more successful at growing cotton, peaches, and rice than the hoped for mulberries, grapes and olives. Since 1956, the Diocese of Georgia has housed its Bishop’s office in a humble two-story brick building on the site.

The kingdom of God could use some demonstration plots. This is the connection between the history of Trustees Garden and the future of our Diocese. I was reminded of this by Dr. Dwight Zscheile’s presentation at last week’s clergy conference. Dr. Clarence Jordan also used this image in founding Koinonia Farms outside of Americus, Georgia. The idea is to carry out the Christian faith in some places in such a public way that others see the Gospel of Jesus Christ being lived out today.

Having the penis with good growth makes you feel proud and gives the sildenafil india wholesale pleasure to your partner in a better way. This medicine, that is specially designed for rejuvenation of men are now available worldwide for any one to experiment with. aimhousepatong.com generic tadalafil from india However for people who appear to have more links and pages than it actually has, or it gets links by scraping sites for buy generic cialis blog comments, trackbacks, guest-books. It has natural aphrodisiacs and no prescription viagra potent herbs to cure low libido related problems in women. How might your congregation be a demonstration plot for the Kingdom of God? First, you would need to be living out the love of God as revealed in Jesus Christ in such a way as to get others thinking. For example, at Koinonia Farms, this was done through an integrated community at a time when segregation by race was the norm in Sumter County. Out of that plot grew the Cotton Patch Gospel, birthplace of Habitat for Humanity, Jubilee Partners, Prison Jail Project, Fuller Center for Housing and other ministries.

Second, “demonstration plots” are created in public places so that farmers can watch the progress of the crops or methods used in the experimental garden. This would mean that the work going on would have to be shared with the public as we can’t lead by example unless others know the example we set. One way to do this is through sponsoring Episcopal Service Corps, as we will be doing through the Campaign for Congregational Development. Having a group of young persons living in Christian community out working in the neighborhood where they live could form one small example of a public garden for the Kingdom.

How might your congregation live out the Gospel in a way the neighbors will notice, not for the sake of your church so much as for the sake of the Gospel?

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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Sex and religion make cozy bedfellows in the series of six Starbridge novels by Susan Howatch. The books are the perfect antidote to the literary legacy Bishop Benhase acknowledged and bewailed in his latest eCrozier Kill George Herbert? The problem our bishop notes is the ideal of a priest as “omni-present, omni-competent, and omni-affirming.”

Following a 1980 move to live in the shadow of Salisbury Cathedral, Susan Howatch experienced a spiritual epiphany. This lead to her writing the series of novels which are set in the fictional Diocese of Starbridge and begin in the 1930s. In each novel, the theological struggles of the times are viewed through the lives of very real, and therefore flawed, priests and bishops who seek to follow God’s leading. Unlike the writings of George Herbert with an idealized priesthood of visiting parishioners every morning and settling in to write metaphysical poetry each afternoon, the priests and bishops of Howatch’s imagination struggle with the shadow side of their God-given gifts and human frailties.

Lest my headline be hyperbole, Glittering Images does feature the carnal struggles of a widowed cathedral canon who fights his inner demons while trying to burnish the image he presents to the world. And yet, even as the characters’ flaws have some tragic consequences through the series, they never lose site of the ideal. For example, in wondering whether a woman he is deeply attracted to is suitable, Canon Ashworth thinks, “No matter how strongly I felt that Lyle was right for me I would have no choice but to accept that she was wrong if I had uncovered evidence that she was not devout. How could one live in the closest intimacy unless she was able to understand the fundamemtal force in one’s life. An attraction of spiritual opposites was a disaster for any clergyman.”

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Howatch deals with the real inner turmoil behind the glittering images and glamorous powers that might help a promising young man (remember the time period) rise in the ranks of clergy. The solution in the novels, as in life, is to drop the mask and live the authentic life to which God has called you. This is true whether that calling is as a firefighter, sailor or teacher as much as for a priest. We are never called to be omnipresent or omni-competant and rathering than omni-affirming, sometimes God comes not with a pat on the back, but with a tough word and difficult consequences for our choices. Yet these novels reveal that God can redeem our faults. We are not to achieve perfection, but to be real and faithful and when we fall short, to repent and return to the Lord.

The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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Last week, I shared how the priest and vestry must embody the change they wish to see in their congregation. This week, I will map out a simple strategy for setting one or two goals and then following through on them to make a difference in your church. The following exercise is intended to be undertaken by a vestry soon after its election, most hopefully at a vestry retreat.

The priest (whether rector, priest-in-charge or vicar) and vestry should begin by brainstorming what needs to change for the congregation to be even more vital than it is now. Take all answers without judgment, getting as many ideas up as possible. The concerns can be quite broad, such as “increase attendance” or specific such as “hire a nursery worker instead of using volunteers.”

Next give the priest and each vestry member five stickers to use in voting. Each vote could go to a different priority or all five could be placed next to one concern. After giving space for the voting, talk about the findings. Work toward a consensus on one, or at the most two, areas of concern. They do not yet have to be narrow in focus. After the one or to areas are named, they will need to be focused to one very clear relatively small change.

One example is a vestry decides that participation at events other than worship is an issue. If this is the broad concern that gets the most energy for tackling, the vestry can begin work at the retreat. In this case, it would mean working through the annual calendar, making some tough decisions to discontinue some events that have outlived their time. Then comes the looking at what to add. Next the task is to set some clear goals, usually just one or two positive changes, such as a commitment to add a Blessing of the Animals and to enlarge the way the church celebrates its annual feast day. Decide who will need to do what to get this done and create a timetable for the work.

Along these lines, this is online prescription viagra without important to get treated by this pill. To get financial aid you will need buy sildenafil to fill your car with extra fine or extra crude fuel. It cannot discount for cialis only restore lost or deleted pictures, videos, but also songs, documents, graphic files from all types of cases related to sexual disorders and infertility with best and satisfied results. Treating a sexual disorder has become convenient with this medication, still one needs to be pharma-bi.com buy viagra online careful or pay attention if kamagra is purchasing or consuming. No matter what the larger area of concern is, the priest and vestry will want to focus so that the next steps are clear, concrete actions. Increasing attendance could end with actions steps to send mailings to those in the community requesting a change of address through the Post Office as well as creating invite cards for members to use in encouraging friends and co-workers to attend at Christmas or Easter.

Then the job is not complete until the vestry discusses how they will be involved. No, everyone can’t do everything, but if the Blessing of the Animals is going to take off, it will probably have some of the vestry taking part on a committee and others at the event. And if each vestry member can not name at least two people to invite using an invitation card, there is no use in creating them.

If you really want to follow through, place the two goals on the agenda for every vestry meeting until they are accomplished. The check in need only be a reminder of the goals and accountability to make sure the follow through is occurring, including the vestry naming how they are taking on their role of encouragement and support for the change, embodying the change as agreed.

The Rev. Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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In the past two years, I have come to see much more clearly the ways in which the ethos of the vestry can infect a congregation with hope and joy or doom and gloom. The vestry is something like a scale model of the congregation and also functions as a model for others.

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It shouldn’t startle me, but it always does. The loud crowing of a rooster each day ay 5:08 p.m. The alarm on my wife’s phone has the crowing sound set to go off each day at the same time to remind us to pray for the church. Though I am not always with her at eight minutes after five, a workday that typically has me working in the office from 8:30-4:30 with a mile commute home means I am often around for rooster’s always startling call. Sometimes we are at home talking about how our days went. Sometimes he catches us running errands. Sometimes the phone was left at the other end of our apartment and he won’t stop until one of us picks up the phone and dimisses the alarm. Each day, the rooster’s insistent crowing tells us once more that it is time for for us to pray for the the church to be roused to prayerful discernment and action.

Why 5:08? For Acts 8. Acts is the fifth book of the New Testament and then eight for the chapter in which the church responded to a culture hostile to the Gospel with greater faithfulness. In advance of this summer’s General Convention of The Episcopal Church, a move came about through three bloggers writing together about how we needed not to rush to responses with unintended consequences, but to make room for prayer, discernment, reflection on the scriptures. During the General Convention, interested people met to do just that, to join together in prayer for the church. The group referred to this as an Acts 8 Moment following the example of the church responding to the crisis created with the martyrdom of Stephen, one of the first deacons. What followed was Holy Spirit led with a church ready to be guided where the spirit was leading. I created a video in advance of the Convention to articulate this moment in the church’s life. Since then, my wife, Victoria, and I have remained involved, primarily through the Acts8Moment.org website. Part of this is praying every day for the church.

Praying changes the one who prays and I am finding the daily time of prayer for the Church to have the impact of keeping me focused on this Acts 8 Moment in a way I would not otherwise. I pray for inspiration. I pray for discernment. I pray for others to join us. I pray for us all to have the courage to go where the Holy Spirit will send us. I pray for the Church in expectancy. Each day when the rooster crows, I am reminded that we are in a moment pregnant with potential, and I hope for a Church up for being the Body of Christ to a lost and hurting world. In this, we are not alone. As shown in the video below, the same impulse within the United Methodist and Presbyterian Church and beyond. The Holy Spirit is moving. I am praying for this moment in the church’s life and I hope that you’ll join me.
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The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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For the second year in a row, St. Anne’s Tifton has leveraged a small amount of advertising money to create an ad campaign that reaches deep into the heart of life in Tift County. The church has a color inside back cover ad in the football program for Tift County High School. Despite the apparent conflict of interest of having a church cheer for a team is called “The Blue Devils”, there is genius in this approach. The church plays off the tradition of Friday night football to promote Sunday morning church.

Then the QR code in the top left takes those with a smart phone to a YouTube video created just for this ad campaign (posted below) to get a simple message connecting the text of the advertisement to an invitation to a life-changing encounter with Jesus Christ. The whole advertising campaign with video tie in cost a mere $250. The benefits my well be priceless, and eternal.

Has your congregation found an innovative way to reach its community? Let me know so that I can share it here.

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The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

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“As a form of ministry, fundraising is as spiritual as giving a sermon,
entering a time of prayer, visiting the sick, or feeding the hungry.”
-Henri Nouwen

Creating new and lasting relationships with one another and with Jesus is at the very heart of raising money for ministry. This insight, better stated than my simple sentence, is at the heart of an engaging little book with an unlikely title and author. The Spirituality of Fundraising (ISBN 978-0-8358-1044-9) is by Henri Nouwen, the beloved author of more than 40 books on spirituality including The Wounded Healer and the Life of the Beloved.

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If your church was to close its doors today, never to open them again, who would miss it? Certainly those who attend sporadically might miss the church as much as those who worship there, well, religously. But who else would miss your church? What would they miss?

This question cuts to the core of one way of considering church life. I came to this question while serving as a seminarian at St. Philip’s in Baden, Maryland (pictured here). The historically black church had an Average Sunday attendance of 44 when I arrived. During the coming year, I only recall one visitor ever walking through the doors and she was welcomed and quickly became a part of the life of the church. So, while newcomer retention was 100%, no one concerned with church growth alone would have seen St. Philip’s as a model congregation.

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The Bible is quoted by a many more persons than the sum total of people who have read their way all the way through its pages. War and Peace and Moby Dick certainly have many copies in print whose spines have never been cracked, but the gilt edged pages of the Bible surely hold the record for highest number of unread editions in print. The Bible need not be so daunting, especially for Episcopalians. As Episcopalians, our lasting literary legacy is the esteemed translation known as the King James Version of the Bible (and the Book of Common Prayer). The impulse pushing the English Reformation was not the divorce of Henry VIII. Yes, that was the driving desire of the monarch, but this made it politically possible for the deep longing for a Reformed Catholicism to be fulfilled on British soil. The English reformers were convinced that both the Bible and the liturgy of the church must be in the language understood by the people.

The Process
Try reading and reflecting on the Bible with a group. A small group Bible study makes reading the Bible both easier and, dare I say, fun. Gather once a week with a small group. No experts are needed, but the Holy Spirit. Read a short passage and talk about it as you read.

One method, often referred to as East African Bible Study is to have one person read a passage (such as the Gospel reading for the coming Sunday) while all listen. Pause and reflect and then have anyone offer what they heard. What words or phrases stood out. Then have another person read the same passage and repeat the process. Having served as an intern in the Anglican Church off Tanzania while in seminary, I learned that in the East African Revival this would continue as the group would apply the text to their lives and decide how they might live the coming week differently for having read that text. The group meeting week by week would then hold one another accountable for seeking to live out the Gospel.

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Whatever method you choose, week by week ruminating over the Word of God with a group is rewarding. This is best augmmented by also reading through the Bible in a pattern such as the one found in both the readings for Morning and Evening Prayer and Forward Day by Day (readily available in most Episcopal churches and free online). If you have not tried meeting routinely with a group to discuss scripture, know that it need not be intimidating and often leads to a lot of laughter as well as getting serious about what is going on in the world and in the lives of those studying. I have studied the Bible this way with numerous groups over time and have never found it a chore and uniformly found that God used the scripture read together with a group to get my attention in a way that less frequently happened when reading on my own.

The Rev. Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary

NOTE: Would those who participated in a Seven-Week Advent last year get in touch with me to let me know how it went, if you are participating again this year and what you discovered in the process. For those wondering, what I mean by seven weeks of Advent rather than four, please see: Rediscover the Seven Sundays of Advent.

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The reason I loathe church conferences is there is often the underlying assumption that you can attend a conference, get great ideas, go back and implement those ideas and see your church grow in one or more of the following: 1) numbers of people in worship, 2) amount of offering in the plate and 3) increased faithfulness to the Gospel. But if growing a stagnant or shrinking congregation could be solved by a conference and a binder full of ideas, then we wouldn’t have any problems.

The problem with this approach is at least twofold-there is little enthusiasm for the changes and they wouldn’t work anyway. It is nigh unto impossible for one person excited about a new “silver bullet” approach to the issues your church faces to actually get a critical mass of people to share the vision long enough and energetically enough to overcome whatever resistance might exist to change (this is a church we are talking about after all).

The second problem is that even if you could get through that first hurdle, it is quite possible that what worked for a church elsewhere won’t work for you. Why? Because context is King, Queen, Judge, Jury and Executioner when it comes to all great ideas. What works for a church in suburban Atlanta is not likey to work in quite the same way in Vienna or Cairo (yes, mean the south Georgia towns, not the European cities). It is equally unlikely that lifting the Blessing of the Crops from St. James’ Quitman and dropping it onto Kingsland hoping for a similar turnout, when the one town is surrounded by an annual cycle of planting and harvesting and the other town is set amidst rows of pine trees that are on a much longer growing cycle.

Here is my short version of a church growth conference in three steps:

1. Your church is an important part of the Body of Christ in your community.
2. You are surrounded by a lost and hurting world in desparate need of the forgiveness and healing found in Christ alone.

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3. Body of Christ meet hurting world. Now you kids go play.

That’s about it. The shape it will take in one location given the unique grouping of gifts in the congregation and needs in the community will be different in each context. What is unchanging is that despite the fact that we have a proven ability to keep the light of Christ firmly hidden under a bushel basket as if it were our own private night light, each and every church in the Diocese of Georgia is surrounded by people who have little to no use for an Episcopal Church and yet within their spirits is a deep, abiding hunger for the exact spiritual food we offer week by week. It’s not that people don’t need what we offer, it’s that we are filling a need they don’t yet know they have. So, sometimes it is easier to start with a need they can identify, meet that need and in the process come into a relationship with people who would not otherwise ever cross your threshold. From that starting point, we then share the Gospel in a more intentional way.

Getting at the answers that will work in your context starts not with yet another meeting, but with looking at where the strengths of your congregation meet with the needs of its community. In Darien this came when retirees with some free time were put together with students with low test scores. In Cordele it came at the intersection of the energy within the small congregation and the needs of folks summering on Lake Blackshear (pictured here). For the resulting Worship on the Water look for the video found in the post below.

There is no telling what might happen in your church. But whatever it is will put you in touch with the needs of your community and will start by matching the gifts God has already given your church with those needs already present in your community. The rest is just imagination and hard work. You don’t need a conference or even a consultant. But you do need a broad group of people looking at your church and its context who are willing to pray and dream and then work. Name tags and binders not included. Some assembly required.

The Rev. Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordindary

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