2020 Challenges
and Opportunities
by Charles N. Fulton III
February 2001

Some think to set a goal of doubling membership is a risky goal. Some think that doubling membership in twenty years is not aggressive enough. The real challenge for Episcopalians may not be the numbers of members or the years it takes to reach the numbers. The real challenge is more likely taking seriously the change in the world outside the church.

The world outside the church is young, high tech, diverse, rapidly changing, and unchurched (and with the young often never churched). The Episcopal Church is not.

The average age of a person in the United States is estimated to be 34.6 years old. The average age of an Episcopalian is estimated to be 57 years old. In twenty years many of the “average Episcopalians” won’t be around to know if “2020, A Clear Vision” succeeded. The gap between 34.6 and 57 is often our own children. A big part of the real high-risk challenge is to reach out and negotiate how we worship with other generations who aren’t going to grow up to be like us.

Many of our churches do not have a large screen TV and VCR. Outside the church, the eye and ear have become accustomed to excellent sound and rapidly changing image. With the young there is strong indication that hearing and seeing are experienced as a single stimulus. While older people see a multi-media presentation as a nice addition in some circumstances, younger people see multi-media as essential to engagement and learning, as a language that opens up meaning. Electronic communication is a daily part of life outside the church. The high-risk challenge here is to bring good lighting, good sound, and projected still and live image into our worship. Are we going to communicate in the language of the electronic generations?

Diversity of age, of race, of culture, of socio-economic situation is increasingly a part of almost every community. Diverse is somewhat descriptive of the Episcopal Church. However, most of our congregations can claim only a token diversity. It will make less and less sense for the congregation to look radically different from the community around it. This flies in the face of the guiding principles of the evangelical church growth movement, which advocates homo-geneity and affinity as the basis of forming a congregation. Organized around the baptismal covenant, we may be peculiarly equipped to challenge such thinking and to break new ground.

The world is rapidly changing. The New York Times says the culture in the U.S. is changing measurably every three years. The church moves slowly. It takes ten to twenty years to change church culture. (Twenty years ago the Episcopal Church began to focus on congregational outreach. Today ninety-seven percent of Episcopal churches participate in a food pantry.) The challenge is to mobilize the church more rapidly. For 2020 to be successful we need to set and reach short term goals. We cannot expect a balloon payment of growth in 2019.

It used to be that we lived in a churched culture. Most people belonged to a faith community, and the majority of those communities were Christian. In that environment we aimed at 2 percent of the population for membership. Today, most people do not belong to a faith community, and many of those who do are not Christian. Our assumptions about evangelism need to change in light of the changing culture.

When half the population is in bed while the other half prays, we can aim at more than 2 percent. The challenge is that when we invite someone into conversation about faith and belief, we cannot assume they have had an unfortunate experience with the Roman Catholics or Southern Baptists. It is less and less likely that the invited will have been baptized in another denomination. We will need to begin at the beginning, telling our own faith story, listening to the story of another, and engaging the Gospel story with them.

The challenges are real in a changing culture. Even if we do not want to support the 2020 Resolution, all of us have to live in the culture that has changed enough that we can get radically unsatisfactory results from efforts that have worked in the past. Even to stay the same requires adjustment.

The challenges alone might lead one to despair were it not for the fact that each congregation is not alone, that there is a system wide convergence happening in the Episcopal Church around these challenges that is turning them into opportunities.

Four years ago when Bishop Griswold was installed as Presiding Bishop he set the theme for office, “Rebuild My Church.” A year later he invited 200+ people to St. Louis to engage in a Future Search process on the theme of “Congregational Ministry–The Next Eight Years.” Executive Council brought several years of an intentional diocesan visitation and listening and their own priority setting to focus around three areas: diversity, discipleship/spiritual development, and communication for the 21 st century.

Bishop Payne and the Diocese of Texas have shared their focus on healthy and growing congregations and the resulting energy and vision for the diocese as a “loving, outwardly oriented community of miraculous expectation.” These Clear Vision conferences at Camp Allen have attracted hundreds of people, including over 50 bishops, who want to explore a clear vision for dioceses and congregations.

Two national and ecumenical research projects funded in part by the Lilly Endowment are nearing completion. The first project, Faith Communities Today (FACT) involved 45 different faith communities, collected data from randomly selected congregations in each of the faith traditions. The questionnaire included questions about identity and worship, history, location, and congregational programming. This project will tell us a great deal about congregations that are growing in the Episcopal Church and offer us a comparison with other denominations. The second project, New Church Development for the 21 st Century has surveyed the founding clergy person, the current clergy person and five lay leaders of congregations started between 1980-1996. This project will identify the characteristics of the leadership and the planning elements of congregations that grow beyond maintenance in their first seven years. These projects will be invaluable to future planning.

The General Convention in Denver in July embraced growth as a goal and further resolved to organize an Alleluia Fund to provide extraordinary resources to meet the challenges ahead.

The treasurer of the church, Steve Duggan, has publicly stated his understanding that the assets of the church are pledged to further the mission of the Episcopal Church. We have a financial leader who understands both finance and mission. Steve is open to creative and responsible ways to use our resources to support diocesan and congregational mission.

We are this month sealing the Concordat with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Ecumenical partnerships double experience and expertise. We will do much better in our efforts together than is possible alone.

Finally, there is an energy and desire in most congregations to grow. That desire has not been fully tested to see if there is also willingness and openness to the change that is a part of growth, but it is difficult not to be hopeful in the face of the converging opportunity. The early conversations about growth often begin with talk of scarcity and ‘if onlys’. The conversations and planning are continuing in the spirit of abundance–that God always gives us not only enough, but more than enough to do the work God calls us to do. That abundance of God is evident in the Episcopal Church today!

Opportunity is fleet of foot and cannot be seized from behind. Growth takes place in the present and one Christian at a time. Each of us can seize the opportunity and reach out to another person and tell our own faith story, listen for that person’s faith story, and begin to engage the Gospel of Jesus Christ together. That redeeming activity will not only transform our church it will transform the world and it will transform us.