Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
2
(Rector’s note: This month, I'm turning over my column space to Dan Hotchkiss of the Alban Institute. Alban is a major
resource for American congregations facing the challenges of a changing society. Their chief aim is to help congregations and
During the Great Depression, my grandfather lost his job and started a new company. His
friends had enjoyed his Christmas gifts of homemade candied fruit--the kind used in fruitcakes--and
encouraged him to turn what had been a hobby into a business. Luckily for him, the fruitcake market
turned out to be countercyclical: when people can't afford expensive luxuries, they look for cheap
ones. Fruitcake--like liquor, lotteries, and day-old bread--sold best when times were worst.
Many people like to think religion, too, is countercyclical--that people cling to it when other
sources of support fail. Religion may be countercyclical, but organized religion may not be: worship
attendance rates in mainline churches reached record lows during the Great Depression and record
highs during the prosperous 1950s. Why would people go to church more when they have more
money? The possible explanations are many; the most likely one, in my opinion, is that people are
ashamed to worship where they no longer fit the economic profile of the congregation.
A minister told me this sad story: A leading member of a leading church dressed every morning
in a suit and rode the train to town. Hardly anybody knew it, but he had no job to go to. To him,
keeping the appearance of prosperity was worth deceiving everyone, even (or perhaps especially)
everyone at church.
Like cars and houses, congregation membership can be a costly marker of class membership. Cars
and houses have played leading roles in the early stages of our current economic downturn; churches
and synagogues likely will face hard times as well. To be sure, giving to congregations is steadier
than other charitable giving in the face of economic fluctuations. Tithes and offerings may be the last
charitable giving people cut, but at
some point, cut they will.
In seminary, most of us learned
little enough about managing a
congregation in good times. What
we did learn, often, was steeped in
rhetoric about abundance, growth,
and optimism that, in retrospect,
reflects a time of heady growth,
fervent spending, and heedless
borrowing. The future, at least in the
short term, may require us to relearn
concepts of stewardship and
planning that stress thrift, the clever
use of resources, and the courage to
say no to low priorities.
In times like these, endowed
congregations, which like to think
they have a cushion against economic harm, find that in fact they are affected more abruptly and
severely than member-supported congregations are. Members, as a group, can almost always choose
to give a little more; a portfolio of stocks cannot. You can soften the impact by smoothing out the
"draw," but in the long run, the return is what it is.
3
Unfortunately, in many congregations the process of decision-making about money is ill-suited to the
task of allocating scarce resources wisely. The implicit mental model is that the congregation’s first duty
from the rector is to sustain its institutional core--to maintain the building, service the debt, meet the payroll, and keep
the lights on. If there is money left, we can then speak of mission, outreach, service, innovation--as if
those were optional extras.
This mental map--institutional maintenance as the foundation, mission as the ground floor,
innovation as a decorative filigree--does little harm so long as the supply of money grows from year to
year. But in lean years, when spending needs to be trimmed back, this way of thinking can accelerate a
downward spiral. Who would support a congregation that does nothing but support itself?
Which brings us to an awkward point: over time, congregations, like all nonprofits, tend to fall away
from serving their mission into serving their constituents. One powerful set of constituents comprises
long-time members who want to preserve the congregation’s familiar look and feel--appearances and
practices that comfort them. Another powerful group is the paid staff.
I once consulted with a church in a magnificent Romanesque building studded with distinguished
opalescent stained glass. It had a full-time minister and music director, a sixteen-member paid choir--and
thirty-five people in the congregation on an average Sunday. This mode of operation had been financed
by liberal spending from a once-large endowment and even larger withdrawals from the invisible bank
account of deferred building maintenance.
Like most congregations in such circumstances, this one took pride in the heroic way they had
sustained a proud tradition against long odds. But one day their treasurer reframed their situation for
them. "Every day we open up our doors, we piss away fifteen hundred of God's good dollars," he said.
After a stunned silence, the discussion shifted. Instead of "How can we continue to provide ourselves
with a church for the longest possible time?" the group began to ask, "How can we make the most faithful
use of the resources in our trust, to fulfill the true purpose of the church?"
Luckily (or providentially), the church stood next door to a museum, which purchased the building
for its collection of religious art. The congregation scattered, leaving a substantial legacy to other
congregations, charities, and religious institutions. Not a perfect outcome, perhaps--what is?--but better,
ethically, than simply waiting until the money was all gone.
This story is dramatic but instructive even for a congregation that is faced with trimming back by 10
or 20 percent. The easy path is always to give tacit priority to existing staff positions and activities, to
ignore the hidden cost of deferred building maintenance, and to cut whatever lacks a strong internal
advocate. In many cases this means cutting outreach giving, denominational support, and innovative
projects. Or it means copping out of all priority decisions and enacting an across-the-board percentage
cut.
In times of strained finances, even more than in fat years, it is important that the budget process
begin not with the budget from last year but with the congregation's mission. The congregation needs
leaders--call them the board--capable of standing apart from the daily management of ministry. The
board needs to reflect and pray about the congregation's mission and articulate a vision for its ministry
that reflects its special calling in a time of trouble. And it needs to make hard choices--sometimes
choosing what is right instead of what will keep the peace.
Nothing can make budget cutting easy, but there can be some joy in it if, in the process of accepting
what we can't afford to do, we reach a deeper understanding of what we must afford to do, one way or
another.
__________________________________________________________
Reprinted with permission. Copyright © 2009, the Alban Institute.
4
Soup, Sharing and Service Baptism
congr e gation/wor ld
Our Lenten Community Life The sacrament of Baptism is the celebration of
“Soup, Sharing and Service” is a simple God's call to us to be in relationship, as the People
meal of bread and soup, accompanied by of God. It is an important event, not just for the
conversation about living into Lent, and person being baptized but for the entire parish
followed by Compline. Join us on Sunday community.
evenings throughout Lent, Easter Vigil is a traditional time to welcome
with dinner starting at new members into the church. If you are
5:30, and a 30-minute interested in baptism for yourself or for your
Compline (think of it as children, contact Liddy immediately for more
God singing you a lullaby) information.
at 7:00.
Easter Flower
Thanks from Izzy Durham Memorials
Thank you so much for the wonderful care
Don’t forget to make your
package you sent me last week. You can’t imagine
donation to honor friends and
how happy/grateful/touched I was to get it in the
relatives this Easter. The
mail. Your support and affection these past few
weeks have been such a comfort to me, and I can’t donations are used to offset the
wait to see you all in March! extra costs of flowers and music
for Holy Week and Easter Day.
Love,
An envelope is included in this
Izzy
issue of Topics for your use,
and the deadline for inclusion in the Easter
ECW Meets at COMPASS bulletin is Monday, April 6.
5
On the Threshold Notes of a hospital pilgrim…
[Editor’s note: David Christian Nelson (sometimes called
congr e gation/wor ld ~~Notes from our seminarian~~ David Nelson the Elder) shares his observations on his experi-
Hello Trinity family! Since the annual report ence of metastatic cancer.]
gave you an overview of my life at Episcopal In late December I, a spiritual director, felt very
Divinity School (EDS) so far, I thought I’d tell much overdue for my own personal renewal re-
you about some of my classes in this installment treat. I didn’t expect that retreat to begin with my
of “As the Church Nerd Learns.” discovery a few weeks later that I couldn’t walk.
One of my favorite first semester classes was Testing revealed a cracked spine with nerve
on ecclesiology (that’s seminary vocabulary – compression (a complication of my prostate
it’s the study of the nature and function of the cancer’s getting into my
church) called Revisioning the Church: spine and weakening it)
Communities of Hope, Solidarity and Resistance. requiring emergency sur-
That class was why I came to seminary: to figure gery. I had eight vertebrae in
out how to create the kinds of communities that the middle of my back joined
help bring about God’s mission in the world. I with rods and pins. I spent
learned that our starting point is the world, not three days in intensive care,
the church. God’s mission is not to preserve the then I moved to a rehab unit
institutional church, but to bring about true where I re-learned how to
shalom on earth. How do we create walk. I’ve had minimal spi-
communities that do that, so that we can nal damage, and I’m at home now, walking with a
participate in God’s mission? cane, picking up the pieces of my life.
That mission springs from and is reflected in My hospital stay proved to be a winter retreat
our liturgy. (Think of it like this: if a bunch of of the highest order. Prayers bore me up as I went
strangers watched Trinity’s principal Sunday into surgery, and the One I love was within me
liturgy and then had to answer the question, when I awoke in a drug haze, gently calling me to
“What does this community believe?” would attend to my body’s needs. This was my first
they get it right?) This is my area of passion, “retreat” confrontation. I could feel sorry for
what’s called my “special competency” here. It’s myself and let the hospital staff take care of me, or I
like my major. I started with a class called could begin the slow march back to health. I made
Liturgics last semester, in which I learned about a “tiny effort” to find my functions. So many care-
the history of liturgy. Fascinating for me, givers, family, and faith community were by my
probably not so much for normal people. side that I never doubted, nor feared the “shadow
In January I took a class called Psalms and of death.” Each day, I had to make a “tiny effort,”
Worship. For years I’ve had sort of a love/hate to feel my feet, to roll from one side to the other, to
relationship with the Psalms. (I mean really, sit in a spinal brace, to balance in a walker, to use a
what do I do with a line like, “Happy shall they cane, to retrain muscles, to walk again. Each day,
be who take your little ones and dash them others helped by refusing to feel sorry for me, and
against the rock!”) This class certainly didn’t by presenting me with what I could do for myself.
answer all my questions, but it gave me some I’m not “out of the woods” with my cancer. I
perspective on bringing emotions before God in face more radiation therapy and chemotherapy,
prayer and in worship. but each day I crawl out of bed and pick up my
I’m now in a class called Liturgical Practicum calendar and work a little toward my goals, with a
where we learn things like what gestures go firm determination and a faith that God will never
where in the Eucharistic prayer, how to do them leave me.
gracefully and how to really embody what we’re Do you have some impediment to living fully?
about as future priests. We’ve also worked on Are you paralyzed, or just paralyzed with fear?
our reading, chanting and overall presence as Make a “tiny effort;” reach out to the One who
presiders. It’s no surprise that I love this class! waits for you and will respond. If you don’t know
Next month I’ll write about my field how, find someone who will listen, who will
education site, an emerging community called remind you of what you already know about
The Crossing. In the meantime, I’ll be with you coping. You don’t know how powerful your
on March 22. I can’t wait! community is until you’re weak, and you don’t
Marie know how strong you are until you make that tiny
effort.
6
Personal Hygiene Items
During Lent we’ll be collecting personal Food For Thought Needs
hygiene items for men, women and children Food for Thought helps to support an
outr eachings
staying in local shelters. The bags (blue for estimated 1000 local families each month
men, pink for women and yellow for children) through its stationary and mobile food pan-
will be available on Sunday mornings, and we tries. It also offers around 1200 lunches per
will gather them in on Sunday, March 22 for month to those who gather on Saturdays at
blessing prior to distribution to the shelters. the Mail Library.
Please take a bag or two and fill it with the If you can help with donations of
items on the list. canned soup or canned protein (tuna,
Food For Thought also gives out hygiene beans, chili, canned meat), please bring
items along with food. They offer soap, those donations to the church and we will
shampoo, toothpaste and pass them on to Food For Thought.
toothbrushes, and would
welcome these items –
place donations in a bag
marked “Food For
Thought” in the Feed Toledo Network
Your Neighbor basket. A growing number of local spiritual and
Food For Thought also civic leaders (including our rector) are meeting
welcomes large packs of medicated foot weekly to explore local community needs and
powder (available at the dollar store), which resources. They are discussing how the 700+
they turn into small, single-use packages to churches in the greater Toledo area can come
help soothe sore feet along with their sock together to serve the needs of the city and
exchange. They also welcome large packs of slowly transform it into the kingdom of God.
cough drops (packs of 50 from the dollar store) While this network is still new, it’s first
and they give out small bags containing a few visible step will be to work with the director of
cough drops and a pack of tissues. the City of Toledo Department of Neighbor-
hoods. It has issued a call to the people of all
metro Toledo churches to meet on several
Saturdays in March and April to help clean up
neighborhoods that the city can no longer
afford to maintain. The first clean-up effort
Feed Your Neighbor will take place on Saturday, March 14 from
Challenge 9:00 to noon. Participants will gather at the
For the 12th consecutive year, the Marina District near the shuttered Acme Power
Feinstein Foundation of Rhode Island will Plant on Front Street in East Toledo.
divide $1 million among hunger-fighting Watch local news media for more
agencies all over the country that raise information about this project.
matching funds during March and April,
2009. The more donations made to Feed
Your Neighbor from March 1 to April 30, Blanket Grant
the more Feinstein Challenge funds they In February, the Episcopal Community
will be eligible for. These donations can Services (ECS) Development Council awarded
include cash, checks or food items (valued a total of $168,514 in grants to 55 programs re-
at $1.00 per item). In 2008, FYN raised sponding to the basic needs of vulnerable
$102,000 and received $575 from the populations in the Diocese. Trinity received a
Feinstein Foundation. grant of $3,721 for our Blanket Blitz. This will
Make your support for Feed Your help pay for the huge quantity of fleece needed
Neighbor even more valuable by to put together the hundreds of blankets we
contributing food or funds to FYN during give away to local ministry partners.
March and April.
7
A Visit To Emanuel Children’s Home
In late February, several Trinity members visited San Pedro Sula, Honduras and spent time with the
outr eachings kids living at Emanuel Children’s Home.
Watch for photos in next month’s Topics of the nursery under construction.
8
Emptying Our Cups
Once upon a time, an ancient story tells, the A monastic Lent is the process of emptying our
master had a visitor who came to inquire about cups. Lent is the time for trimming the soul and
Zen. But instead of listening, the visitor kept talk- scraping the sludge off a life turned slipshod. Lent
ing about his own concerns and giving his own is about taking stock of time, even religious time.
thoughts. After a while, the master served tea. Lent is about exercising the control that enables us
He poured tea into his visitor’s cup until it was to say no to ourselves so that when life turns hard
full and then he kept on pouring. Finally the of its own accord we have the spiritual stamina to
visitor could not bear it any longer. “Don’t you see say yes to its twists and turns with faith and
that my cup is full?” he said. “It’s not possible to hope… Lent is the time to make new efforts to be
get anymore in.” “Just so,” the master said, what we say we want to be.
stopping at last. “And like this cup, you are filled
with your own ideas. How can you expect me to From The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages
give you Zen unless you first empty your cup?” by Joan Chittister (Crossroad, 1996).
9
Lenten Blessings
Lent is a time to honor the journey – the journey that leads us from life to death and back into life again.
For days that seem hard, and even negative, there is a path of blessing that can be accessed and utilized for
the growth of our soul. Life takes us into the core of our own self, it travels through troubled waters of
suffering and lonely spaces of emptiness, urging us to seek the God beyond us and recognize the new life
that issues forth from death. Lent itself is but a mirror of this journey of life. Lent condenses the journey of
life into 40 days, yet when those days are watched with care and openness, blessings emerge that might
never have been expected. Let these blessings be an aid to you on your Lenten journey. May they be holy
words that strengthen your soul, words that engender and create life.
10
A Blessing for the Journey of Death
May your endings be embraced with fervor equal to what
you gave your beginnings.
May the stopping places in your life create a space
╬ ╬ ╬
During Lent and Holy Week, 1999, Phyllis Cole-Dai and James Murray lived
voluntarily on the streets of Columbus, Ohio, America’s fifteenth largest city.
They didn't go out on the streets to satisfy idle curiosity, or to experience a
strange new world. They didn't go out to find answers to questions or
solutions to problems. They didn't go out to save anyone, or to hand out
donations of food or blankets. They went out for one primary reason: to be as
present as possible to everyone they met – whether it was a homeless person, a
university president, or a cop. In other words, they set out, in their own way,
to love their neighbor as themselves. In doing so, they were reminded just how
difficult the practice of compassion can be.
The Emptiness of Our Hands: A Lent Lived on the Streets is a meditative narrative accompanied by
black and white photographs, most of them taken by James Murray on the streets using crude
pinhole cameras he constructed from trash. This book will thrust you out the door of your
comfortable life, so that you might better understand what being without a home can do to a
person.
11
TIME SENSITIVE MATERIAL — PLEASE HANDLE PROMPTLY
NON-PROFIT ORG.
U. S. POSTAGE
Trinity Episcopal Church
One Trinity Plaza $ Toledo, Ohio 43604-1585 PAID
Toledo, Ohio
Permit Number 529
Phone: 419.243.1231
Fax: 419.243.0920
Email: trinity@trinitytoledo.org
services
Parish Staff
Elizabeth Hoster, Rector SUNDAYS 9 & 10:45 am, Holy Eucharist
Wayne F. Anthony, Associate for Music and the Arts 10 am, Formation for all ages
Susan Lowrey, Associate for Community Life HOLY DAYS as announced
Virginia Shafer, Executive Secretary
Jane Bueche, Parish Accountant
Bridget Blanchard, Organist
prayers
Parish Vestry FOR THE PARISH COMMUNITY
Jeff Albright, senior warden; Jason Rahe, junior Remember those for whom our prayers have been requested: Jessica Snyder,
warden; Karen Wabeke, clerk; Solveig Barnes, Lucia Bonnie Loss, Nancy Paulas, Carol Statum, William E. Siebold, Izzy Durham, Barbara Clarke,
Cooper, Jane Gomersall-Zohn, Jennifer Siebold, David C. Nelson, Herb Landis, Ruth Archer; the children and staff of Emanuel Children’s
Sherre Owens Smith, Jim Zechman. Home; all those on death row; all victims of war and violence; Marie Harkey and David S.
Nelson in their continuing vocational discernment; and David S. Nelson and Beth Anne
Parish Offices Swartz, preparing for marriage.
Mon thru Fri, 8:30 am – 4:30 pm
Phone 419.243.1231 Fax 419.243.0920 Prayers for those who have died: In this month which marks the 6th anniversary of
Email: trinity@trinitytoledo.org the Iraq war, we pray for all who have died, including 4,255 American troops, 318 troops
from other countries, and uncounted thousands of Iraqi men, women and children. Each
Episcopal Diocese of Ohio one was God’s beloved.
2230 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44115-2499
800.551.4815 216.771.4815
The Rt. Rev. Mark Hollingsworth, Jr., Bishop Ordinary