Marti asked a couple of questions about the outreach fund and about the funding of mission churches. Those are two totally different issues.
Sue gave an excellent response regarding the outreach fund. What follows is my opinion about the funding of the mission churches and place of those missions in the life of the diocese.
For a number of years, I was a member of the Department of General Mission Strategies (DGMS), culminating with my serving a term as Chair of DGMS. When I became chair, Bishop Beckwith and I had a discussion in which we both agreed that the continued growth in funding the mission churches could not go on. The original concept (long before my time on DGMS) was that the diocese would fund "up to half" of the Vicar's pay (the priest-in-charge of a mission is, in our usage, called the "Vicar"), but the mission churches were tasked with improving their own stewardship, with the goal of ultimately eliminating the need for diocesan assistance. Over the years some churches (mine of St. Thomas, Salem) worked diligently to work our way to zero assistance. We achieved that goal around 2001 or 2002, if my memory serves well. Some churches, though, were happy to give their Vicar a raise, simply passing the need on to the diocese in their annual request for assistance.
It was that growth that I wanted to end. Bishop Beckwith wanted, for reasons we didn't explore sufficiently (my bad), to eliminate the funding altogether. I said, "Aye, aye, sir" in good military fashion (I'm a retired Navy Lieutenant Commander [of the Line], he a retired Rear Admiral [Chaplain Corps]) and off I went. In a few short years, around 2006, I believe, mission funding had been reduced to zero. At it's maximum, the total funding had been around $60,000 per year (give or take - I don't have an old journal to look at). We, in DGMS, allocated those funds to each church, EXCEPT IN THE HALE DEANERY, where the diocese handled the funding. The Hale deanery money would be above and beyond the DGMS administered funds. DGMS was never given an adequate report as to the Hale Deanery money, so we just quit asking, on the theory that to Bishop Beckwith and Treasurer Jim Donkin, we had become "just a noisy gong." The elimination of mission funding dealt only, we understood, with the non-Hale Deanery mission churches.
At the present time, all of the mission churches (Hale Deanery and part of the Darrow Deanery excepted) are on their own to secure priests. In the case of St. Thomas, Salem, the Bishop's Committee (the mission church version of the vestry) voted to pay me $16,992/year (I really forget how we came up with that strange number) starting in late 2002 (when I was a Deacon on the way to becoming a priest). That number has never changed, over the last eight years, but has resulted in a slow decline in reserve funds over the last four years as we lost a couple of fairly high giving members to death. I presume, but do not know, that other mission churches have similar problems.
That, of course, raises a good set of questions, as Marti indicates. Does the Episcopal Church, in its Springfield incarnation, want to have a mission role? Or does it prefer to "hunker down" in the parish churches of the larger congregations?
We need to recognize that in many of the Illinois communities (mostly large towns that the state, in its wisdom, has declared to be "small cities), the Episcopal Church cannot compete, in numbers, with either the Roman Catholic Church or the fundamentalist Protestant Churches (mostly in the guise of Baptist or Christian Church denominations). Do we really want to?
We are, and will always be, a small minority church, with mostly family size (less than 75 members) congregations. These can be quite dynamic, as any number of the small missions can tell you. But if, as Marti implies, we have the wrong model, then we need to rethink that model. That may, as Bishop Beckwith wanted, to mean the raising up of local deacons and priests, who are willing, as I am, to work for minimum or no wage at all, depending upon other sources of income to support our ministry (as noted, I'm retired from the military). But that means that the people must do much, much, more to pull their share of the load. In my church, they do. Almost everyone, not just "the few," do most of the work. But the importance of being part of the diocese, and not being seen as "step-children" cannot be over-emphasized. The problem of "big parish" versus "little mission" cannot be ignored. I suggest that both the parish churches AND the mission churches have been, and are, guilty of "us versus them" thinking, to the detriment of our Christ-given commandment to spread the good news.
So that's my "two cents, or less" on the subject.
Peace and blessings to all. Tom+
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