The Church of St. Jamestown

I had planned to continue my reflections on the body today, but the Episcopal Church advertisement in the Saturday New York Times, on the OpEd page, derailed that intention. The ad, which commemorates the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, represents in almost every respect the problem with the Episcopal Church today.

The ad is wordy, dense, backward-looking.

The headline, "Marking a Milestone, Moving Forward," is about as dull and institutional as a headline can be.

The content begins with history, buildings, and, finally, in paragraph 7, The Boook of Common Prayer.

It appears that the people in the Episcopal Church have differing points of view but it isn't clear about what.

And then there is a reiteration of our English heritage as a church (the word English outnumbers the word Jesus three to one), as if that is a big selling point.

The ad says we struggle over how to interpret faith for today, how to maintain tradition, how to disagree. Some people leave us, some come back. But: TO WHAT? WHAT DO WE BELIEVE?

We are moving forward in mission all over the world--a world we are committed to transforming to one of justice, peace, wholeness, holy living (as Jesus taught). We get around to that message in paragraph twelve. Is that the core of our belief?

It is apparent in a couple of other references that the church has been in the right place at the right time (for gays and lesbians, for example), but the overwhelming impression created by this unfortunate ad is that the Episcopal Church is the First Church of St. Jamestown: stuck in the past, unaware of its own mission and message for the world of today, inordinately proud of its buildings (especially the big ones), and unable to articulate a vision for the future that might mean something in the twenty-first century. Historically, Jamestown is significant for this country and the church, but it was also a slave-owning settlement and the first step toward the extermination of native culture. It is not the shining icon of the church of today.

The ad also reinforces the old image of the Episcopal Church as the conservative party (the people with money and power) at prayer. Its very placement on the OpEd page of the Times speaks of power, the establishment, and immobility. It is addressed pre-eminently to the demographic that now rules the church, people of my age (over 50--I'm 63). No one under forty will "get" it or even see it.

The ad invites the reader (assuming he/she gets through all of the type to the bottom of the ad) to "come and grow" and offers a website link to both the main church website and a come and grow site. Click on www.comeandgrow.org and tell me you're excited about the mission and message of the church. Tell me what it is. Tell me what Episcopalians believe and why anyone should move a muscle to come into one of our churches.

A pdf of this ad is available on the church's website, presumably for parishes to download and perhaps run in local media. I think it's a very bad idea. Anyway, you can read it at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/documents/newYorkTimes_opAd.pdf

The Episcopal Church, and indeed all of the mainline churches, are terrible at marketing themselves. (Please see http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com --the blog to "frustrate, educate, and motivate the church to communicate, with uncompromising clarity, the truth of Jesus Christ"--for some helpful information on how to do what the Episcopal Church, as this ad definitively establishes, does not know how to do.)

Come and grow? I don't think so. Sit there and stagnate is more like it.

Here's an alternative idea: Go into the world and give people in despair the Good News. Tell them what that Good News is and why they should care. Give them some hope. And maybe show some faces of real people.

They can get the history and the architectural details later.