I have a question about Episcopal Church Governance

[AlabamaYankee]

I've been an Episcopalian for about five years, having been a Lutheran all of my life, and I have a question about the roles of the Vestry and the Congregation in decision making. In my current parish, the Vestry deliberates and approves the annual budget with virtually no input from the congregation. Is this normal?

Also, how are the senior and Junior Wardens selected as a rule?

Thanks

[Kat45]

1. I work as the parish office administrator at an Episcopal church.

I can partly answer your question. The church asks parishioners to nominate people for the positions of junior and senior warden, treasurer, clark, vestry members. This announcment was put in the bulletins and newsletter about a month before the date of the annual meeting. But I really don't know what happens after that: I don't know if the parishioners vote for these offices at the annual meeting, if only one person is generally nominated for each office, or something else.

I've never belonged to an Episcopal church, so I don't know what is common in this denomination. Although I don't know for certain, I get the impression that the congregation is not involved in budgetary decisions at the church where I work.

I hope that helped somewhat. :-)

[AlabamaYankee]

2. My parish votes for the Vestry, but that's about it

A nominating committee comes up with names to go on the ballot, not always an easy task, and the parishoners vote. The Rector "recommends" to the vestry who should be Senior and Junior Warden, and as far as I know, has never had an opposing candidate nominated.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. I'm another former Lutheran

The vestry at an Episcopal church operates with less congregational input than the council of a Lutheran church.

For example, if you call a new rector or other clergy staff person, the vestry will choose a search committee, which will report in detail to the vestry, but make only non-detailed reports to the members of the parish, perhaps during announcement time. The candidates never meet with the entire parish, only with the search committee and vestry. When the vestry is ready to issue a call, they first inform the bishop and ask for a go-ahead signal. This is the first time the parish finds out who their new rector is.

Ironically, candidates for bishop DO meet with the rank and file members in their prospective diocese before being voted on. Unlike synod presidents, bishops can stay on as long as they want.

I'm not sure which system I prefer. On the one hand, the Lutheran system is more democratic. On the other hand, the Episcopal system is more efficient and seems to hire good and bad clergy to the same degree as the Lutheran system.

In the churches I am familiar with, a finance committee, made up of people who may or may not be on the vestry, draws up a provisional budget. This budget is tinkered with and put into final form by the vestry and then presented to the parish at the annual meeting. They may vote it up or down.

The junior and senior warden are chosen in different ways in different parishes. In some parishes, they run for the office separately. In others, they're elected by the vestry from among its members. In others, they're appointed by the rector. You probably already know that the senior warden is responsible for finances and personnel, while the junior warden is responsible for property and programs.

I think the more top-down structure comes from the church's English heritage. It has its advantages, as when a rector goes really bad (e.g. telling the congregation that anyone who disagrees with him is blaspheming against the Holy Spirit), and the bishop can toss him without much fuss.

[kwassa]

4. Lydia is correct

The vestry operates on it's own and makes all governing decisions in it's church. There is a finance committee that puts together the budget, stewardship committee that does the fundraising, and so on. In our church, the junior and senior warden are directly elected.

At the same time, churches create their own by-laws, which they may or may not follow. It can get pretty creative sometimes. Personnel decisions are finalized by the rector from recommendations by various search committees. I have served on a search committee for choirmaster/organists, a mind-numbing experience.

And my wife understands these governance issues far better than I, she being a diocesan representative.

Episcopal churches also can vary politically from extremely liberal to extremely conservative. We are in a very liberal area with a few very conservative churches in the diocese that refuse to recognize women as priests, for instance. As a denomination, the Episcopal church is really run by the liberal faction.

[pelagius]

5. This is what I understand to be true, also...

...speaking as a vestry member of a "broad" Episcopal congregation. I will say that in our smallish congregation (around 200 active attendees) the possibility that the vestry would ever be isolated from the congregation is quite slim.

An interesting footnote: Although the vestry can hire ("issue the call") to a new rector, it can't fire a rector. Only the bishop can do that.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. My previous parish actually did get rid of its rector,

someone who had alienated enough people that membership dropped by 1/3.

I wasn't on the vestry at the time, but as I understand it, the senior warden informed the rector that the vestry was going to ask the bishop for permission to seek new leadership for the parish. The members of the parish were informed by letter. I had known that the vestry and a lot of other people were extremely unhappy, and I had noticed the steady defection of parish members, so I wasn't as shocked as some of the less involved members were.

The one case I know of in which the bishop reached in and fired a rector was in a church in Minneapolis about 25 years ago, where the rector went charismatic and started establishing a charismatic sect within the parish. My cousin was a member of this parish, and she invited me to attend a Sunday service with her. I noticed the group that all marched in together and sat right in front of the pulpit, but I was stunned when the rector began his sermon by saying that people who criticized him were committing the one unforgiveable sin, "blaspheming against the Holy Spirit."

There must have been complaints from the non-charismatic members of the parish, because the bishop removed the rector not long afterwards.

[kwassa]

7. We are leaving a church we've been in for six years because we

don't like the poor management. We were originally attracted by the extremely diverse congregation, a rector who had a gift for preaching, and a good music program.

The management has been horrible, however, a combination of the rector's inadequacies and several key lay people, lifers, who have a death grip on the governance of the church. The music program is pretty much dead, too. Numbers are dropping at the church, but not radically, and the rector is politically connected, so removal is not likely. The members who are leaving, however, are the ones who did the most service in the church, a very bad sign.

We are just beginning to shop for a new church.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. It's sad when you have to do that

I've done it, too, in my distant past. There comes a time when attending a dysfunctional church is actually bad for your spiritual health. It feels so good when you stop! :-)

Fortunately, I seem to have lucked out in this move to Minneapolis.

[kwassa]

9. A dysfunctional church is indeed bad for our spiritual health

as we were beginning to obsess about internal political conflicts and personalities within the church, and stopped experiencing anything like a spiritual experience there. It was only dragging us down.