Presiding Bishop says support for new church plants a must if TEC is to survive

COMMENTARY

By David W. Virtue, DD

www.virtueonline.org

March 14, 2025

The penny has finally dropped. The new Episcopal Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe has looked in the mirror and admitted the Church has no future if it doesn’t plant new churches.

When the Episcopal Church declared a “Decade of Evangelism” in the 1990s it was hoped the church would jump start, moving away from the slide. In 2003, the development of new congregations was identified as one priority in a series of proposals, known as the “20/20 Vision,” that set even more ambitious goals, including doubling church membership by 2020. It all flopped.

Both presiding bishops Frank Griswold and Michael Curry conceded that they didn’t know what to do and shrugged it off. “But if this church should wither away, the movement that Jesus began will not go away,” conceded Curry in a moment of illumination. Katharine Jefferts Schori said the church needs to face its fears and embrace an unknown future. Rowe expressed skepticism toward those past efforts to grow the church and rightly so.

“The Decade of Evangelism, how’d that work? Not well,” Rowe said Feb. 26 in a keynote conversation at the Episcopal Parish Network conference in Kansas City, Missouri. “We spent 10 years on evangelism. That’s a good thing. But we have no idea why that didn’t work,” reported ENS.

I can tell you. The church did not have a message then or now to proclaim that which didn’t echo the culture. Planting and growing churches on themes of diversity, inclusion, pansexuality, anti-racism, LGBTQ acceptance and full-on gay marriage hasn’t planted one church. The Episcopal Church has steadily been eroding for over half a century and now has just over 400,000 weekly Sunday attendance out of a total membership of 1,547,779.

The elevation of homosexual priest Gene Robinson to the episcopacy split the church from which it has never recovered. And by all accounts it never will.

But the new presiding bishop is going to give it the old school try.

As a churchwide realignment begins to take shape, three Episcopal priests and others who spoke to ENS say they are worried about the future of their network and denominational support. “That network has been absolutely crucial in my ongoing formation as a priest, as a disciple, and I can’t imagine myself doing any of the things we’re trying here without the ongoing support of this nationwide cohort,” one of the priests told Episcopal News Service.

ENS reports that recent examples of church-planting starts are plentiful across The Episcopal Church, from a family-friendly dinner church in the Diocese of Georgia to an Episcopal community serving the unhoused in the Diocese of Western Oregon. Innovative Episcopal clergy have launched more than 200 new worshiping communities since 2000 – many of them in the past decade, during which The Episcopal Church has awarded more than $9 million in grants to support that work while developing and expanding its churchwide infrastructure. No figures were immediately available on how many of those new worshiping communities remain active today.

$9 million!!! The total current assets of the ACNA for 2023 which has over 1,000 parishes is a tad over $1 million dollars!

REALIGNMENT EPISCOPAL STYLE

But changes are underway. The priests involved in this work, who already were uncertain about the status of an additional $2.2 million budgeted for church planting and revitalization in 2025-27, told ENS they are eager for clarifying details about Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe’s plan to realign churchwide operations to better serve dioceses.

Last month, Rowe laid off 14 churchwide staff members in the first phase of his restructuring plan, including the two church employees who have developed and overseen the network of Episcopal church planters: the Rev. Tom Brackett, manager for church planting and mission development, and the Rev. Katie Nakamura Rengers, staff officer for church planting.

Though church planting is one of the departments being reorganized or phased out, “our commitment to church planting and redevelopment is undiminished,” Rowe said in a Feb. 20 letter to the church outlining the structural realignment. “In the months to come, we will be reorganizing this ministry and the ways it supports and serves our dioceses.”

The changes also could impact the churchwide grant program that invests in new congregations. It is facilitated each triennium by an advisory board, which has not yet been appointed for this cycle. Rowe says he and House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris are now working on those appointments, which were on hold until the staff realignment, ENS reported.

In a March 10 Zoom interview with ENS, Rowe affirmed that he is not abandoning the church’s ongoing investment in church planting. He said the detailed way forward will be worked out through collaborative conversations with dioceses and the priests who have been active in the churchwide network.

So, you have two pivots for church planting. How ironic that the Church of England is facing the same crisis with funding new church plants. An ambitious target of planting 10,000 new, predominantly lay-led churches by 2030 headlines the recommendations of a briefing paper issued by the Church of England’s Vision and Strategy group. The church-planting initiative’s leader, the Rev. Canon John McGinley of New Wine, touched off a firestorm of criticism when he labeled stipendiary clergy, church buildings, and theological college training as “limiting factors” for growth at a recent church planting conference.

When asked whether the former structure had not been meeting the church’s needs, Rowe emphasized a new diocese-centered approach “rather than us running some kind of parallel structure” at the churchwide level.

But the tension between diocesan versus national church support for church plants is there, with ENS reporting a number of complaints about how the process will work out.

“How can we help dioceses realize their local vision for church planting, for redevelopment at the local level?” Rowe said. “I think it will allow for more effective use of resources over the long run. … That’s to be determined, but I think what we want to do is have more integration.”

IT’S THE MESSAGE, STUPID.

But the real issue is whether church planting is simply about institutional survival or something else. It must be about evangelism, discipleship, and community engagement if it is to grow and survive. None of which TEC bishops, clergy and laity are good at. Gay and lesbian bishops do not plant churches.

Telling people God loves them unconditionally without the corollary of God’s hatred of sin, and the need for confession, repentance, and a turning towards God, will only produce a sinner without salvation.

Here is the usual Episcopal cant about the church: “One invitation is a call to cultural humility in mission. How might we shift from expansion to incarnation – showing up, listening and co-creating with local communities? How do we look afresh where God is already at work and join in? I think that this is one way we can approach church planting and redevelopment, one where people don’t have to leave behind their cultures and histories to belong.”

None of the above issues plants or builds a church. Do your think if John Stott, (one of Britain’s foremost Anglican preachers) had tried to start churches talking about “cultural humility”, “expansion to incarnation” and “listening and co-creating with local communities” that a single church would have been born?

What about Christ’s atoning death, the reality of our sinfulness, the hope of heaven for those willing to bow the knee to Him who alone saves. Do you think millions of Nigerian Anglicans give a damn about “cultural humility” facing Islam and persecution head on, along with the inroads of homosexuality pushed by the West onto their culture?

If TEC continues along its present lines, no amount of money on new church plants will save it. It will be millions of dollars spent and lost, and then cometh the end.

END