Why Christians should ditch monuments in favor of messages

From RNS-

 I was working with a historic church, whose majestic facility was built long ago by wealthy industrialists.

The church needed to raise $3 million each year just for facilities maintenance and repairs, plus another $3 million to operate the church, do outreach and serve constituents.

It was an impossible task. If all members — not the 50 percent who actually donate — gave at normal giving levels, they would need 3,000 pledges, three times their most optimistic count.

Meanwhile, emergency repairs required a major capital campaign on top of the $3 million nut.

I made a suggestion: Close the doors, and worship on the front steps and yard. Let the city see your faith. Make a joyful noise.

More here-

http://www.religionnews.com/2015/01/20/christians-ditch-monuments-favor-messages-commentary/

Episcopal priest: 10 lessons learned in the decade since 9/11

From Minnesota-

It's been 10 years since 9/11, and of the countless lessons we've learned since then, here are 10 of the most important:

1. An open society invites attack. Not only do we present an abundance of targets that we cannot possibly defend, but America's openness is offensive to the repressive, the insular, and the intolerant.

2. An open society won't be easily intimidated or vanquished. Terrorists deeply wounded New York City, but here we are, 10 years later, more alive, more confident, more open than ever. Democracy is a durable system.

3. The issue isn't Islam, but rather religious extremism in any form — Muslim, Christian or otherwise. When one group claims absolute certainty and the belief that all others are infidels or pagans who do not deserve freedom, then the inevitable next steps will be repression and destruction.

4. Common sense is the antidote to such religious extremism. Dueling faiths are not the answer, but rather an awareness that life has many struggles and no easy answers, that more people are decent than not and that things tend to work out when people are free to make choices. Mutual respect will accomplish more than victory in any sandbox.

More here-

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/otherviews/129322103.html

Ehrich: Churches must plug in to marketplace

From North Carolina-

An Episcopal priest who served in a local parish but has now found his ministry as a writer and church consultant in New York says it's time mainline denominations "break through the denial" and face declining attendance across the board.

This is no new song for Tom Ehrich. Even when he worked in Durham in a high-tech job, he was fearless in writing how churches and congregations were failing to respond to changes in society and culture. He was eager to share his notions about how congregations might energize and find new direction for ministry.

He sampled some local churches, including Durham's Watts Street Baptist where he stayed for a while and where he preached on occasion. But his creative spirit evidently kept calling, and a few years ago he moved to New York City and has since become a voice for church reformation.

I rediscovered Ehrich via the Presbyterian Outlook, a magazine that targets the Presbyterian Church USA, but does not get support from the denomination and is not an official publication of that church. In a recent column , he says we know why attendance at mainline denominations is dropping.

"We just don't want to see it."

Recently, his Weekly Report online had suggestions on "Turnaround strategies" for struggling churches. He says churches need to "Listen to the marketplace."

More here-

http://www.chapelhillnews.com/2011/03/30/63454/ehrich-churches-must-plug-in-to.html

Not quite Christmas as usual

From RNS-

It's hard to gauge just how many Americans feel broke this Christmas.

Those who feel broke don't want to talk about it. Those who sell to the broke are hoping they don't give in to discouragement. And those who brought about this mess are spending lavish bonuses and catering to the rich.

But as far as I can tell, the broke are legion.

Government employment statistics tend to undercount job-related despair.

They don't report those who have given up looking for work; those who need full-time work but have accepted part-time jobs; those who did find work but at far below their last reasonable paycheck; or those who are ready to retire but are clinging to jobs for as long as they can.

By the time we add those categories to the official unemployment figure of nearly 10 percent, I suspect we are looking at one in four, or maybe even one in three, Americans who approach Christmas 2010 with thin wallets and heavy hearts.

Banks seem to have resumed risky practices and are stuffing our mailboxes with credit card offers, as if they owed nothing to 'We the People' for bailing them out.

More here

http://media.www.districtchronicles.com/media/storage/paper263/news/2010/12/19/DivineIntervention/Not-Quite.Christmas.As.Usual-3967631.shtml

Look beyond the lies

From TOM EHRICH

Everyone seems to have a solution for “restoring” America.

Take power away from liberal intellectuals, say some, and put “ordinary” people in charge.

Or make this a white-run, Christian nation.

Or insist on leaders who are intelligent and informed.

Or stop wasting American lives in pointless wars.

Or honor truth-telling and stop allowing ideologues to finance phony “research” to serve their interests.

Or restore traditional marriage and family life.

Or allow new forms of marriage and family.

On and on they go, prescriptions of astonishing contradiction, grounded in smoke, expressed in absolutes, claiming the moral high ground while denigrating opposing views as morally repugnant.

What these solutions have in common is a belief that America needs “restoring,” that something is fundamentally wrong in America, that America has lost its way and is in danger, and — here comes the money pitch — that they alone know how to fix it.

It’s an old form of argument, of course. In debate it’s called the “straw man.” I deflect the point you made by insinuating that you said something else, something profoundly stupid.

Or as Sarah Palin said at the “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington: “Say what you want about me, but I raised a combat vet, and you can’t take that away from me” — as if someone had been denying her son’s military service.

In marketing it’s called “selling the problem.” Before you can sell diet products, first convince people they are fat. To sell hatred, first convince people they are being hated.

In religious history, it’s called “scapegoating.” Denominations stir solidarity by declaring themselves under attack. To stir rage among working-class Americans, tell them that the college-educated look down on them.

In everyday life, it’s called lying. To rescue a dying candidacy, fabricate stories about illegal immigrants and blame them for falling property values and distressed retirement portfolios. To stir anti-Islamic rage, misstate the facts about a cultural center planned for lower Manhattan.

More here-

http://www.sj-r.com/features/x412948771/Tom-Ehrich-Look-beyond-the-lies

Tom Ehrich: Ordination is a day; ministry is a lifetime

From Springfiled Il.

In a whirlwind month of yesteryear, I graduated from seminary, was married and ordained.

I joined a team planning the consecration of our new bishop.

Thinking no church large enough, planners had rented a basketball arena for this epic event.

On the day itself, I kept waiting for eager Episcopalians to pour into the arena’s 16,000 seats, where Elvis Presley had just played his final concert. But they didn’t. Some came, but the hall felt empty to this self-absorbed young clergyman.

That should have been a sign that the world wasn’t holding its breath while we ordained a bishop. Although the new bishop was a fine man and would lead capably, even our own folks had other things to do.

That was 1977. If we had been paying attention to such outcomes, we would have known a steep decline was in its 13th year. After three decades of growth up to 1964, mainline Protestant congregations were hemorrhaging members, as all but a handful of denominations are dwindling today. It was time to rethink everything.


More here-

http://www.sj-r.com/features/x2084257214/Tom-Ehrich-Ordination-is-a-day-ministry-is-a-lifetime

Tom Ehrich: Archbishop is being used

From Indiana-

Now that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has slapped my church’s wrists for refusing to marginalize homosexuals and has threatened to have us become second-class citizens in the Anglican Communion, I say this to Archbishop Williams:

The Episcopal Church has a life. Not a perfect life. In fact, a messy one, a life that could be more than it is. But we do have a life.

That life preceded the formation of the Anglican Communion. That life will survive our being marginalized within the Anglican Communion.

There’s nothing we do in our congregations that depends on the Anglican Communion. You have become a weapon in a siege war being waged by a minority who has been resisting change in the Episcopal Church for 50 years.

The first votes were close, but the anti-change position has steadily lost ground. Not because the church came under an evil spell, but because people’s minds and hearts shifted and their understandings of God and mission changed. That happens.

The anti-change minority fights on, however, for by now their fretful arguments against changing “Thou” to “You” and “he” to “he or she” have advanced to holy war against homosexuals.

The battle isn’t about God. It’s about fear, control and property.

More here-

http://www.sj-r.com/features/x1331799118/Tom-Ehrich-Archbishop-is-being-used

The customer's always right

From Tidings Online-

In my consulting work with churches, time and again I see the cumulative impact of poor customer service:

---Uninterested ushers.

---Parishioners who form tight circles.

---More attention paid to setting the table than to greeting guests.

---Fussy liturgy designed for insiders.

---Facilities with poor signage (or Web sites).

---Congregants fighting each other.

---Music that pleases only the trained musician.

---Clergy who don't call --- the list is long.

When I ask former congregants why they worship elsewhere or stay home on Sunday, that's the list they recite, detail by detail. Some were hurt, some were offended. Some said, "Who needs this?"

It wasn't doctrine or change that drove them away. In a world of many choices, the quest for faith simply won't tolerate poor customer service. People stay where they are treated well --- and leave where they aren't.

Pay attention to details, I tell church leaders. Look at how you respond to visitors, for example. Reconsider the maze you impose on anyone asking for care. Watch people's faces sag as they sit through worship. Don't let the prickly long-timer force you to stick with methods that clearly aren't working.

Be customer-driven, not provider-driven, I tell them. Visit a successful church and see lively gathering spaces, helpful signage, friendly greeters, cheerful atmosphere, worship designed to help people worship, leaders who are excited and not dodging bullets --- that list is long, too.

More here-

http://www.the-tidings.com/2009/061209/ehrich.htm

How will faith groups cope as recession digs into them?

As the bill comes due for the boom-time spending that we financed on credit, more is at stake than just family finances.

The great story of the post-war American economy was the vast expansion of the middle class. But one card at a time, that house is collapsing. Real incomes for the middle class began declining more than a decade ago. Much of the credit mania of recent years wasn't profligacy, but a desire to maintain a middle-class lifestyle in the face of growing odds.

As unemployment surges past 8 percent, certain markers of middle-class status are vanishing, including ready access to health care, mortgages and private education. Cadres who rose into the middle class by serving the wealthy suddenly find their shops and services no longer needed. The two pillars of long-term security -- retirement benefits and real estate investments -- look shaky for many.

All classes are hurting, but it is the middle class's radical downsizing of personal horizons that could prove most traumatic.

Can you think of an economic sector that didn't ride the rising expectations of the middle class?
Faith communities were no exception.

The rest is here-

http://www.indystar.com/article/20090314/LIVING09/903140381/1111/LIVING09

In this sobering time, only 1 path offers hope

Tom Ehrich in Indianapolis-

These are sour, sobering and scary times for many people. Not only are their assets dwindling, but so is their self-confidence, and their trust. People are being forced back onto their own resources.

For some, that is a reasonably smooth transition. They paid enough attention to their families to have homes capable of providing succor and new direction. They kept their skills sharp. Others, however, find themselves adrift.

I see four paths lying ahead:

» Some will turn vengeful and indulge in wild swings of blaming and recrimination.

» Some will turn their anger inward and slide into depression.

» Some will "ride out the storm," hoping that yesterday's normalcy will resume.

» And some will do the hard work of repenting, not so much in the traditional Lenten sense of confessing sins (although confession is always good for the soul), but in the broader sense of rethinking values, lifestyles, assumptions, attitudes and purpose.

Only the fourth path offers hope. We must rethink who we are, what we value, how we intend to pour out our lives, and whose star we will follow.

http://www.indystar.com/article/20090228/LIVING09/902280393/1111/LIVING09

When it comes to layoffs, lay on the thanks

I held the door for a neighbor. She breezed through without a word of thanks.

No eye contact. No acknowledgment. No gratitude. Just an attitude of entitlement, a princess on parade.

As the economy crumbles and millions lose their jobs, this scenario happens again and again. The enterprise stumbles, and loyal employees are shown the door without a hint of gratitude.
Some are marched off the premises by security guards, lest they sabotage, say, the computer network. It is humiliating, and it brands the fired employee as unstable, a problem to be managed, certainly not a person deserving respect.

Some receive impersonal notices telling them not to report for duty on Monday; they're no longer needed. It's time for "lean and mean," and sloths must go. Or so goes the implied message.

Higher-ups get golden parachutes and severance packages and don't face the same economic peril as paycheck-to-paycheck wage earners. Even so, they experience the same cold conversations and lawyer-designed exit interviews.

On their way out the door, they sense the same averted eyes, shunned handshakes and thinly disguised relief that the one's going enables the other's staying.

http://www.indystar.com/article/20090214/LIVING09/902140380/1111/LIVING09

Good Stuff in TEC

Tom Ehrich an Episcopal priest in New York offers some practical advice for the new year. From a paper in Oklahoma.

Start the new year in right direction

• Don’t believe in "something for nothing.” We cannot continue to suspend skepticism and careful evaluation just because we want things to be a certain way.

• Don’t shop on credit. This is the year to tear up credit cards, stop drawing down home equity loans, and stop using debt to finance our lifestyles.

• Be generous even when you feel strapped. True community depends on people looking out for each other, especially when danger or distress looms.

• Learn to can vegetables and to make repairs. It isn’t about saving money, but about self-reliance and making-do. As we stagger into the second year of a worsening recession, it is important that we each feel capable and not rendered powerless by a complex world.

• Learn from failure. The greatest shortcoming among recent leaders hasn’t been their mistakes, bad guesses and faulty information, but their refusal to admit failure, to accept accountability for failure, and to learn from failure. We the people, in turn, need to stop pouncing on failure.

More here-

http://newsok.com/start-the-new-year-in-right-direction/article/3334819

You can see all of the Good Stuff posts by clicking on Good Stuff in the labels below.

Church's separatist stance ignores much bigger issues

The Rev. Tom Ehrich in the Indianapolis Stars opines about The Diocese of Quincy "leaving" the Episcopal Church.

I doubt that much sleep was lost, in heaven or on Earth, when the tiny Episcopal Diocese of Quincy, Ill., recently voted to secede from the national Episcopal Church for being too liberal.

With 1,800 members scattered over a large area bordering the Mississippi River, the diocese has long been a recalcitrant outpost of the fading Anglo-Catholic wing of the Episcopal Church. Its stern refusals -- no to women as priests, no to gays, no to theological diversity -- have played poorly in Peoria.

Its 24 congregations have an average membership of 75. Its 7 percent decline in membership since 2006 is the worst among Episcopal dioceses in its region.

But Quincy's debate over leaving the national denomination was illuminating.

With the nation caught up in its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, focusing a church convention on denominational politics showed an odd detachment from reality.

http://www.indystar.com/article/20081129/LIVING09/811290394/1111/LIVING09

If we are fortunate, much good might come from doing without

An Interesting Opinion piece on the possible spiritual benefits of the current financial crisis. Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal Priest in Indianapolis.

I am telling church leaders that it is time to let go of old anxieties, especially self-centered fussing and stale traditions, and to focus instead on being lean, efficient and self-sacrificial enterprises that are dedicated to serving others. Too many congregations are strangling on yesterday's bickering and priorities.

There are so are many families and businesses with arguments that don't end and business models that don't work. We all need fresh starts.

In fact, when we stand back, I think we will see why we ran up $2.3 trillion in personal debts: We were trying to escape ourselves and the difficult decisions that we needed to make in order to have peace and meaning in our lives.

We have tried to live without God. We have tried not to see our skills, blessings -- indeed, our very existence -- as God-given assets entrusted to our care, but rather as economic engines for amassing worldly wealth. In our world-view, we weren't engaged in a dynamic transaction with a living God. We were living as we chose, and if we turned to God at all, it was only as a last resort.

http://www.indystar.com/article/20081115/LIVING09/811150381/1007/LIVING