by Lallie Lloyd
Here’s my big question: why should the church advocate for the MDGs? Put the emphasis on “church” not “MDGs” in this question, and you’ll hear it the way it echoes in my head. I’m not asking if a world in which the MDGs are achieved will be closer to the biblical vision of God’s just reign. Of course it will, and perhaps that is reason enough.
I’m asking about the nature and purpose of the church. What we pay attention to when we’re together, what our preachers teach from the pulpit and what lay people do the rest of the week.
For the better part of five years my faith and work have been challenged and strengthened by two groups in the Episcopal Church: EGR and the Standing Commission on Domestic Mission and Evangelism (SCDME), which reports to General Convention as one of the bodies that guide church policy and practice.
SCDME’s purpose is to reflect on trends in our church and recommend actions so we become a more healthy and growing faith community. It meets a few times a year and includes people of vastly diverse life experience: age, class, ethnicity, gender, geography, nationality, race, sexual orientation – the twelve of us cover almost every spectrum one can imagine. We are all baptized into the ministry of the laity; some are also ordained to the ministries of priest and bishop.
Here’s what I’ve learned from SCDME:
(1) The Episcopal church is in decline. As measured by the number of people who come to worship, all but four dioceses were smaller in 2005 than in 2000. Our domestic dioceses were more than eight percent smaller in 2005 than in 2000. We are hemorrhaging people.
I’m asking about the nature and purpose of the church. What we pay attention to when we’re together, what our preachers teach from the pulpit and what lay people do the rest of the week.
For the better part of five years my faith and work have been challenged and strengthened by two groups in the Episcopal Church: EGR and the Standing Commission on Domestic Mission and Evangelism (SCDME), which reports to General Convention as one of the bodies that guide church policy and practice.
SCDME’s purpose is to reflect on trends in our church and recommend actions so we become a more healthy and growing faith community. It meets a few times a year and includes people of vastly diverse life experience: age, class, ethnicity, gender, geography, nationality, race, sexual orientation – the twelve of us cover almost every spectrum one can imagine. We are all baptized into the ministry of the laity; some are also ordained to the ministries of priest and bishop.
Here’s what I’ve learned from SCDME:
(1) The Episcopal church is in decline. As measured by the number of people who come to worship, all but four dioceses were smaller in 2005 than in 2000. Our domestic dioceses were more than eight percent smaller in 2005 than in 2000. We are hemorrhaging people.
(2) When we focus on what we have in common – the love of God as made known in the life and ministry of Jesus – we come to love people with whom we disagree on things we hold dear.
Christians aren’t called to capitalism or socialism, to parliamentary or representative democracy. Paul doesn’t say the world will know us by our resolutions, but by our love; Jesus doesn’t tell us to agree with one another; just to love one another.
I think the MDGs will be accomplished when ordinary lay people doing their work in commerce, education, manufacturing or whatever make connections between God’s vision for a just world and what they do in their daily lives.
I know a pediatric neurologist who supervises international training programs for a major teaching hospital. He helped arrange for doctors to work in a South African AIDS clinic alongside seminary students. When a seminarian asked a patient, “Where do you see the face of God?” the doctor cringed, but the patient smiled and patted the doctor’s arm, saying “Because my sister here has not forgotten me.” The young doctor tells this story as a moment of transformation.
Can a declining church turn itself around by focusing on the MDGs and a vision of global justice? Would my neurologist friend have made this connection without the advocacy for the MDGs that is a vibrant part of his congregation? We belong to a declining church. Can we afford to have preachers advocating issues that divide worshippers? Are the MDGs a case in point, or are they inherently different? When priests and bishops take positions on issues, even ones with apparently clear moral imperatives, can they simultaneously model and teach us to love people who see the issue differently? What do you think?
Maybe being a faithful Christian in these times means caring more about the MDGs than about the institutional survival of the Episcopal Church (or any other denomination). I’m not sure; that’s why I have this big question.
Can a declining church turn itself around by focusing on the MDGs and a vision of global justice? Would my neurologist friend have made this connection without the advocacy for the MDGs that is a vibrant part of his congregation? We belong to a declining church. Can we afford to have preachers advocating issues that divide worshippers? Are the MDGs a case in point, or are they inherently different? When priests and bishops take positions on issues, even ones with apparently clear moral imperatives, can they simultaneously model and teach us to love people who see the issue differently? What do you think?
Maybe being a faithful Christian in these times means caring more about the MDGs than about the institutional survival of the Episcopal Church (or any other denomination). I’m not sure; that’s why I have this big question.
Lallie Lloyd is the author of "Eradicating Global Poverty: A Christian Study Guide on the MDGs" for the National Council of Churches and chair of the Standing Commission on Domestic Mission and Evangelism.
Tomorrow: Sarah Bush
