At particular junctures in our common life, members of the Episcopal Church have come together to call upon its people and leadership to read the signs of the times, to discern the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and to act with boldness to proclaim the gospel in new contexts and situations. One concrete method that call can take is a Memorial to Church. We believe that we have reached one of those critical junctures in the life of our church, and respectfully submit a Memorial calling for the church to recommit itself to the spiritual disciplines at the core of our common life, to go into our neighborhoods boldly with church planters and church revitalizers, and to restructure our church for the mission God is laying before us today.
So begins the explanation for A Memorial to the Church, a letter written to General Convention by a collection of upstart Episcopalians who include a church planter, a publisher, a Canon to the Ordinary, and a seminary dean among them. This isn’t some half-brained operation. This actually is the church.
At a time when it is easy to be pessimistic about leadership there are moments when we realize the true nature of things. That we have been wrong to leave things up to chance or the regular order of things. The church waits for General Convention to act and General Convention waits for the church to act. Meanwhile we are waiting for someone to act.
At first glance, this short letter, the “memorial” is both easy to agree with and to dismiss. And yet, its revolution is found in its simplicity. That it comes from what seems like left field. That it comes from a smart group of people who aren’t officially connected by the institutional church, but are “networked” through like-mindedness. They are the evidence of a Spirit-moved order of things. Of not top-down or bottom-up leadership, but leadership from the side. Calling us out. Calling us up. Calling us off our butts.
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