Drew Downs

Make a New Normal

decline

  • Some Thoughts On Decline

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    6 min read

    There’s a consistency to our talk of decline. What to blame. How to fix it. Talk and action. Still missing the point.

  • Needing to Blame

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    4 min read

    Our response to decline is to blame someone or something for it. But changing our institutions is far more challenging.

  • There is no normal to return to

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    3 min read

    “Going back to normal” is a deeply pessimistic idea. And it represents a fatalism we cannot afford to encourage.

  • The Trouble with Being Done with Church

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    12 min read

    It is a familiar sight in many of our churches: to see the empty space, the pew that once held up a faithful member, a devoted, active, loving Christian. One of us. And now, an empty space. Nobody has died, of course. Not this week, anyway. The space is empty because the person who was…

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  • What If the Church Believed in Eternal Life?

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    4 min read

    When Jesus speaks of eternal life, he isn’t talking about forever. Many of us learn this in seminary or when we read books about scripture. That this phrase Jesus uses*, “eternal life” doesn’t mean what we think it means. Or to be more precise, doesn’t communicate only the narrow understanding we take it for. The…

    1

  • The Church’s Missing Ingredient

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    12 min read

    I’m tired of the blame. The health and vitality of the The Episcopal Church and the Mainline generally is an oversimplified story of the 20th Century, too easily shouldered on the leadership of the 21st. It’s always the politics or the practice or the beliefs or the Bible or the liturgy or anything else ad nauseam, but…

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