Thinking about my own parish and looking into the polity of the Church of England has me thinking about how we might go about building the Continuum up into a successful church. One thing that I saw that has my gears moving is the idea of the Parish Church. My own church is the only Continuum church in my county, so it got me to thinking about how to go about building it up.
If I see the county I live in as the Parish of the church, and then look at the way the Church of England has and does do things, then there is a model there that could be used, if adjusted just right. For instance, if we decide that the Parish Church will be the central hub (in the county seat) of the county, then we can move on from there. The Parish Church itself is what we will be working toward building. To that end, we establish several chapels throughout the county in population areas (small towns within the county, which my county has about 7 or 8 of). You build the Parish Church as a typical church building that can handle between 200-500 people in seating. The chapels would be in a store front, or some other convenient place near a major market.
The reason for this is because the center of our society at this time seems to be somewhere around Wal-Mart. If we can set our chapels in places where people go, it has the possibility of drawing some of those people in to see what's going on. In the Chapels, you offer daily Morning and Evening Prayer, and perhaps Eucharist once or twice a week (with one being set on Sunday at an hour that doesn't compete with the service at the Parish Church). In addition, you offer bible studies, and other devotional times to add to the life of the church.
But the Chapels could also serve another purpose. Perhaps a Christian Book Store, or a Coffee house, or a boutique of some sort. All that is really needed is a place to meet and worship. And if the Parish Church owns it, then the profits could be used for ministry.
Another thing that is needed, is to depart from the regional diocese model in favor of a State-by-State model. States with between 5 and 15 Parishes could be established as a Missionary Diocese, and those with above 15 should be organized into a Diocese. Any state that does not have at least 5 churches, those churches would fall under the Area Diocese, which would be styled an Archdiocese. This will accomplish a few things. First, it will ease the pressure on our Bishops to have to travel a wide area. Second, it will give people a local Bishop with fewer churches to oversee, giving them more personal leadership from their Bishop.
All of this is just ideas. It could be a way to establish the unity that we have needed. If we go with a State-by-State method, we can dispense with the Super-Dioceses that we currently have in favor of a more local (as in within ones own state) leadership style.
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Hello Fr. Steve,
I really like your idea of resuscitating the parish model. I think you are certainly on to something in so far as identifying dioceses and parishes with USA states and counties. Using Roman civil political boundaries was the very basis of the early Church drawing up ecclesiastical territories. Makes sense, and to some degree Anglican ecclesiology owes much to state rights. This is a great way to reconnect 'place' with 'spirit'. It also helps amend the trouble of 'commuter churches', namely through a robust discipleship. Interesting thoughts.