Dispatches From Dean Dane

The meeting to establish the Parish of Christ Church in the village of Cooperstown, New York, took place on the first day of January in the year of Our Lord 1811. The total membership numbered about 100, all spread across Otsego County. A dignified brick church building had been erected in the midst of the village burying ground the previous summer, and on the first day of the new year several of the prominent men of that hardscrabble frontier community gathered with their intrepid missionary priest, the Reverend Daniel Nash, to do the necessary legal and canonical work of gathering the little society of Episcopalians into an actual parish.

It did not go well. The original minutes of the meeting are still held in the vault in the basement of Christ Church’s Parish House, and I have read them myself. The clerk’s clear, elegant hand records the following: “The meeting was called to order at noon, and immediately adjourned, it being exceedingly cold, and there being no fire in the brick church.”

Happily, this false start proved but a temporary setback. The records declare that the first vestry immediately reconvened in the warm home–which seems also to have offered the comforts of a tavern–belonging to one of its first members and promptly completed the work of incorporation. As the saying goes, “Wherever there are four Episcopalians, there’s a faithful commitment to good order and proper church governance.” The parish was duly organized, officers and vestrymen were elected, Father Nash officially called as rector, and all the important work of keeping records and monitoring finances and constituting committees proceeded according to the canons of the Episcopal Church and the laws of the State of New York.

This coming Sunday, the people of Trinity will gather for the 213th Annual Meeting of this Cathedral Parish. In spite of the dusting of snow we have enjoyed this week, it looks as though this Sunday will be a cool and pleasant day in Columbia, so we won’t face anything like the discomfort of our coreligionists in Cooperstown two centuries ago. Indeed, I expect we will be significantly more comfortable than our own forebears were when they gathered to organize this parish in the still-quite-new city of Columbia on August 8, 1812, in the days long before air conditioning. Perhaps the churchmen–and the fact is that only men were allowed to serve in leadership in those days–of the 19th-century considered it especially virtuous to hold ecclesiastical business meetings at the most extreme and unpleasant seasons of the year?

Weather notwithstanding, why do we do all this to ourselves? Why do we organize the Church into parishes, and adopt bylaws, and attend annual meetings? Why do we endure the tedium of financial reports, and Robert’s Rules of Order, and slates of candidates, and “point of order,” and shouts of  “so moved”? (Sticklers for proper usage of Robert’s Rules maintain that the phrase “so moved” is improper as it does not adequately restate the motion intended by the one “so moving.” Sticklers for proper usage of Robert’s Rule are not, in general, much fun.)

To ask the question from a different point-of-view: doesn’t all this procedural stuff just get in the way of “being the Church”? Plenty of folks feel that it does. Organized religion has been on the decline for decades, and that slide seems to be picking up speed. Many people express a desire to live a faith that’s free of institutional burdens. It’s certainly increasingly difficult to get younger generations of Christians to serve on vestries and committees and commissions and guilds. So why do we bother with all this?

The Acts of the Apostles tells us that the meeting to establish the Church of Jesus Christ was held in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost in the year of Our Lord 33. The total membership numbered about 120, all gathered in one place. The disciples were not gavelled into a business meeting. They did not use Robert’s Rules. They happened to be together praying and keeping the Jewish feast of Shavuot which falls 50 days after Passover–and, therefore, 50 days after Jesus’ resurrection–when “suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.” The Spirit of God blowing around them and through them with power and fire and evangelical zeal transformed an assembly of fishermen and tax collectors and other ordinary men and women–Saint Luke takes pains to tell us that women were present, and all the evangelists are in firm agreement that it was women who first bore the tidings of the Lord’s resurrection–and made them the Church.

Their first official act was to stand up and preach the Gospel in languages they had never learned. They proclaimed, in the native tongues of the Jews who had gathered for Shavuot in Jerusalem from across the Greco-Roman world, the triumphant Good News of what God had done in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Furthermore, they declared that this Gospel was good news for those first listeners, and for their children, and for all whom “the Lord our God shall call.” The Lord blessed their proclamation, and added some 3,000 believers to their number that day.

To go from 120 members to 3,000 in a single day is pretty impressive church growth. (Trinity has, by the grace of God, grown steadily for the last several years, but by no means have we grown at that rate!) But this stunning movement of the Spirit of God in the souls of hundreds of women and men carried with it practical implications for the common life of those women and men as they came into the Body of Christ. We human beings are, after all, creatures simultaneously spiritual and physical. What we believe shapes and is shown forth in how we live. Jesus told us that where our treasure is, there our hearts will be also.
The believers in Jerusalem in those early days held all of their goods in common, entrusting their material wealth to the stewardship of the Apostles and looking to the Church to meet the physical needs of its membership, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable. It seems that the expectation that they would share what they have came not as an absolute requirement of membership but as free-will, love offerings for their community. (But refer to the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 to see just how seriously the Lord takes honest-dealing when it comes to wealth and generosity!)

Before long, the work of ensuring a fair distribution to meet the physical needs of Church members caused division along demographic lines: “there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration.” Saint Luke’s phrasing here can be a little confusing. What he actually seems to be describing are disputes between Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christians native to Jerusalem and the Holy Land and Greek-speaking Jewish Christians who came from other regions. But if the parties are unfamiliar to us, the dynamics are the same. The combination of tribalism and competition for limited resources does not bring out the best in our species. Christians are not exempt from that truth of our human nature, and the conflict between groups within the Church threatened to split the community and consume all the Apostles’ attention. Something had to be done to resolve the disagreement and maintain good order. So the Twelve called the whole Church together.

If the Day of Pentecost constituted the Church’s organizing meeting, this gathering was its first Annual Meeting. On the one hand, it was an occasion to take stock of and give thanks for what the Lord God had accomplished among them. It was also an occasion to assess their mission readiness and refocus their roles. But most importantly it was an occasion to solve problems and elect leaders from among the congregation who could tend to the financial and physical realities of the congregation. The Acts of the Apostles records the minutes of that meeting, and I will quote the Apostles’ motion in full:

“It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables. Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. But we will give ourselves to prayer, and to the ministry of the word.”

The motion carried. Stephen and six companions were set apart as the first deacons, a title derived from the Greek word διάκονος, or “servant.” The principle of accomplishing the complex and varied work of the Church by coming together, discussing and resolving issues, and then sharing responsibilities according to acknowledged gifts and ministries was established.

This practice of engaging the whole body of the Church in the governance of the Church with the selection and setting apart of certain individuals in certain roles of leadership for the sake of the Church has been maintained ever since, adapted to the needs and customs of different times and places. We stand in this same line when we come to our Annual Meeting: a gathering of the whole body of the local Church engaged in the governance of the Church to select and set apart certain individuals in certain roles of leadership for the sake of the Church. Whether the weather is fair or foul–and whether the procedures seem dull or thrilling–it is the Spirit of the Living God moving in and through the realities of our individual lives and our collective life that draws us together for this important work. It is to support, uphold, and expand the Spirit’s work in the world that we assemble. It is in confidence that the Spirit will lead us, guide us, and give life to the dry bones of our institutions that we go forth.

Yes, the focus on finances and details can sometimes obscure the spiritual realities that gather us, in the same way that a growling belly can distract us from a good sermon. But just as we need to eat so that we can be strengthened to do the work that matters, we need to meet so that Trinity can do the work that really matters. Come together. Attend to the needs of the Body. Then go forth in the Spirit.

Join us this Sunday, January 26, at 10:00 a.m. for the Holy Eucharist, followed by the 213th Annual Meeting of Trinity Cathedral Parish.