Victorious Surrender:

An Open Letter to the Worship Groups of the Episcopal Church in South Carolina

October 6, 2013

My Friends,

As a member of a “worship group,” you probably spent this Sunday morning as I did, helping to set up and then break down a temporary Episcopal Church in a rented space. Maybe you hung the “Episcopal Church Welcomes You” sign, unloaded hymnals from the trunk of a car, or plugged in a portable keyboard. A few miles away, the church building in which you used to worship still stands, no longer connected to The Episcopal Church. On that building the word “Episcopal” has been inexpertly effaced. The Episcopal shield has been pried from the very structure, leaving something like a wound.

On most Sundays, our joy of being free of the negativity and division that for so long shrouded our diocese competes with rootless anxiety. Worship groups are tenants, with leases subject to change. We get bumped from the schedule when our landlords need the space. We update our websites when we change addresses. From lining up supply priests to storing reserved sacrament in the absence of a tabernacle, worship groups manage week-to-week. We've been reminded how little we need, and how easily we had allowed non-essentials to encrust our faith, like barnacles on a ship. (I should substitute “dock” for “ship,” in deference to the worship group at Okatie, which did for a time worship on a dock. I still repeat their joke about “casting bread upon the waters.”)

Resentment is tempting. Why should we be reduced to rented sanctuaries and makeshift altars simply because we wanted to remain Episcopalian? A man moves here from California, decides The Episcopal Church no longer suits him, and we’re the ones told to hit the bricks?  Why has his decision to leave our church left us in this bind?

Resentment?  We should give thanks. Leaving our buildings has been a blessing, and losing them for good would be a godsend.

As worship groups, we have paid a price for our loyalty to The Episcopal Church, and therefore we’ve earned the right to tell our leaders that we object to the ruinous and expensive legal battle being waged on our behalf.  Let us win through surrender.

For those still bitter over packed vestries and secret standing committees, surrender might be cleansing. Some of us walked away from buildings in which we were baptized, married, and confirmed. We left the names of loved ones on brass plaques attached to donated pews. We served on building campaigns that raised money for churches that we are no longer allowed to use. We painted the narthex, mended the roof, and helped install the playground.

But when two children are fighting on that playground we helped build, with a single toy in both their grasps, the one that lets go first has control. The one who lets go first chose to let go, and at that moment the toy loses its value. The kid who doesn’t let go often ends up on his butt, crying over his hollow victory. The toy’s power springs from its desirability.

What if we let go first?

When we refuse to fight for property, we escape the temptation to worship the space, rather than in the space. Those buildings are tombs. In them are buried all the good works that can’t be accomplished by congregations enslaved by facilities. Refusing to fight for property is not a sign of weakness, but of the kind of strength that says, “Take this building. We have a better refuge and a stronger fortress.”

In the twenty-first century, The Episcopal Church in South Carolina is no longer the establishment church, no longer “The Republican Party at prayer.” Each worship group is a ragged extended family of “indiscriminate inclusivity.” Giving up those buildings is a gesture that suits our new identity – missionary, underdog, stripped-down, self-reliant Christians, tolerant to a fault. Heck, tolerant past fault. So tolerant it drives some folks up a wall. So recklessly tolerant that we might occasionally go too far, but knowing full well that the grave danger is not going far enough.

Yes, in some cases we would be giving up prominent symbols of Christianity in our communities. Many of us would be saying goodbye beautiful churches that have stood for decades (or centuries), with steeples that assert respectable religiosity. The prestige building is a sign of worldly success, the right church for polite company, the correct church to join if you want to advance socially.

We worship groups are called to be the wrong church. To join a church that meets in a barbecue restaurant (as the worship group in Edisto did for a while) is to join a church that grants no social advantage. God’s gentle lesson – replacing Edisto’s pretty white church with a pig-picking joint – is directed at us all. We are not able to point to a lovely building and say “That’s our church.” We’ll have to point to the world instead.

Today’s lectionary included a reading from Habakkuk. It starts with the prophet complaining, but turns to a call for perseverance:

I will stand at my watchpost,

and station myself on the rampart;

I will keep watch to see what he will say to me,

and what he will answer concerning my complaint. (2:1-4)

We've been assigned our watchposts: St. Francis Episcopal Church in West Ashley worships in a funeral home. St. Catherine’s in Florence meets in a school. The Episcopal Church in Myrtle Beach is already in its third location, having moved from a back porch to a rented classroom to a building on loan from the Methodists. The Church of the Good Shepherd in Summerville and the East Cooper Episcopalians are also borrowing space from the Methodists. (Thank God for the Methodists!)  These are not the watchposts we would choose, but we are called to keep watch nonetheless.

If after a season we find our mission would be served by owning our own buildings, we will have arrived at that point after a worthwhile (if occasionally inconvenient) period in relative wilderness. We will have to buy or build those watchposts on our own, and we’ll enter them after we’ve been thoroughly reminded that we should view property as a sharp tool –potentially useful, but dangerous to the careless. We’ll be wiser; perhaps wise enough to pity and love those who now appear to be “winning.”

So by letting go – letting all that brick and mortar pass into hands more desperate than ours – we win. We fulfill the promises made at baptism and embraced at confirmation. We avoid a decade of claims and counter-claims with those with whom we used to worship. We devote our resources to the Great Commission, not great attorneys. We can be both in the right and willing to be wronged. 

The property under dispute in our diocese is the second-place trophy in the only race that matters. Wouldn’t we rather come in first?

Regards,

Dan Ennis

Senior Warden

St. Anne's Episcopal Church, Conway