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Generation X gathering previews Episcopal Church's near future
By Jan Nunley
2002-167
6/28/2002
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[Episcopal News Service]
'I am Generation X. I am not content to be next. I am the Church...WE are the Church.' That's how David Flentje explained to his parish in St. Louis why he spent three days in Indianapolis recently learning from fellow Episcopalians how to pray, play and grow in Christian community. To Gen-X Episcopalians, 'being the church' doesn't look one bit like 'the way we've always done it before'--it's full of light and color and sound and, above all, authenticity. Welcome to the postmodern Episcopal Church in the 21st century.
'Equipping Ourselves for Lifelong Ministry Together' was the theme of the June 20-22 gathering of Gen-X Episcopalians in Indianapolis, reflecting the strong sense of community among those born between 1961 and 1981. It was the first meeting of the Gathering the neXt Generation (GTNG) network to involve both Gen-X clergy and laity, and the gathering was two years in the planning. Almost evenly split between what organizers wryly called 'confessed clergy' and 'confessed laity,' it drew 113 participants from 49 dioceses across the United States.
Most knew one another but had never actually met, in the manner of communities whose primary meeting place is cyberspace. GTNG regularly maintains two e-mail lists, one for 'Xers and friends' and the other restricted to Gen-X clergy. 'This was my chance to get to know better many people with whom I have been in deep (and not so deep) conversation and prayer for a year and a half,' wrote Flentje in an e-mail response after the meeting. 'We joked that this was a backward meeting--we knew and recognized each other by name tag and then looked up to learn the face.'
Core values
GTNG traces its beginnings to a 1998 gathering of Gen-X clergy, who realized that they represented only 3.5 percent of Episcopal clergy while their generational cohort formed 30 percent of the American population. It's sometimes called 'the first generation raised without religion,' of whom only 15 percent identify as Christians. At Virginia Theological Seminary that year, the Gen-X clergy met to sympathize, and strategize, with one another, and out of that was born the GTNG 'network.' It is not a special interest group, or a membership organization, but a loosely affiliated connection of people who try to live by four 'core values':
* We are Christ-centered.
* We value the leadership of Gen-X (defined as people born between 1961-1981).
* We value our relationships in Christ over the issues that divide us.
* We value restoring all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.
The larger network is not restricted to Gen-Xers, though the nine-member GTNG 'core team,' which manages and sustains the network, currently is. The network is dedicated to building Christian community 'across party lines,' and so as a matter of policy does not issue endorsements of causes or legislation. In fact, it's one of the few places in the church where people on all sides of 'hot button' issues can find common ground--typically, over a steaming Starbucks venti latte.
Artificial clergy shortage?
The main gathering was preceded by a Clergy Day, which drew almost half the conference's participants for conversation among themselves and with Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold. Three Clergy Day workshops dealt with developing community among Anglicans in their twenties and thirties, cooperating in ministry with Lutheran Gen-X clergy, and rethinking ministerial ideals in the light of the crisis of young clergy vocations.
In workshops held Friday and Saturday, the participants struggled with issues peculiar to their generation, as well as others more universal to the practice of ministry. All but one of the presenters were Gen-X clergy and laity, and most workshops were interactive and participatory--the very antithesis of the teacher-student model of previous generations.
The issue that initiated the group's formation, the shortage of Gen-X clergy, drew many to a computer-assisted presentation by the Church Pension Fund's director of analytical research, Dr. Matthew Price. There's no comparison, he said, between the Episcopal Church's current clergy supply, with a ratio of one priest to every 583 parishioners, and that of the Roman Catholic church, with a ratio of one priest to every 1,654. And a quarter of Roman Catholic clergy are over 70 years old, Price added.
Still, the steadily rising age of seminarians and candidates at ordination, the relatively small number of Gen-Xers seeking ordination, the number of priests who don't want to (or can't afford to) work in available parishes--combined with the predisposition of parishes to prefer a full-time priest who's a 'married male with children at home and 10-15 years of experience,' while qualified women priests are overlooked--may create an artificial shortage. It's possible, Price said, that 'a significant number' of parishes with full-time clergy now won't have them in 10 years, unless they raise salaries or reconfigure so that 'the Eucharistic celebrant is not the chief parish leader.'
But he warned about the value of predictions, pointing out that a 1978 book predicted that at ordination rates current at that time there would be one clergyperson for every person in the pews by 2004. 'If every diocese ordained one more person each year, we will not have a clergy shortage,' he said. 'If they ordain two more each year, we will have a glut.'
A generation 'marinated' in debt
Several workshops dealt with issues that every generation negotiates, but with a Gen-X twist. The Rev. Kate Moorehead of Boiling Springs, South Carolina, shared her experience of giving birth to two baby boys while working as a full-time rector. The Rev. Stacy Alan, assistant in a Kalamazoo, Michigan, congregation, led a discussion of how Gen-X parents can be spiritual guides to their children. (Alan's two children attended the conference with her and her husband.) The Rev. Jonathon Jensen, editor of a Gen-X journal, The Catalyst, was just called to a new ministry in Kansas and shared his thoughts on Gen-Xers' special challenges in navigating the calling process.
And in three separate but well-attended workshops, presenters Janet Todd (a consultant with Church Pension Group) and the Rev. Greg Rickel of St. James' Church in Austin, Texas, grappled with an issue in which Gen-Xers often feel 'marinated': money and its stewardship, especially coping with a 'staggering burden' of educational and consumer debt. The Church Pension Group also offered one-on-one financial planning consultations throughout the conference.
In Rickel's workshop on 'balancing your checkbook with God in mind,' participants toggled between the 'safe' area of sharing stewardship campaign methods and the scarier place of admitting their own struggles with money issues. Some confessed to feeling 'reckless' with money, others admitted that tithing 'went out the window' when they moved from a rectory and purchased their own home, and still others bemoaned the trade-offs required when time crunches made them choose convenience over good stewardship of money or the environment. Although they spoke passionately about the importance of tithing as a spiritual discipline, when Rickel asked participants what they would do if someone gave them $50,000 guaranteed tax-free today, the instant--and telling--response was 'pay off my loans and my credit cards.'
Participants in Todd's workshop on 'debt reduction through cash management techniques' told nearly identical stories of racking up tens of thousands in seminary student loans, plus maxing out several credit cards to cover groceries, car repairs, and family expenses. Several had reached the desperation point, investigating consumer credit counseling services for help until they learned of the negative effect that would have on their ability to qualify for auto or home loans. Todd's well-documented presentation offered practical techniques for dealing with debt without outside intervention, eliminating all but two credit cards, and paring down the pay-back timetable by paying more than the monthly minimums or transferring balances on high-interest credit cards to a single, low-interest card.
Unity without uniformity
The most distinctive aspect of the gathering was worship, a dazzling display of 'unity without uniformity.' Each day, participants could choose from five different 'flavors' of Morning Prayer: an interactive Bible study format; a chanted monastic office with two brothers from the Society of St. John the Evangelist; a 'highly participative' service based on the innovative liturgies of the Church of St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco; another monastic office based on that of the Society of St. Francis; and the 'Digital Daily Office,' an 'Anglican ancient-future experience' using Rite I, PowerPoint iconography, and recordings of the Psalter from the 1558 Book of Common Prayer. Between service times, one room of the hotel was set aside as a 'Meditation Chapel,' quiet space for postmodern contemplation.
Music for services was drawn largely from the supplemental hymnal Wonder, Love and Praise, accompanied by guitar, piano, and conga drums. The opening Eucharist, designed as an 'agape meal,' interspersed liturgical elements with the serving of dinner 'family style.' The closing Eucharist featured a sermon delivered in three parts, one segment of which included the congregational singing of the Indigo Girls' poignant 1994 hit 'Least Complicated,' familiar to many in the congregation. 'The 'least complicated' thing, the hardest to learn, is to love,' declared the Rev. Michael Kinman, while Dylan Breuer remembered her childhood participation in the Marlo Thomas production 'Free to Be, You and Me,' and the Rev. Raewynne Whiteley declared that 'we have a certain freedom, because we do not have to be the gatekeepers of an institution, we are not bound to sustain the structures. We can simply be the Church, gathered around Christ--our center, our hope, our life--for whose sake we are the Church.'
Cool kids being church
Breuer's comment in her sermon that the gathering took Gen-Xers from the margins and made them 'the cool kids' resonated with Flentje. 'Many of my generation who are in this Church have spent time on the margins, and in many cases we have brought this with us into the Church as an expectation that we will be marginalized, ignored, or passed over,' he reported to his parish in St. Louis. 'Two of the most powerful things done by the GTNG community are nurturing the understanding of, and empowering action on, the reality that we are the Church.'
The Rev. Beth Maynard, a Core Team member and one of the group's original organizers, reflected on the growth of GTNG since the 1998 meeting in Virginia. 'At VTS, nothing like this had ever been attempted before; many of us arrived feeling almost afraid,' she said. 'In the intervening five years, GTNG has had a significant impact in the Episcopal Church, linking together hundreds of Xers, working for reform in some commissions on ministry, and fostering a number of ministries that have begun to change the landscape for our generation.
'This means that that crying need for connection is not the driving force anymore; the driving force is Christ's mission,' she said.
'I felt a bit like Simeon,' joked the Very Rev. George Werner, president of the House of Deputies, who joined the GTNG group for workshops, worship, and conversations over dinner. 'What enthusiasm, what discipleship, what commitment, and all from a large group of lay and clergy who weren't born when I was ordained 40 years ago this week.'
More Gen-X ministry links:
How to Evangelize a GenXer (NOT)
The Church and the World in Transition
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