Eleven Strategies for Doubling the Episcopal Church by the Year 2020
Introduction

The 20/20 mission initiative to double the size of the Episcopal Church by 2020 is to be commended. In fact, campus chaplains across the United States have been working and praying for the church to make a serious commitment to domestic mission for years.

Campus ministries have a proven record of bringing people into the Episcopal Church According to one poll, 60 percent of non-cradle Episcopalians received their first significant exposure to the Episcopal Church through a campus ministry. [1] Moreover, statistics compiled by the 2020 Task Force [2] indicate that, “In the age band of 18-29, the number of adults identifying with the Episcopal Church decreased by 39.5 percent, from 570,000 to 345,000, while the U.S. population in this age group increased by 5 percent.” This confirms the observations made in the 2020 Task Force Report (and elsewhere) that we have a serious problem attracting and/or retaining the younger adults,” both as lay members and as candidates for ordained vocation.

The same report notes that, “In the age band of 30-64, those identifying with the Episcopal Church increased by 18 percent, but the U.S. population in that age band increased by 38.8 percent, indicating that as a percentage of the population we are losing significantly in that age band as well.”[2] Given the historical associations between campus ministry and Episcopal Church membership, many of us believe it is not a coincidence that the decline in Episcopal Church attendance among this cohort, many of whom graduated from colleges and universities after 1960, parallels significant declines in funding for campus ministries which began in 1967.

In order for the 20/20 strategy to successfully address the problems identified by these and similar findings, the Episcopal Church must devote significant resources to a national strategy of renewal for campus ministry.

We have a vision for growing the Episcopal Church which incorporates the accumulated wisdom of many years on the front lines of the Episcopal Church's most fertile domestic mission field. These ideas are "field-tested," and could be expanded into national programs without having to be reinvented by administrative systems.

1. Mission-Oriented Growth

We will not grow because we think we need to. We will only grow when we seek and serve the will of God. A passionate desire to serve God by serving the people of God is the purpose of faithful mission. In order to reach young people and, we believe, just about anyone in our culture, a widespread suspicion toward organized religion must be overcome by maintaining a strong focus on one simple fact:

Our commission as Christians is to proclaim the gospel in word and in the offer of life in community the church offers. It is an Anglican principle to make that proclamation in “a tongue ... understanded of the people,” [3] thus the evangelical challenge is to meet the people of God in their contexts and engage them in “languages” of worship, education and formation consonant with this principle.

Our teens and young adults are in crisis. According to the American Medical Association, teen suicide rates have tripled in the last 30 years; binge drinking on campus has tripled over the same time period. [4] Eighteen-year-olds report rates of overwhelming stress, depression, anxiety, and frequent smoking double those of just five years ago. [5] And their values have shifted dramatically to a nearly singular concern for material wealth, yet they reject organized religion in record numbers. [6]

On college and university campuses across the United States, there is a tremendous need for the kind of spiritual community that the Episcopal Church can offer -- if it can only adapt to the changing culture. Conservative Evangelical groups dominate religious discourse on campus, and yet appeal to a fairly narrow percentage of students. The lived faith and theology of the Episcopal Church, in fact, more closely reflects the views of most college students, yet Episcopal campus ministries do not exist on many campuses and, where they remain, lack the resources to make their voice heard over the better funded and more aggressively run programs of conservative Evangelicals.

Campus ministries that have adapted their approach to the culture of young adults while maintaining the values and practices that are essential to Episcopal identity are meeting with great success. These approaches can be models not only for other campus ministries, but for parish start-ups and para-church approaches.

Strategy One: articulate and emphasize the theological, liturgical and historical traditions of the Episcopal Church in ways which communicate its strengths.

Strategy Two: develop a visible presence on college campuses that addresses young adults' needs and concerns by encouraging creative practices consistent with our distinctive Anglican identity, by subsidizing ad campaigns in college media, by hosting and promoting websites for young adults, and by sponsoring other public campaigns.

Strategy Three: bring young adult and professionally experienced representatives from campus ministry into the development approaches for start-up congregations.

2. Meeting the Mission Challenge on Campus

If a large corporation expressed a desire to grow while simultaneously cutting back on both its sales force and its research and development department, and resisted all efforts to modify or improve its product, it would be doomed to failure. Yet that is the state of affairs in the Episcopal Church. Campus ministry is both the "sales department" and the "r & d" of the Episcopal Church.

In part because of the lack of resources dedicated to campus ministry, there has been a lack of creative imagination and leadership in many campus ministries. Without the benefit of full-time clergy who have trained for campus ministry as a vocational specialty, many campus ministries limp along with a parochial model that poorly serves students. Attention must be paid to the distinctive needs of generations and the types of communities they form.

Too often, Episcopal campus ministry is perceived by denominational leadership as directed to the Episcopal students on campus. Programs are encouraged that are familiar to cradle Episcopalians, with little thought given to the overwhelming numbers of students who don't care about denominational identity, and are turned-off by activities that they neither understand nor appreciate, but who are deeply hungry for spiritual community.

We encourage renewed commitment to and the investment of venture capital in campus ministry adequate to the task defined by the 20/20 vision, including support and training systems that would attract talented and creative clergy into this most challenging mission field.

Strategy Four: dramatically increase funding to campus ministries that have been cut-back over the past thirty years.

Strategy Five: include campus ministry start-ups at strategically selected colleges and universities among the 300 new mission congregations proposed by the 20/20 plan.

Strategy Six: utilizing the Provincial infrastructure, restore funding for full-time campus ministry coordinators in each province, charged with expert consulting and entrepreneurial start-ups of campus ministries.
3. Addressing the Crisis in Leadership in the Church

In addition to its other benefits to the church, campus ministry has always played a critical role in the recruitment of young men and women for lay leadership and ordained ministry. As funding for campus ministry has declined, so has the church's ability to reach and influence young people as they make career decisions. With a critical shortage of clergy on the horizon, the church is at risk of falling into a self-perpetuating cycle: as the ranks of Episcopal clergy age, young people find it increasingly difficult to imagine a place for themselves in the ranks of the ordained. As well, serious lay ministry, as church professional or as a faithful Christian in society, is undervalued. There are a variety of roles campus ministry can play to break this cycle, if given the resources.

Strategy Seven: develop internship programs to give undergraduates and recent graduates a highly supportive opportunity to explore and develop gifts for campus ministry.

Strategy Eight: establish a commission to recommend changes to diocesan and national canons and policies to remove barriers to younger vocations.

Strategy Nine: encourage the bishops of the church to engage young adults by making visitations to campus ministries a priority and by participating in provincial and national campus ministry conferences.

Strategy Ten: dramatically increase funding for seminary training for young adult "first vocation" (20-29-year-old) postulants, thereby enhancing incentive and reducing the debt load carried by young clergy.

Strategy Eleven: Challenge each diocese to make campus ministry a budget priority.



[1] Reported by Portaro and Peluso in Inquiring and Discerning Hearts: Vocation and Ministry with Young Adults on Campus (Atlanta: Scholar’s Press, 1993), p.186.

[2] Selected Statistics re Episcopalians from CUNY 1990 and 2001 Surveys The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) found at http://members.aol.com/taskforce2020/CUNYsummary.html

[3] The Articles of Religion, Book of Common Prayer 1979, p. 872.

[4] Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, Columbia University, 1993

[5] Sax et. al, The American Freshman: National Norms,” Cooperative Institutional Research Program, UCLA, 1966 - present.

[6] Ibid.