So when I moved into my office at St. Francis I immediately began clearing out the twenty tons of junk that had collected over the years... old Almy catalogs, unused offering envelopes from 1990, tons of old bulletins, off-centered Christmas cards, and more. Tons of useless debris. It was awful. I ended up with three huge (lawn and leaf huge) trash bags being hauled out to the curb. The few things worth saving in terms of parish history and archives ended up fitting into one cabinet!
But amongst all of the garbage I found some treasures. I found a bunch of classic anglo-catholic tracts, Mandate magazines, Touchstone, and Christian Challenge magazines that could all be put to good use. They were obviously procured at one point with the intent on handing them out because they had many copies. But what were these fine materials doing? They were languishing on a shelf! All of this great educational and promotional material was just languishing on a dusty shelf in a dirty office with a bad, rusty lighting fixture! A lot of good that does. So tonight I got some inexpensive tract and magazine racks from Staples, and all of this stuff, freshly organized and dusted, will serve as the centerpiece to a new "information corner" in the parlor. The parish will grow if people knew something about it, and about classical Anglicanism in general!
When will the leaders of our churches and the parishes get this through their heads? People need information. We can't expect people to join us if they don't know anything about us and can't get information on who we are and what we believe! If you have information - use it. If you don't have any - get some! There wasn't even any literature in the parish I attended in seminary! Nothing. No information. And we wonder why we're so small.
And don't even get me started on what I found (and didn't find) in the "parish register" and "register of services". Gosh... for anyone out there who is mad at organized religion come to a continuing Anglican parish! It is sometimes the most DISorganized religion I have ever seen!
Maybe so many of our continuing Anglican parishes have been faltering because there has not been good lay and ordained leadership. There has been no one to set up a vision and plan for the future, and get the materials and items needed to make that happen. There have not been enough "leaders" who want to lead.
