The Episcopal Church Introduction

A Word from The Rev. Canon Mark Stevenson, Domestic Poverty Missioner for The Episcopal Church

Prior to my work in the Justice and Advocacy Ministries Office of the Episcopal Church, I spent eight years on a bishop’s staff working with congregations of all sizes in the effort to strengthen congregational vitality. Whether it was strategic planning, capital campaign preparation or rector transition profiling, the common starting point was often some sort of needs-assessment. That is, what are the opportunities that God has put before or around us that the congregation might embrace as a ministry? Once the needs were identified, folks would decide whether or not a ministry could be started to address them. In some cases, the church members would agree that they had no way to tackle a particular problem; in some cases, a program would be launched that would die out after a short period of time; and in some cases, an initiative would begin that became a vital part of the life of the community. This last scenario was always the goal, of course, but there often seemed to be a certain hit-and-miss nature to it all.

I have come to discover that there is another way to approach ministry development within a congregation, one that does not begin with an assessment of the needs that surround a community, but with the assets – God-given human skills, passions and resources – that are possessed by the people of the community themselves. Such assets are possessed not just by parishioners, but by the collection of persons that make up the wider community in which a church finds itself. God has given treasure of one form or another to everyone. It is not the case that the needs of a community are unimportant, but that God provides what is necessary in any given situation even if we don’t see it at first. Letting people give their treasures away creates a sense of vitality in a community of faith that is truly transformative.

The ideas, tools, stories and processes that have been gathered here are offered to help us discover what is that God has gifted us to do, and to then to give those gifts away to the glory of God and the betterment of us all.