Last weekend, I went on a walk through a wetlands in a national park. I have to say, my first reaction on seeing places like this is, “Ugh. Marsh. Bugs. Gross.” But it was a marvellous place, teeming with life—beavers, turtles, fish, frogs, and, yes, loads of bugs. I was reminded of the wisdom of creation, the interdependence of all life, and the way a place I find initially repulsive can be such a vibrant ecosystem.
Though we often talk about “the church,” it’s a mistake to think of it as a single institution. I’ve found myself thinking that the image of ecosystem may be more helpful. The church is a connected network of various organizations—parishes, dioceses, national churches, theological colleges, para-church ministries, etc. Each of these has their own health to attend to but that health is dependent on the entire network. (We won’t speculate on who the mosquitos of the church ecosystem are.)
So if we are interested in asking about what the church will look in a post-pandemic world, what we’re really asking is this: What will this ecosystem look like?
I think the first thing to say is that it’s hard to generalize about this because the impact of the pandemic on institutions has been widely varied, due to the differing severity of the pandemic, differences in government support, church responses, and a whole host of other factors.
In Canada, for instance, many church organizations have been able to access the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy. This has paid up to 70% of church salaries for over a year. (The program is set to taper down over the summer.) Some dioceses have also suspended or reduced the assessment they expect parishes to pay to the diocese. The result I am hearing is that some congregations are in stronger financial shape than they’ve been in a long time. This has allowed some to invest in new technology, pay down debt, or sit on a financial cushion they may not have known before.
At the same time, however, precisely because of the suspension of assessments, many diocesan offices—which supports the ministry of the bishop and so much else—are in deeper trouble. Some diocesan offices are running deficits in a sacrificial fashion—they bear the cost of the financial flourishing of congregations.
Meanwhile, national church offices—the office of the senior bishop and staff—have found themselves with sharply reduced costs. (Much of their work involves travel, which has been curtailed.) The national Episcopal Church is launching a grant program to return some of this money to dioceses.
I’ve also heard of new kinds of church networks emerging, frequently facilitated by the Internet. There are conversations happening across great geographic distances over topics like formation, stewardship, discipleship, and more. These kinds of things were happening before the pandemic, of course, but I get the sense the transition of so much church life to the Internet has turbocharged these networks.
But it’s also clear the pandemic is depleting the resources available in this church ecosystem. The wage subsidy and other similar measures are keeping some parts of this ecosystem afloat, but when that disappears the potentially harsh reality of diminished giving and people not returning to church will become much more apparent.
Now is the time, therefore, for the conversation about how we structure this church ecosystem to happen. We have often asked in the past if we need as many congregations and buildings as we have. Can we now ask the question if we need as many dioceses as we have? Can we ask seriously what kind of services we need diocesan and national church offices to provide? Does it make sense for diocesan offices to act sacrificially in relation to parishes? Where are the centres of vitality in this ecosystem?
If we don’t ask these questions now, in a moment when there is a degree of health in this ecosystem, we may find ourselves asking the same questions when the ecosystem is much weaker.