I am sharing this article in hopes that, by talking about an unrelated subject, we might gain some perspective on what is happening in the church. Specifically on the death and life of the Episcopal Church. So in the 1950s Jane Jacobs published The Death and Life of Great American Cities. It was a major, and prophetic, critique of the urban planning of her day, much of which is still in place, and suburbia. The reality is that a lot of people still bought into the idea of suburbia, a lot of people loved the idea of suburbia, in some places suburbia is still growing to this day. For many of us who where brought up in the suburban ideal the entire idea is flat and depressing. It does not embody the type of community we seek to be a part of nor does it represent a set of ideals we consider worthy. So we are seeking to reinvest and bring back urbanism, be it small towns or big city burroughs. To bring an end to urban blight and bring about communities that are diverse around lines of race, class, culture, and ethnicity with common third places where we all gather to learn and grow from our various experiences. This is not just a fad of a few but a shift we have seen in the base of our housing market that is changing the nature of real estate. It is the rejection of the suburban dream for another one. After the second world war was also the time when we last did a major overhaul of our churchs system. Just long ago enough, mind you, that those currently in power never knew a different structure. Things now completely ubiquitous to the church, such as the Pension Fund, come from that time. Another major change that occurred was a move from pseudo independent but fostered volunteer organizations doing a majority of the work to it primarily being done by the staff at the national church. Some of our organizations, the Episcopal Evangelical Society for instance, predate this change and transformed themselves then, and are transforming themselves now in light of our current transformation. In urban planning what we are seeing is that suburbia is dead. This does not mean all suburbs are dead and worthless, nor that your particular suburb is not a vibrant and amazing community... what it means is that the model of building community and the ideals inherent to suburbia no longer have traction in society at large in the way they once did. Many of us also talk about how the church is dead. This does not mean we think all churches are dead and worthless, nor that your particular church is not a vibrant and amazing community... what it means is that the model of building community and the ideals inherent to church that we have been using since WWII no longer have traction in society at large in the way they once did.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 15:26:29 +0000
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