A Church is Not a Franchise: A Homily on Regional Ministry

Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, on the Ninth Sunday After Pentecost (Yr B).

Readings for this Sunday:  2 Samuel 7:1-14A; Psalm 89:20-37; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. (Eph 2.14)

A few decades ago, it was very common to drive into a small town anywhere in Canada and see one of those blue signs that said “The Anglican Church welcomes you” with a helpful arrow to point you in the right direction.  Those signs were always very useful if one was staying over on a Saturday night and wanted to visit the local church in the morning.

Those signs were a feature of the postwar decades when every new neighbourhood seemed to have a new Anglican church built in the modernist style with lots of concrete and glass.   In those pre-GPS days, the blue church sign was a helpful landmark when I had to go to clergy meetings in the city, which were often held in churches tucked away in labyrinthine 1960s-era neighbourhoods.

Those signs were helpful, but I think they led churches to adopt what I call the Franchise Mentality.   We thought of parishes rather like Tim Hortons, and felt that every neighbourhood should have one.   Each Anglican parish offered more or less the same menu of worship and programs, on the assumption that there would be a steady stream of people interested in our menu.  Of course, there were other “chains”, so if we Anglicans were Tim Hortons, the United Church was Coffee Time, the Presbyterians were Second Cup, and so on.   

But as you know, the times changed.   Fewer and fewer people wanted what we were selling. Churches that used to put out extra chairs for Easter Sunday found that they were no longer necessary.   Our kids grew up and moved away or lost interest.  Children’s choirs and Sunday schools dried up.  We got older and fewer and so did our buildings.

And then then blue “Anglican Church welcomes you” signs began to disappear from towns as the churches dwindled and closed.  Recently I drove through Listowel, where Christ Anglican Church was a distinctive presence with its old stone tower, very much like ours, and its bright red doors.   The building’s still there, but the Anglican congregation closed in 2016.

As we Anglicans began to dwindle, we discovered that our Franchise Mentality had not in fact served us well because it had conditioned us to see our neighbouring parishes as rivals.  We were all competing for fewer customers, with each parish thinking of its own needs.  

When two or more small congregations tried to share the cost of a minister there could be nasty fights over who got more of the priest’s time (I have the scars from my first parish).  The Franchise Mentality meant that each congregation tended to think of its own survival when Anglicans should have been thinking about how to be the family of God and the Body of Christ in a challenging time.

I think it’s always been a struggle for Christians to see themselves as a wider family, because our life as communities, with our places and our practices, tends to be intensely local.  Paul faced this challenge when he was writing to the believers in the Greek city of Ephesus.  Gentile believers in Jesus were trying to find a place with Jewish Jesus followers who had their own ideas about how to be community.  Different groups with different customs and practices were trying to figure out how to live together and enjoy the peace and healing that Christ offers to all of us.

Paul writes that Christ has “broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us” (Eph 2.15).  There were some high solid walls between Jewish and gentile Christians that fortunately we don’t face as Anglicans but we have our own walls and hostilities.  There were unhappy marriages between small congregations that foundered because of money.  Some small churches closed and faithful people were left embittered and grieving.  We blamed the bishop, or the diocese, or each other.

In the last few years our Diocese has wisely decided that the Franchise Mentality has to go, and in its place we’ve been building something called Regional Ministries. The premise of regional ministry is on an idea of community that’s wider than the local parish. As you know, All Saints has a relationship with our Anglican friends in Wasaga and Creemore.  We’ve been sharing clergy for some time, and this fall we at All Saints our new curate will have a more visible role here while she also supports the folks at Prince of Peace.   We’re also beginning to share ideas, we have a regional newsletter and we’ve done some regional events and services together.   We’ll do more together in the coming year, and we’ll meet make some new friends along the way.

For the last month I’ve been in discussions about welcoming the congregation of Good Shepherd, Stayner, into our regional ministry.  There are some good, faithful and generous people there, but no longer enough of them to support even a part-time priest.  So as of August we’re going to help them and Good Shepherd will join our regional ministry.   I’m very proud that our clergy team are willing to step in and give their time in the sort term, while we work on a grant application for Diocesan funding.  

I’m also grateful that some of our lay leadership here is willing to help them, since they have no wardens.  The alternative is Good Shepherd closing, and if they did I suppose we could shrug and say that it’s not our problem, but I don’t think that’s how the family of God and the Body of Christ works, and I don’t think that’s who we are.

How will this impact us at All Saints?   It won’t affect us fiscally, but I won’t lie, it will mean that our clergy team will be busier in the short term.   You may see either Sharon or myself leaving half way through the service a little more frequently as we will now have 11:15 commitments at St Luke’s and at Good Shepherd.  I’m grateful to Father Gordon for also being willing to step in, and we have a deep and talented bench of retired clergy to draw on.  

So we will manage, and I think we’ll find that we’ll make some new friends that will enrich our common life through shared events.  The fifth Sunday of September will be a combined service where we can all meet and worship and eat together, and more on that soon.  My hope and prayer is that we will find, like the Christians in Ephesus did, that the Body of Christ is just that, a body of faithful believers that is larger than any single parish.