[Diocese of Georgia] Bishop Benhase Pep Talks Parishes Before Upcoming General Convention Tawdriness

But they (or the PB) are going to budget money for church planting.  When they can’t fill the ones they have.  Or even keep up some of the empty ones they “won” by spending millions on litigation.

Well, maybe a few more millions and  “radical restructuring” will somehow make the same old creaky, dysfunctional people into church planters.

Or not, according to Bp. Benhase.  Since they already perceive themselves in a positive light and blame all the failure on local folks who don’t honor their sheer hierarchical greatness.

I suppose that the elves would edit my comment if it were averred that Mr Benhase surely must be mad to actually accuse his peons of not realizing that what GC does is good for his fiefdoms. and of course one would not suggest that he’s a bootlicker for Mrs Schori. “...it’s also an excuse for congregational leaders to do little to proclaim the Gospel in their communities by treating themselves as victims of the larger Church’s actions or inactions, as the case may be. This is learned helplessness in its most clear form.”

Golly, this reminds me of the large corporation I worked for that, after they had screwed you over, proclaimed that you were in charge of your own career and not to make yourself a victim.

Perhaps one would not be too bold to suggest to the bishop that the bishops all get together over the next 10 days and actually do something so the national church can no longer bring charges against people whose only “crime” is that they DO proclaim the Gospel.

Why does everything TEo does have to be “radical?”  It’s just another mainline buzzword now.

Crash Experts Agree: “Something Went Wrong”

Bishop Benhase: “I’m No Crash Expert!”

#2, there are no elves here, except on some of the bloggers’ dinner plates.

The entire message is worth a close read. Taken at face value, it’s applicable to church, work (as #3 points out), and life at home.

It becomes just a bit vacuous in light of what Sarah duly notes above.

Everyone expected this guy to cave in to the homosexual agenda right away, bringing in practicing homosexual clergy, and authorizing SSBs. None of that has happened yet, though he has cavorted with the diocesan Disintegrity group.

I think they’ve lost only 3 parishes. I’m sure he understands that the radical agenda makes his diocese fertile ground for ACNA church planting. Maybe he’s even had a change of heart. We need to keep a very close eye on him and this diocese - especially this week, and in its aftermath.

Prayers for all dioceses everywhere.

Translation:

You small-minded people are just too stupid to recognize the wonderful things the Holy Spirit does through the delegates and bishops who attend GC.  Keep putting those checks into your local church pledge plates and TRUST the Holy Spirit.  We have got to keep our priest and bishops fully funded to carry out “mission” work.

How in the name of God’s green earth does one ‘do missions’ when:

(1). Your denomination leadership are an adversarial bunch who throw everyone into a constant state of civil war?

(2). You can’t agree about the character and the nature of the divine person you are doing missions for?

PS: There is also a whole ‘market place of ideas’ movement going on here that not a single Tec person wants to address (partially because they hold in contempt any ‘Free to Choose’ Milton Friedman notion…they want to embrace their own alcohol-hazed ‘experiences’, or center their lives on ‘emotional truth’ like Oprah, etc.):

Back to the marketplace:

There is truly a small number of progressives and activist types who dedicate themselves to some vague notion of ‘fairness’ (as opposed to ‘freedom’), and a smaller number of these people would like to explore their religious instinct in a church where the fullest expression of God’s character is in political activism and the language of social justice. Let’s make no mistake: there are people who do want and are searching for such a self-affirming tabernacle . The problem is, there is not very many of them, and rarely will a community (except in a few big cities) have enough of them to create a viable congregation.

My point is that missions, while it’s about bringing people to know Christ and to worship him, is also marketing as well. While there are many Episcopal congregations who resist 815, KSJ and her people are still the ruling class of the denomination and they play a big part in projecting the image they want of ECUSA.

(3). So how do you market a church that few people really want? How do you sell garlic-flavored Barbie dolls?

It would be neat to see a few of these modern-minded Tec bishops suddenly become more market-savvy (I mean, more tuned-in to the market as it exists, not as they imagined it to be pre-2003). But I’m not holding my breath.

RE: “It would be neat to see a few of these modern-minded Tec bishops suddenly become more market-savvy (I mean, more tuned-in to the market as it exists, not as they imagined it to be pre-2003).”

Yeh—I haven’t figured out if the revisionist bishops 1) still think that there are hundreds of thousands of progressive people out there who long to be a part of a liturgical, all-things-gay religiously-minded organization or if they 2) know in their hearts that there is no market at all out there like that except on the west coast and in some liberal urban enclaves, and they just don’t care, because, by gum, it’s “quality not quantity” and the parishes *with no such market at all* can just die out.

“My boss is a Jewish Carpenter.”  Great bumper sticker, and a righteous message.  No matter what our circumstances, our REAL boss is God, period.

Having said this, I agree having all the controversy swirling around makes it tougher to do mission work.  Nonetheless our job is to spread the Gospel, regardless of the circumstances.

I’ve encountered both of the categories in [11], but would humbly propose at least one more category of revisionist bishops – the prideful enlightened.

As an aside, some entrepreneurs with a new product or service believe that they will be able to grow the market (or demand for their product or service) while they develop the business.  While theoretically possible, it compounds the difficulty and chance of failure.  Yet the entrepreneur has such confidence in his own abilities and/or the appeal of the product or service that ‘success is assured.’ 

(I’ve encountered some investors who are fond of asking such entrepreneurs: ‘who are your competitors?’ If the hapless entrepreneur is unable to identify competitors, the investor responds: ‘then you have no market for your business proposal.’)

For TEC, there are other competing, declining revisionist denominations.  But like the confident entrepreneur, I suspect that some revisionists bishops believe that they have what it takes to grow the market for episcopal revisionism, even with competition. 

The context: ‘TEC selected and elevated me to be a bishop, which fact reveals its fundamental wisdom, good judgment, and unfailingly sound operation.  That TEC espouses a revisionist theology, with which I happen to agree, reveals the intelligence and rightness of TEC’s ‘gospel.’  There may be a few things I might tweak in the organization – but overall things are progressing in the right direction.’

The problem is not with the prideful enlightened bishop or the message.  This revisionist bishop teaches exactly what needs to be done.  The message ‘sells itself.’  The problem lies in those (clergy and laity) who are slow or unwilling, or otherwise fail to get on board with the bishop’s campaign to educate those masses of people who do not yet fully appreciate the intelligence and rightness of episcopal revisionism.  If clergy would simply follow their bishop and make these sorts of ‘disciples,’ then together we will grow the market – progress for all.

Of course, churchy revisionist theology is self defeating, contradictory stuff that doesn’t hold together, and lacks general appeal.  And, as a strategy, TEC has decided to impose episcopal revisionism as a threshold to the participation of new disciples. 

But that simply cannot be a problem.