DioCNY: “Financial Realities” Forcing “Staff Reorganization”

“Canon for Youth and Family Ministries”

Do they even have enough “Youth and Family” left in the diocese to justify the posistion?

Silly AndrewA… you know Episcopalians are better educated and have fewer children. We have no need for “Youth and Family Ministries.”

Keep looking for Diocese’s and parishes to use the recession as the main reason for money problems.  This is convenient cover to mask the deeper problems.

Tis always better to blame the current issues surrounding society than admit that your New Thing Theology isn’t working out and you are bleeding out finances and people that no longer are there for you for your dioceses!

Well, obviously useless positions, now those building which we’ll never regain members to occupy (new families might want a youth program, which wisely is being cut) and not dispose of in a down real estate market, those we must spend millions to feed hungry lawyers, else they might be seen on the street with signs such as “will sue for food.”

So many of the “commissions and committees” are really just adult play groups, that their elimination might give the participants time for real work, like preaching the gospel.

DioCNY: “Financial Realities” Forcing “Staff Reorganization

Kinda like “reorganizing” the deck chairs on the Titanic, don’t ya think?

the snarkster™

Why aren’t they reducing salaries, like that Dean in Seattle (I think it was Seattle?) who makes 200 thousand per year? Selling the PB’s 5th Ave. penthouse, and disposing of non diocesan related property investments? Didn’t the PB evict a bunch of nuns from a church building to create some high faluting “retreat” space for female priests and bishops? Sell that. The PB and other high flyers should gut their budgets, no more travel expenses, reduce their standards of living to a more humble level.

Is that ‘Easy Street’ or the “Boulevard of Broken Dreams?”

I wonder how many Roman Catholic dioceses have commissions and committees such as TEC has?

#8   Mari, what you say makes a lot of sense.  To that, I would add this:  Consolidate outlying parishes and missions.  The Adirondack Mission in the Diocese of Central New York is a good example of that.  Three churches in northern Oneida County and southern Lewis County did that….but even so, they’re still having financial problems.

Outlying parishes and missions have been forced to do this for years, and it’s especially true for those “summertime” churches where the ASA figures fall off dramatically after Labor Day.  Unfortunately for dioceses such this one, that’s going to happen a lot more often if finances continue to nosedive due to falling attendance….and it will spread to larger communities as long as bishops like Adams remain in power.

I like to call all these groups and committees the “Pardiggle” groups.  Mrs. Pardiggle is character in Dickens’ novels.  You can google if not familiar.  The resemblance to all the busybody do-gooder groups in TEC is quite hilarious.

It is very frustrating to read this.  As Greg rightly points out, if they settled their lawsuits they could probably save some staff.

Reminds me of Pharaoh.

Helllllllllooooooooooooo.  Less membership equals less giving. Duh!

Finally was able to bring up the stat sheets. 

There are actually four dioceses that grew: Alaska and East Carolina each by 2%, and (drumroll, please!) South Carolina, w/ that new whacko bishop who hasn’t had the taste to follow along w/ TEC’s tripe, was up 6%, and Tennessee, up 7%.  So 101 shrank.  I’ll leave the math to you all.

If this were a business w/ 105 branches - say an outfit like “Curves” that depends on memberships? - and they all were losing an average of 11% per year, wdn’t there be some heads rolling somewhere?  At least franchises folding or combining, as someone mentioned above, merge small missions.  (Does distance from those who might attend matter, when the cost of gas is what it is?)  Lots of red ink on books. 

V sad.

Maineiac,
East Carolina’s +2% may be phantom growth.  They still have people on their books who left two years ago, largely because Bishop Daniel will not grant letters of transfer to anyone moving to a non-TEC congregation. 
I dare say he’s not the only one cooking the books to perpetuate the myth that All is Well.

According to a comment on MCJ, some orthodox dioceses are not growing either, but losing members dramatically:  “Springfield and Quincy are the most shocking: their ASA and/or membership have dropped something like 25% over the past few years.”

One of the reasons that conservative dioceses are shrinking is the national church and its focus.  I’ve heard from several former members here in Dallas and their story is very similiar.  They know we have a faithful bishop and are members of a faithful congregation, but they can’t abide what the national church office is doing and can’t understand why it won’t discipline the wayward bishops (such as +Spong, +Righter, +Bruno, +etc.)

YBIC,
Phil Snyder

I’m in the diocese of Dallas, too.  I was consumed by all the national church business 3 or 4 years ago, but the vicious politics (nothing is nastier than a church fight), slow pace of events, seemingly endless droning about doctrine and how one faction or the other ain’t doin’ it right,  and general polarization in the websites has pretty much turned me off.  I am content to worship in my parish,and just follow Bishop Stanton’s Godly leadership.  He may be the most trustworthy religious figure outside of Billy Graham and the Pope that I know.  I am particularly tired of carping over property by both sides.  I had a pastor once, Richard Ellis of Reunion Church in Dallas, who refused to build church buildings.  He still holds services in rented public facilities.  He always said he was in the sheep business, not the barn business.  We have had no telling how many screwballs on the national scene in the Episcopal Church over the years - there just seem to be a lot more of them lately.  I’m not going to let them distract me from following Christ.

Last winter in South Dakota we had more snow than many could remember.  One of my neighbors has had a “Stop Global Warming” sign in her front yard for about 2 years now.  I laughed all winter long, as the sign got buried by snow and she had to keep pulling it up higher and higher.  At the height of winter it was planted on top of a 5 foot deep snow bank.

Thank you Presiding Heretic Schlamori for switching to sporks.  It seems to be doing the trick.

whoops - sorry…wrong thread :-(  Firefox failed me again.