Anyone up for a chat thread?

[The Liturgist]

Yay! Out of curiosity, why do you have to report baptisms to your bishop?

Just out of curiosity, are Episcopal priests not required to do that? In the Orthodox churches bishops or their subordinates such as archdeacons or the protopresbyter of a deanery and so on are usually informed about quite a lot, although there have been cases where this was not done, for example, in the very large extra-diocesan areas that used to exist in the Coptic Orthodox Church which had “genera; bishops” but which were under the diocesan supervision only of the Pope of Alexandria (and thus were effectively unsupervised).

I'm surprised at this too. In my experience, it's normal to send a bunch of statistics into the diocesan office once a year. (Usually around the time of the annual meeting). The only time I'd contact my bishop specifically about a service is for a wedding for which I need his permission.

Which reminds me, the parish statistics are overdue and I really need to find time to look at them.... sigh.

To be clear, this periodic reporting of data is what I had in mind in the previous paragraph. Although that being said there are many cases where bishops have fairly close relations with their clergy and get informed about everything by phone, and there are other cases such as the aforementioned case with the former extra-diocesan areas where if reports were being generated, no one was reading them, but reports probably were not even being made.

 

[Shane R]

Mine likes to get a quarterly report. But I know him quite well and tend to report the measurables within a week. We talk every 2-3 weeks.

 

[Shane R]

Every Continuing Anglican bishop I have known personally likes quarterly reports.

 

[Deegie]

So he can keep a log of what is happening in the church. In the Continuing churches, documented numbers are a salve for many things. It will probably make the newsletter.

I figured you folks reported too; at least annually to the diocese?

Thanks! And as to your question, in TEC, there is an entire circle of Hell called the Parochial Report. Every congregation has to complete it online by March 1st and then the diocese reviews them and sends them up to New York by (I think) May 1st. It's pages and pages of numbers: attendance, membership, financial, etc. There are questions about the number of adult baptisms and child baptisms, for example. And these last few years they have added some narrative questions, which take a bit of time to complete. The PR is where all the national statistics come from, so the most important two metrics are probably ASA and giving. That latter number is how dioceses figure out how much money to ask for from each congregation, which is mandatory in some and optional in others.

 

[Deegie]

Just out of curiosity, are Episcopal priests not required to do that? In the Orthodox churches bishops or their subordinates such as archdeacons or the protopresbyter of a deanery and so on are usually informed about quite a lot, although there have been cases where this was not done, for example, in the very large extra-diocesan areas that used to exist in the Coptic Orthodox Church which had “genera; bishops” but which were under the diocesan supervision only of the Pope of Alexandria (and thus were effectively unsupervised).

Please see above. I literally haven't informed my bishop of a single thing in more than a year. And that last one was what time I wanted them to show up for the service when they visited us. I'm wondering if the Orthodox dioceses you reference are perhaps smaller? My TEC diocese is well over a hundred congregations and the bishop is too busy putting out fires to spend any time on the ones where everything is fine.

 

[The Liturgist]

I'm wondering if the Orthodox dioceses you reference are perhaps smaller?

The ones where there is a great deal of contact between clergy and bishops are definitely smaller in terms of total number of parishes, although not total density, but there are some larger dioceses, and some massive dioceses, and in the case of those, they function like the Episcopal dioceses you have mentioned in terms of how the bishop spends his time, except there is much less standardization and nothing spanning the jurisdictions, which are like Anglican provinces except in the Diaspora where a set of unpleasant events many of which people seem to forget only began as a result of the rise of the USSR and a resulting series of schisms resulted in the formation of overlapping jurisdictions in Eastern Orthodoxy, and in the Armenian Apostolic Church (and as the Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopian, Eritrean and Mar Thoma Indian diaspora spread, these tended to form overlapping jurisdictions even in the case of the Syriac Orthodox from the Middle East vs. the Syriac Orthodox from India who are still under the omophorion of the Patriarch of Antioch). And in the case of the Copts, they allowed a number of parishes not only in the diaspora but in Egypt to fall into a twilight zone of Extra-Diocesan areas where there existed General Bishops who could perform ordinations but otherwise had no authority, resulting in a complete breakdown of organization since the Pope of Alexandria was too busy to deal with both that and with his duties as the bishop of the two largest cities in Egypt, Cairo and Alexandria, and as the leader of the Holy Synod, but fortunately this was recognized and after some campaigning by a group of concerned traditional church members the new Pope created dioceses with real bishops spanning the whole area.

So the joke among both Eastern and Oriental Orthodox is that we don’t believe in organized religion.

In contrast all Anglican churches that I’ve seen and the Episcopal Church of which I was a member are very well organized. I particularly like the Episcopal’s system of numbered internal provinces.

Out of curiosity how often are you able to get your bishop to come out to concelebrate the liturgy? This again varies extremely between jurisdictions in the Orthodox Church but in the Episcopal Church Fr. Steve had at least one liturgy with Bishop Bruno of Los Angeles during his last year before retirement, but i was not present that day, however one elderly member of the congregation who I particularly enjoyed visiting with, who always read one of the scripture lessons at the 8 AM Said Service, which I really loved. Unfortunately I don’t think those have returned post-Covid; they were not well attended and the people who attended them were an elderly and interesting group.

 

[The Liturgist]

Thanks! And as to your question, in TEC, there is an entire circle of Hell called the Parochial Report. Every congregation has to complete it online by March 1st and then the diocese reviews them and sends them up to New York by (I think) May 1st. It's pages and pages of numbers: attendance, membership, financial, etc. There are questions about the number of adult baptisms and child baptisms, for example. And these last few years they have added some narrative questions, which take a bit of time to complete. The PR is where all the national statistics come from, so the most important two metrics are probably ASA and giving. That latter number is how dioceses figure out how much money to ask for from each congregation, which is mandatory in some and optional in others.

Yes, I remember now, you have brought that back to mind, and that is what I recall Fr. Steve did not look forward to, although he had help completing it, otherwise I don’t think it would get done. He had even tried to set up a database using an older version of Visual Basic (pre .Net) to help him generate the report.

By the way out of curiosity are there congregations that lose money and require subsidies, such as missions?

 

[RamiC]

I own the red Book of Common Prayer (a wonderful, wonderful resource, even though I’m Roman Catholic), and, if I’m not mistaken, conditional baptism is in there.

I don't think there is much in there that you would not be permitted to believe as a Roman Catholic. It is probably more the case that you are expected to believe some things on top of it, which our Anglican beliefs do not include.

 

[RamiC]

I performed a conditional baptism last Sunday and reported it to the bishop Tuesday. He told me I have the distinction of logging the first baptism of the year.

Congratulations

 

[Shane R]

My TEC diocese is well over a hundred congregations

That is a huge difference. I'm quite confident most Continuing bishops have less than 15 congregations to keep track of. I'm fairly sure I can count on one hand the number of bishops who have more than 15 to look after. Frankly, many of them are notorious micro managers, sometimes even control freaks.

My bishop is neither. We share a relationship somewhere between father-son and peers. We used to live in the same city. I found him when he was stuck in a rut in ministry and pulled him out. In turn, I was injured once and he came to my house every morning, except Sunday, for a month to make breakfast for my children. We've shared hotel rooms and diocesan events, often sat down to eat together, and he's always wanting to co-write something with me (which really means I write it, he reads it and attaches his name to it). He was only consecrated a little over a year ago and I was there making the service go off because the geriatric guys doing the consecration surely needed the help.

 

[Paidiske]

Out of curiosity how often are you able to get your bishop to come out to concelebrate the liturgy?

Concelebrate? When the bishop comes, we don't concelebrate. He presides and I usually act as a liturgical deacon for the day (we don't have an actual deacon).

That said, I generally aim to get him out once a year. I must admit it's been a bit longer than that here, now; I probably should try to get him to come sometime soon-ish. But there are reasons why it might be better to wait for a while, so we'll see.

 

[Deegie]

Out of curiosity how often are you able to get your bishop to come out to concelebrate the liturgy?

As @Paidiske alluded, concelebration is not really a thing in Anglicanism. Sure, among the more Anglo-Catholic it might happen, but otherwise our theology (speaking just for TEC here) is more that the entire assembly is celebrating and the priest is just presiding, which only requires one person to perform. I do, however, stand with the bishop at the altar, along with our assisting clergy. The college of presbyters is definitely on full display, we just wouldn't usually think of it as concelebration.

In my diocese, the bishop tries to hit every congregation on a three year cycle.

 

[Deegie]

By the way out of curiosity are there congregations that lose money and require subsidies, such as missions?

Oh, yes. For us in TEC, the distinction is that parishes are fully self-supporting and missions get some funding from the diocese. (That isn't always exactly 100% accurate in practice, but it's the intention.)

 

[Deegie]

That is a huge difference. I'm quite confident most Continuing bishops have less than 15 congregations to keep track of. I'm fairly sure I can count on one hand the number of bishops who have more than 15 to look after. Frankly, many of them are notorious micro managers, sometimes even control freaks.

My bishop is neither. We share a relationship somewhere between father-son and peers. We used to live in the same city. I found him when he was stuck in a rut in ministry and pulled him out. In turn, I was injured once and he came to my house every morning, except Sunday, for a month to make breakfast for my children. We've shared hotel rooms and diocesan events, often sat down to eat together, and he's always wanting to co-write something with me (which really means I write it, he reads it and attaches his name to it). He was only consecrated a little over a year ago and I was there making the service go off because the geriatric guys doing the consecration surely needed the help.

Sounds like you and he have a great relationship! I'm a little jealous.

 

[The Liturgist]

Sounds like you and he have a great relationship! I'm a little jealous.

I am also blessed with a very good relationship with a bishop who wants to receive my missions under his omophorion, which I think will happen as soon as I have recovered enough to be able to convince the people to do it. Alas I have known many bishops and some of them did not impress me, while still others were over-burdened, and in one case I had a bishop who could barely speak English. I was also once a member of a parish whose rector was a retired archbishop, whose ride was a black SUV with the license plate “VLADYKA” which is an honorific used for bishops in the Slavic churches.

 

[Arcangl86]

Out of curiosity how often are you able to get your bishop to come out to concelebrate the liturgy?

As has been pointed out, the Bishop celebrates when they come, but the local priest usually assists but is not seen as being a cocelebrate. As for frequency, IIRC there is a canonical requirement that each parish is visited at least once every three years I thnk, though in some smaller dioceses once a year does happen.

 

[PloverWing]

My TEC diocese is well over a hundred congregations

My diocese (New Jersey) is similar, with 134 congregations. Our bishop is wonderful, both a good pastor and a good administrator, but that's a lot of congregations for anyone to keep up with.

 

[Arcangl86]

My diocese (New Jersey) is similar, with 134 congregations. Our bishop is wonderful, both a good pastor and a good administrator, but that's a lot of congregations for anyone to keep up with.

I'm surprised you don't have a suffragan with that many. The diocese is geographically small enough to make it work though.

 

[PloverWing]

I'm surprised you don't have a suffragan with that many. The diocese is geographically small enough to make it work though.

We need a suffragan, I think. But our diocese is short on funds at the moment, alas.

 

[RamiC]

As @Paidiske alluded, concelebration is not really a thing in Anglicanism. Sure, among the more Anglo-Catholic it might happen, but otherwise our theology (speaking just for TEC here) is more that the entire assembly is celebrating and the priest is just presiding, which only requires one person to perform. I do, however, stand with the bishop at the altar, along with our assisting clergy. The college of presbyters is definitely on full display, we just wouldn't usually think of it as concelebration.

In my diocese, the bishop tries to hit every congregation on a three year cycle.

Warning - I am in the UK.

I saw three Priests simultaneously conduct the Eucharist here. It was only at the special Memorial Mass after the Queen died. I assumed the official Priest at that church just invited the other two who are qualified to do it, one of whom is an Episcopalian from the USA, because it was for the Queen, and it was for the last time. Is that "concelebration"? Is it wrong, or just unusual? I am in the Anglo-Catholic corner, I mean my region leans heavily that way.