Explanation

Our work as the Advisory Group on Church Planting has revealed that instrumental to starting and maintaining healthy communities of faith and/or worshipping communities requires that the dynamics of power, privilege, and authority be consistently evaluated and reevaluated to ensure that church leadership reflects the communities they are a part of or are hoping to engage, and to expand existing concepts of leadership. Doing so allows the new ministry to grow out of healthy DNA. Our work with church plants and mission enterprise zones is an invitation to the church to a new way of thinking, because best practices for new ministries inform how we go about existing ministries. To that end, the Advisory Group hopes to bear witness to the reality that it is best practice for all churches to be aware of how those in positions of authority reflect the existing community around the church. We believe that asking congregations to supply this information each year using the demographic report found at The Episcopal Church Researching Your Congregation and Community web page together with information on staff and vestry will raise the issue in a helpful way for all of the congregations of The Episcopal Church.