An Acts 8 moment?

11 Responses

  1. Scott I can agree with the spirit of your piece, with two caveats. The first is that a transitional budget needs to show a smaller central staff. It is poor stewardship to spend money on what have bee ineffective structures.
    The second is to reject a special General Convention. Wasting $7-10 million dollars to have the entrenched institutional culture propose a restructuring would be obscene. The ideas being floated by “leadership” aim at reducing deputations and increasing centralized influence. That is the wrong path to take.

  2. Scott Gunn says:

    Michael, thanks for stopping by and for your comment.

    What staff, exactly, would you propose cutting? My sense is that people say they want cuts, but I haven’t heard many specifics. I also note that our HQ staff has shrunk from about 240 to about 140 over the last decade. I think it can/should get smaller, but I don’t think an axe in PB&F is the right way to do that.

    I don’t think I said I wanted a special convention, but rather “a group of people.” I’m imagining a task force of 15-25 people. Now, that said, I’m not persuaded one way or another on the need for a special convention. It seems unimaginable that we’ll use our time wisely in a regular general convention to have these conversations to make the best choices. We seem to drown ourselves in a lot of needless debate.

    Lastly, I think I might favor a smaller general convention AND a smaller central staff. I’m not convinced that 1,000 people gathering in a legislative assembly every three years is the absolute best way to do things.

    But I’m keeping an open mind about all these things.

  3. Another thing – maybe point 4 – don’t elect any announced candidate for PHoD or EC – draft the people we need – new people with new ideas. Not the same old same old.

  4. Mary Ann Hill says:

    You mean Thursday the 5th, right?

  5. Don Collins Reed says:

    Scott, I think you mean THURSDAY, July 5, at 9:30 p.m.

  6. Scott Gunn says:

    Don and Mary, thank you. I fixed the post.

  7. Ted Hallenbeck says:

    And— Please remember the importance to Dioceses of the amount of the assessment to the National Church! Reducing from 19% to 15% would reduce our assessment in Rhode island by $94,147 in 2013. That would make a huge difference in what we can do. As with many Dioceses it is the biggest item in our budget. We, too, need all the help we can get.

  8. Kevin says:

    I can certainly understand the desire by dioceses to reduce the assessment to 15%, but I have two questions: 1. What are you willing to do without? 2. Are you willing to support some sort of penalty for dioceses that do not pay the full assessment without good reason?

  9. Paul Rosbolt says:

    Scott, just to add some weight to one of your thoughts. Reorganizing does not solve problems! What’s needed is a good clear vision, and a strategic plan to achieve it.

    I spent many years in large government and corporate organizations and found that the “reorganize to solve a problem” approach usually led to a 2-3 year delay in actually attacking the problem while we did the reorg! And that was in top down organizations where there was unified direction on how to do the reorg.

    In this case, we could spend all of our time arguing about how/when to reorganize, and none attacking the real issue.

    Paul

  1. July 6, 2012

    […] dream of a church that …”  Here’s a link that will help you learn more: https://www.sevenwholedays.org/2012/06/30/an-acts-8-moment/   Worship, legislation, fellowship, bible study.  I ask … where is the […]

  2. July 7, 2012

    […] which is richest in our tradition with innovation and flexibility.  A sign of this might be the Acts 8 movement.  As I listened to some of its participants talk about their dreams for the Church, I was […]