Raw Numerical Truth about the Episcopal Church (1/3 of all 6825 churches face inevitable closure)

Virtue Online ^ | August 23, 2011 | David W. Virtue

[Cronos]

you cannot change how you "do church" without changing what scripture has ordained and what Christians for centuries have practised. What we in orthodoxy practise and believe is what our spritual ancestors right back to the disciples of Christ learnt, from the Master Himself.

To change this, to elevate one thing over another leads only to rack and ruin as we see in all these short-lived groups. Even the ECUSA with a history of 200 years is short-lived.

[Cronos]

years ago I thought the post-Christian world was because of the torments of WWII, but then I saw that in the 50s people still intensely believed.

I see the 1960s and flower-power as being the start of this process and enhanced by the TV revolution

[ken5050]

Many of these dioceses with minimal, unsustainable ASAs occupy churches that are much larger than they require. It is depressing to enter each Sunday a church built to hold several hundred, that today has a few dozen at best in the pews. It also explains why it's harder to attract new, younger families. If you're a couple, with say, two kids, under 10, looking for a new church, are you realistically goign to join a parish where at best, there may be only 1 or 2 families with kids your age?

One more point. The majority of these larger, and OLDER churches, and the cathedrals, have had NO maintenance done for years, in some cases decades, because there is no money. We're talking roofs, heating and plumbing systems..these buildings can't be repaired...even if the $$ was there, which it isn't, you can't justify spending that $$ on a building that houses a few dozen each Sunday.

Virtue talks about 4000 dying, and 2000 being born each year. Those who die LEAVE immediately, and take their pledges with them. A`newborn this year won't be a FINANCIALLY viable member of the church for 2 decades..

I remember well all the talk when Vicki was ordained..how TEC would grow, and become "vibrant" attracting gays the tens of thousands.....

[Mad Dawg]

How would you advise Episcopalians who stay in the ECUSA? Especially when even the basics of Christianity are now denied there?

I think that the events of my lifetime demonstrated conclusively the bankruptcy of the ecclesiology of the Episcopal Church (TEC). When confronted by heterodoxy of all sorts TEC just folded up. Bishop Pike was the first great clue that the system was unable to defend itself.

So my first advice would be to come all the way home to Rome. If they didn't want to do that, I'd say to besiege heaven for guidance.

There are some very fine Episcopalians, but they are clinging to an illusion. There are only thin wisps of real churchiness there anymore.

[Coleus]

My (catholic) bishop is closing schools and merging parishes all over the place...money is tight these days. The small inner-city parishes don’t stand a chance. Today’s immigrants just don’t seem to want to attend mass.

[wild74]

You can change how you do church, you can change the time you meet, you can wear blue jeans instead of suites, you can have two services instead of one. There is a lot of things you can do to change rituals, like believing one has to be baptised to be saved.

[BenKenobi]

“How would you advise Episcopalians who stay in the ECUSA? Especially when even the basics of Christianity are now denied there?”

This question was instrumental in my own conversion. I was a former Anglican. Baptised in their church, but left when I was young, before most of the nonsense came about.

When I was 19, I became a Christian, and joined a mennonite church. Wonderful people. I remember arguing with other Anglicans about how they should join the Catholic church, because they believed in everything the Catholic church did, but were suffering in the Anglican church.

Their retort:

“Why don’t you take your own medicine?”

And so here I am now. Would I counsel them to stay? No. Leave. Join the Catholic church and welcome home. We need all the good people out there that we can get our hands on.

[Cronos]

how TEC would grow, and become "vibrant" attracting gays the tens of thousands.....

The roots probably are in that 50s distorted psychological report that said that 20% of people are gay (or something like that)when in reality the practitioners of this are just about 2% of the population at large and most are those "experimenting" (think Anne Heche)

[Cronos]

There is a lot of things you can do to change rituals, like believing one has to be baptised to be save

These are not rituals -- look at Christ's baptism.

This is an excellent example of people removing what has always been believed -- it ends up in Gene Robinson

To deny baptism is to deny Mk 16:15-16

15And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.

16He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

Acts 16:31-33

31And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.
32And they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house.
33And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes; and was baptized, he and all his, straightway.

Titus 3:5;

5 he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit,

Rom. 6:1–4;

1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

Gal. 3:26–27;

26 So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ

Eph. 5:26;

to make her holy, cleansing[a] her by the washing with water through the word,

[Cronos]

You can change how you do church, you can change the time you meet, you can wear blue jeans instead of suites

That is hardly "changing how one does church"

Church is the Divine Liturgy, the celebration of the birth, life, teachings, sacrifice and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

[EDINVA]

Interesting it mentions the young are not coming to fill the pews. You’d have thought the pews would become a religious haven for gays since appointing an openly gay bishop drove out so many families.

[wild74]

Church is spreading of the Word of the Lord Jesus Christ, teaching new Christians how to live the life Christ would have them live. Ritual is not church

[Cronos]

However, the Divine litury is NOT ritual -- Church is the community of God, worshipping him IN community as He said, following what He said

And He told us to remember His words, ponder on them, He gave us baptism, confession, eucharist as our sacraments in orthodoxy. Marriage too is a sacrament.

To call them "mere ritual" is the first step on the road for any group to become the ECUSA.