Debunking Myths and Avoiding Episcopal Overreach

Conducting Clergy Searches According to the Canons

[My latest article to appear in The Living Church’s Covenant Blog dropped this morning. Below is an excerpt and a link to the full article. All Search Committees and Vestries need to read this important information. - JWD]

Consider the following scenarios:

• A Search Committee is told they must wait patiently for a list of rector candidates from the diocese. They are not allowed to go out and conduct their own search.

• The chair of a search committee is told that unless his church offers a full-time position, they won’t get any candidates.

• A warden is told that because they can only offer a part-time salary, they can’t call a rector. 

• A priest is told by the Canon for Transition Ministry that he isn’t a good fit for their diocese.

• Another priest is told that “the bishops have discussed the matter” and that he is not a good fit for a particular parish — even though that parish asked him to apply.

• After their rector of 15 years is called to another parish in another diocese, a vestry is told by the canon overseeing churches in transitions that they are not allowed to call a new rector. Instead, they must call a priest in charge, who, after a period of time, may be called as the rector.

These real-world examples from recent searches are typical of the broken clergy transition process in today’s Episcopal Church.

The search process is stymied by a lack of awareness — at all levels: parish, diocese, and clergy-in-search — of the canons that govern the election of a rector.

This is exacerbated by the shortage of clergy. By one account from the summer of 2023, there were “622 congregations filling vacancies and only 87 clergy identified as actively searching for calls.” As another observer put it: “The clergy job market is a train wreck.”

In our Episcopal polity, power is not concentrated in any one role or office. Each order of the Church has a part to play, and each player has canonical rights and responsibilities: bishop, vestry, and rector candidates.

The knowledge and practice of this used to be called “churchmanship” (in contrast to our contemporary associations with that term: high church, low church, etc.), and it is now a lost art. Recovering an understanding of the national canons — and how local diocesan canons must accede to them — will restore confidence and trust to a system that is not working.

Read the rest of the article here.