From The Washington Times- (Slightly misleading headline)
Virginia Episcopal Bishop Shannon S. Johnston, in his first diocesan convention speech as leader of the nation's largest Episcopal diocese, made a few surprising remarks today. One of them was that weekly church attendance in the Old Dominion is embarrassingly low.
Speaking at a diocesan council meeting at the Richmond Marriott - which was cut short due to a pending snow storm headed toward southern Virginia - he first talked about an informal poll he recently conducted through a series of town meetings around the diocese. As he talked with Episcopalians about their priorities for church life, he found one thing missing: a lack of desire to start new churches. This did not completely surprise him, he said, considering that the 15 conservative churches and mission congregations that left the diocese from late 2005 to early 2007 (over theological differences and gay bishops) were known for their success in church planting.
In his words: "The context here is a sharp contrast with the priority from some years ago of establishing new congregations. Given our recent experience with many of our new congregations leaving the diocese (having received tremendous spiritual, personal and financial support), it is obvious that many of us across the diocese feel a deep sense of loss, grief and, yes, betrayal and thus are quite “gun-shy” about new congregations. It should be no surprise, therefore, that church planting ranked last on all but one tally, where it was next-to-last. The sense is that with resources being spread very thinly the resources could be used for more stable and proven ministry, such as for our already established congregations. I certainly do understand this, but can you truly affirm our diocese abandoning any vision for starting new churches? I don’t think so. I know I can’t."
More here-
http://washingtontimes.com/weblogs/belief-blog/2010/jan/29/virginia-diocese-admits-aversion-to-starting-new-c/
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