c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Halfway through the Episcopal Church’s 10-day General Convention in Columbus, Ohio, a friend and I found a quiet corner at the Convention Center and discussed matters important to the church.

We discussed communications, leadership, reaching youth and young adults, the lively work that many congregations are quietly doing, and whether the Episcopal Church can move beyond its relentless partisans and their unresolvable divisions over sexuality.

Surely, we agreed, there is more for us to be doing than debating a three-year-old decision to ordain a gay bishop.

Maybe that’s it.

Maybe there is so much more to be doing, and so many people eager to get on with doing it, that sexuality partisans feel momentum slipping away. They would rather see the church paralyzed than moving on. Friends in other denominations report the same paralysis: the few pushing hard on hot-button issues like sexuality, and the many eager to move on.

At some point, homosexuality will cease to paralyze mainline churches. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn later that 2006 was the last gasp for this divisive but relatively unimportant issue.

When I flew on to Springfield, Ill., I found exactly that moving-on attitude in two places. First, I met with two dozen parish communicators from the United Methodist Church. I expected at least some resistance to ideas about electronic communications based on e-mail and dynamic Web sites working in tandem, and moving on from traditional communications.

Instead of resistance, I found eagerness to embrace new technologies and a can-do attitude both about their abilities to make it happen and the willingness of their congregations to let it happen. Nothing will happen overnight, of course, but I was moved by their openness to new ideas. Some were ahead of me.

On Sunday, I preached at Laurel United Methodist Church, on Springfield’s near-south side. This was as healthy and lively a Sunday morning as I have experienced in years. Four people presented mission appeals. The pastor made one of his “shameless appeals for money for other people,” in this case Indonesian relief. Four were baptized. A jazz combo led the first service. People laughed about their pastor’s lamentable affinity for the Chicago Cubs. People crowded close to one another _ all those racial, sexuality and generational divisions that have bedeviled churches being embraced in oneness.

Members said they were simply moving on from divisions troubling the national denomination. They had better things to do than join those arguments. They had a longtime parishioner to bury, a young boy to play oboe, three girls to sing, four generations standing up front for one baptism, and a man handing out loaves of bread to newcomers.

It dawned on me midway through my sermon that this is the answer that breathes hope for churches, even as it discomfits denominational partisans. They were going about the business of being the Body of Christ. They were “showing up for work,” as it were.

They weren’t waiting for the national denomination to resolve doctrinal issues and to announce global strategies. On this local stage, they were doing the small things that make the world better. My read is that this moving-on attitude is far more widespread than our high-profile arguing might suggest.

As one Tennessee delegate to General Convention put it, “What I saw was people bumbling along, as Episcopalians tend to do _ not fixated on sexuality _ already moved on.”

KRE/JL END EHRICH

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, consultant and leader of workshops. His book, “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” was published by Morehouse Publishing. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. His Web site is http://www.onajourney.org)

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