Unabashedly Episcopalian: An Interview with Bishop Andrew Doyle

So for Episcopalians, evangelism happens when we do fellowship outside the church and are ready to respond when we are asked about our church. In order for us to succeed at this essential work of our church, we have to leave our buildings and start to have mixers. That is, we need to host parties, events, dinners, and other fun things. We need to use our social capital to get our church friends together with our non-church friends. This is the first thing we have to do. I recently looked online to see what it said about mixers. When the question was posed, "What should I expect from a mixer?" this answer received the most votes, and it is written by Adam G:

A mixer is the same thing as a cocktail party. Make sure to bring business cards, show up looking hot and noticeable, and make sure you talk to everybody. Don't just single out the important people, because they can forget you even after an hour of chatting, while you may miss a small fish that is ready to make a move. The idea should be short and sweet. Be memorable but also spread the love. . . . Also, don't drink alcohol, if you get hammered, no one will respect you, much less your business ideas. Drink water and don't eat anything at the party. It may seem rude to turn away waiters, but the risk of having food stuck in your teeth is too great.

This is great advice! Episcopalians have to leave the building to mix with people in our communities, get to know them, and "spread the love."

Now here is the hard part and yet the necessary part of evangelism for Episcopalians. We need to be ready to talk about our church and not stumble around looking for something to say . . . "uhhhhhhhhh." This is not an acceptable answer for why we love our church. I know a church that is trying to get it down to three things. What are the three things you like about your church? Go. Name three things. Write them down. Memorize them. Make sure they are the best three things you can think of. Then, pick up some business cards from the church office. (Or maybe your church has some MOO cards to hand out; these have the address and website info for the church and service times). Now you are ready to go.

I think the biggest challenge is that we are unprepared. Episcopalians have to be prepared to talk about their church and be ready to give people information about their church. So I would say get out there, mix it up, spread the love, share what you like best, and give them an invitation card.

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I know from our previous conversations that you feel that the brokenness of the Church is one of the great hindrances to inviting people to be a part of it. We've had big fights over human sexuality in recent years, and you sought a compromise in relation to recognizing gay unions that was written up by TIME magazine and I talked about one Sunday on BBC Radio. Could you describe that idea, and how you came to the point of deciding it was the right thing for the Diocese of Texas?

This is probably too small a space to fully convey my thinking on this so I want to recommend to those interested the following text: www.epicenter.org/unity. There is a great sermon on grace, a paper on my thinking, and a study guide to help you think about the issue.

But here is my deal: I believe the "right thing" for the church is to be focused on spreading the Good News of Salvation and the uniqueness of God in Christ Jesus to the world through evangelism and mission. That's it. It is the right thing, it is the only thing, it is the primary thing. Everything else comes after that. Moreover, every priest and every congregation are serving and ministering within a local context of church and culture and need tools to respond to their own mission fields. Some need to be able to bless relationships, others need the freedom and safety to not have to bless same-sex partners. My responsibility as a Bishop and as a leader is to focus on the main thing, to keep the main thing the main thing, and help people live together doing the main thing—evangelism and mission.

When you were ordained, you were one of the youngest bishops in the Episcopal Church, and you've become known for employing social media and other generationally-significant approaches to forming community. In Unabashedly Episcopalian, you argue that we need to get out of our churches, take our act on the road, and you talked about doing that a second ago. What are some other ways that Jesus people can do that in ways that feel to you authentically Christian?

I believe that God is out there in the world right now doing miraculous things, and that television, art, film, poetry, music, and theater all are revealing God. So, I think Jesus people need to use social media, in all of its various forms, to tell the story of God as it is intersecting and being revealed in the images of our day. Twitter, Facebook, blogs, podcasts, and websites are all places were others are now safely congregating from the safety of their own home, the privacy of their laptop. Jesus people and Episcopalians are challenged to be unabashedly who we are and to translate, interpret, and reveal God's hand at work in the world about us. This is our work.