How sad it must be for the retired Father Niemann, author of the essay, to see the Episcopal church dismantled and sold off block by block in a single generation.

It is with true purpose and excitement that Episcopalians are working together to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs of the United Nations). But it would be more fruitful if we had congregations enthused about the mission and ministry of Christ in the world because they have a personal relationship with the risen Lord, are engaged with others in their congregational life, and believe The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion can make a difference in changing the future of humanity and of the earth.

True purpose and excitement? I don’t of anyone who is willing to give their lives to the cause setting aside 0.7% of income to the MDG’s for the UN, a very much secular organization, to squander. It is sad that the Episcopal church is justifying its existence through its “commitment” to the MDG’s.

Father Niemann rightly asserts that mission must follow faith. The MDG’s are the epitome mission without faith.  He states that the sale of the church is a failure of evangelization. Why would anyone ask a friend to church where the bond that holds the church together is no longer the love of Christ but threat of lawsuit? Paul rightly describes those that bring other Christians to court as “utter lost.” Ask a formative Christian to a church that is “utter lost”? I certainly won’t.

Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Two out of three (questions) “ain’t” bad.
That third one, though…

Yeah, Summersnow - Rev. Nieman says a growth strategy “has little to do with the current inflammatory issues of homosexuality or church polity.”  He’s done a great job encapsulating the core thinking behind successful evangelism in his three questions, but when you get to the third one, sorry, sir, it becomes about inflammatory issues of homosexuality or church polity (and a lot more flotsam, sadly).

In point #3 I would say, after 30+ years of ministry, that if ones only exposure to scripture is the lectionary it is not “significant” but, rather, superficial.  Tom Wright ,in his series on the three year lectionary, often refers to the prissyness and timidity of the lectionary as it regularly skips through a passages of scripture leaving out that which might offend modern ears.

Questions of human sexuality strike at the core of what it means to be a human being. SO his assertion that the pro-gay agenda of TEC and the diocese are not to be blamed are absurd. Certainly, the problem is much larger than the pro-gay agenda alone, but that agenda is a large part of the problem and indicates a community (TEC) that is fundamentally sick and diseased and unable to foster human relationships, specifically within families.

When you replace Jesus with the United Nations, you are bound to have a problem.

Amen to all of the above.  But in addition, the Cathedral of Christ the King was an ugly, impractical building in the wrong place.  Like asking people to worship in the Guggenheim Museum.

(continuing my last thought).  Nevertheless, I do have confidence the Kalamazoo Family Church will use their new home in the service of the Gospel.