A first look at the data from our Structure Conversation

On Friday morning we held a joint session of the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies to have a conversation on the structure of our Church. It was a conversation on what structures (at all levels of The Episcopal Church) best enable our parishes and dioceses to more fully participate in the Mission of God and what structures should be changed in order to enable parishes and dioceses. 

Since I am serving as the assistant secretary for the Committee on Governance and Structure, I did not actually participate in the conversation. I was running the Powerpoint slides of the presentation and trying to keep track of the output from the conversation. We invited people to tweet and email their responses. This resulted in over 50 emails and over 1400 tweets on what people care about in The Episcopal Church. We have taken an initial look at the data that we have received, and I can say it is interesting and inspiring to read what people had to say. Here are the word clouds of the top 50 words in each category of "change" and "keep." While there is much to do with the data (and these word clouds are not perfect), they are a good indicator of where the energy is around our structures and governance. 

KEEP

CHANGE

As you can see, there is a great deal of energy and interest around networking/collaboration, around keeping resources at local level when possible, about diocesan camps, youth, and increasing communication at all levels. This raises the important questions of how we can modify and create structures to enable more relationship building in our communities and across the church and to enable people to be out in the neighborhood using our resources to more fully be about the holy work of restoration and reconciliation. There is also clearly great passion about keeping much of our traditions and structures that bind us together as The Episcopal Church.

As we go about our work today at this General Convention, I trust that that conversation on Friday, and its output will inform our work together. There is clearly energy for transformation and change across the Church. May we also all be inspired and open to the possibilities for transformation in our Church and in our own lives.