Interview Series with Bishop Todd Hunter
(Led by Fr. Kevin Miller)
PART 4 OF 5:
Q: Unlike many dioceses, C4SO does not ask for a 10-percent contribution from a parish like Savior. Instead, you ask for 5% for the diocese, and 5% for local mission (primarily church planting). How well is this working? Does the diocese have enough money to operate well? What are churches doing with their local-mission funds?
Bishop Todd Hunter:
There is a truism associated with elections: “all politics are local.” If that is true about politics, it is even more true about ministry. Missiologists call this the principle of contextualization. Contextualization is simply a reminder that all ministry is situated, and a specific situation and person is the starting point for ministry. As helpful as missiologists have been to me over the decades, my main imagination for this comes from Jesus. In the Gospels, there are more than a dozen personal conversations Jesus has with individuals or groups. In each case he starts where people are, with their present understanding or misunderstanding, as the case may be. We could say Jesus is starting with the context of their mind, their social setting and their religious presuppositions. Having discerned that context, Jesus then begins to talk, to minister.
That worldview is what undergirds my philosophy of ministry regarding local, contextual control of money spent on mission. C4SO has churches in scores of contexts in America. I am not expert on any of them. I don’t love them in the passionate way a specifically-called church planter or rector does. I have no business, just because I am the bishop, to sit in an episcopal ivory tower and tell leaders what to do. Regarding mission and ministry, I am not looking for conformity or compliance, I am looking for intelligent, contextualized, Spirit-led discernment that leads to good fruit. As Roland Allen has written: There is a summons to everyone who will hear to submit inherited patterns of Church life to the searching scrutiny of the Spirit. We need to give pre-eminence to the Holy Spirit in all the work of the Church. This in no way lessens the importance of ordered life in the church; this is taken for granted; what we need to do is not neglect the direction of the Spirit within our ordered structure.
The 5/5 policy is meant to invest in the local work that emerges from that thinking. Up till now, I have not kept track of which churches actually spend 5% of their budget on local mission. But given human nature, I am sure some do not do so. Others are saving money to plant a church or start some other new ministry. That, of course, is fine. C4SO has always be able to meet its budget in the 5/5 model. Until the pandemic hit, we have never had a financial problem. Like all our churches, we are adjusting our budget for 2020 (and maybe 2021?), but right now our finances are “OK” given the magnitude of the challenge.
Photo Credit: c4so.org