Late last year, The Falls Church and Truro Church in suburban Fairfax, Virginia, voted to break away from the U.S. Episcopal Church to join a missionary diocese of the Anglican province in Nigeria. This article in the Washington Post from late last week assures me even more of how much I’m not sad to see them go.

Major schism has not yet uprooted the Anglican Communion — and even from the most technical of viewpoints, it has still yet to destroy the Communion, as parishes are realigning themselves but remaining in Communion — but my Lutheran side is used to this sort of thing. Little Mrs. Johnson sits six inches too far to the left and thus in someone else’s spot and whole families break away to start their own, new church.

From a theological perspective, both Falls and Truro are not aligned with the positions of the national church. It makes sense for them to leave and join a group which supports their belief. From a governance perspective, however what they and other former ECUSA parishes have done is intolerable and a greater threat to the Communion.

By definition, episcopal means “governed by Bishops.” It’s one of the first lessons a young (or young in faith) Anglican learns in J2A (Confirmation). Here in the U.S., that governance is also shared by the laity in a complex system of voting at General Assembly every three years. All parishes submit to the authority of their local Diocese by virtue of their constitution, and all Dioceses submit to the authority of General Assembly, vis a vis all parishes are bound together by the governance of General Assembly.

As a province of the international Anglican Communion, we agree to walk together as the American church, with other believers around the world. And where there is a province of Communion, other members do not set up missions as a matter of practice and principle. So, for example, the ECUSA isn’t setting up a mission in Toronto, Canada, as this would underskirt the authority of the Canadian province, the Anglican Church in Canada. Should such a thing happen, I suspect Canterbury would be getting involved right quick.

So why, then, is it “acceptable” for the parishes to leave the ECUSA and join the Nigerian church? And why are Bishops allowing this? I understand the desire to maintain Communion, but at what cost? Alternative Primateal Oversight (APO), as it is called, is a stark deviation from practice and tradition, and is a greater threat of schism than a handful of parishes breaking away and starting a new communion.

Since Falls and Truro have deviated from Anglican theology and are rejecting their governance, I’m not sad to see them go. But I wish they’d leave, instead of creating more problems in the process.

There’s an interesting post on the blog of the Rev. Susan Russell, convener of Claiming the Blessing. It was originally written by Larry Graham, verger at All Saints Episcopal Church in Atlanta. You’d be good to check it out.

This is an excerpt from an e-mail I sent to my parents and some friends, reflecting on my day. I started the day teaching some communication workshops at a youth leadership training event at a church in the synod. The topic of the day was utilizing effective online community to build ministries. (I’ve edited the excerpt to protect identities, and removed some of my “artistic flair” just for job security!)

A little background on the Episcopal connection. Today was the investiture (”installation”) of the Most Rev. Katharine Jefforts Schori as the 26th Presiding Bishop. It is the first time in history that a member church of the Anglican Communion has installed a woman as its Presiding Bishop, Chief Pastor, and Primate. I’ll post more about that later.

Today’s teaching was interesting. First with the youth leaders — so much fun. This one lady hit it on the head in the large group when the leader was discussing e-groups and effective Web tools. He had planned this huge presentation, and then told me, “Oh, feel free to jump in with examples of how others are doing this as I’m talking.” He’s a nice guy. He was talking about how the group should imagine what it would look like to share our resource online, to have a Web site devoted to youth ministry where anyone could upload files, share ideas, and come together in a community.

Uh, we already have that. The concept is older than the Internet. We’ve had that for a while now. It was one of the first things I set up.

So I put it up on the screen, people were looking at it, and people thought that the only thing we had was an e-mail group. It’s SO frustrating!

So he went further in their brainstorming, and people came up with a lot of good ideas — not new ideas, mind you, nor things that are really intuitive — but good ideas. Then he was looking to get people together to form a committee (can you feel the blood pressure rising?) so they could “take this slowly to do it right.”

Then this lady, out of nowhere, interrupts him and says something like (seriously, it was profound, I wish I remembered it word-for-word because it hit the nail on the head), “I’m sorry, but I disagree with that. When you look at places like the Willow Creek Association who are getting millions of hits on their Web site a day, who monopolize the media, who have seemingly unlimited resources at their disposal and are attracting people with their cheap, shallow theology… the ELCA has missed the boat. Entirely. We do need to do this now. We need to do this yesterday. We need to do this five, ten years ago.”

What upset me wasn’t what she said, because it’s what I’ve been SAYING since I started. It’s that, in typical Lutheran fashion, nobody said “that’s right.” Nobody clapped. It was just a desire to “move on” to something else.

So after that, I transitioned my lesson plan into Google Groups (I was originally going to talk about MySpace). And sure enough, the question came up, that churches had to be cautious using this because it “validates” all the bad uses of the Internet.

I almost wanted to lose it. I’m so sick — SO sick — of the church not doing anything because either a committee has to be formed and nothing gets done, or because the church refuses to get involved in something until it’s too late. It’s no wonder that we’re losing members — or that the mainline church is losing members while the evangelicals are growing. Their theology, yes, is shallow, individualistic, decision-based, and flawed. But they’re the ones who are MEETING PEOPLE WHERE THEY ARE. They’re the ones who are embracing the media, who embrace the Internet and technology to a nauseating degree. They’re the ones who, truthfully, pioneer accessible worship and structures, with their auditorium-style sanctuaries, big-screen lyrics, and video projection of speakers.

And what do we do? We argue that the new hymnal is red, because the old hymnal was red.

At least the Episcopal Church stood out on a limb today and pissed people off. They took a stand. Moderates don’t accomplish anything but a false sense of security. I don’t agree with conservatives, but at least they push the envelope and get people talking. I agree with liberals, and they push the envelope and get people talking.

I’ve never been so excited for my own generation than when I talk with kids from Carthage who have never voted in their lives, and during a midterm election, they’re asking how to register to vote and making sure that they’re able to vote on Tuesday. I’ve never been so excited for my own generation than when I see the reports that this could be the highest voter turnout from 18-24-year-olds since the voting age was lowered in the 1972.

I’ve never been so excited than today, when I hear youth talk about how they’ve joined MySpace, Facebook, and other social networking groups that are conducted by Campus Crucade, InterVarsity, Willow Creek/Elmbrook, and other fundamentalist evangelical organizations, and watch leadership squirm and feel uncomfortable in their chairs as they fear what is going to happen to our church and realize they’ve missed the boat.