July/August 2005: Wayne Floyd

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By Diane Ney
Washington Window
Vol. 73, No. 8, July/August 2005

Wayne Floyd is the director of the new Center for Christian Formation at the Cathedral College. Part of his work is to provide support to the Diocese’s emerging Christian Formation Committee and to contribute to the work of the Commission on Ministry. Here he speaks with writer Diane Ney about his work in the diocese.

Tell me about your plans for the Center for Christian Formation.
At the heart of my work in Christian Formation will be to establish a Lay Academy dedicated to the enrichment of the intellectual and spiritual life. I envision this evolving into a full ‘certificate’ program that includes courses offered on weeknights and weekends, as well as multi-day residential programs in the Cathedral College. The official ‘launch’ of the Lay Academy will take place early in calendar year 2006. Already this fall, though, we will be sponsoring some initial offerings, including a course in Muslim-Christian dialogue, and then a winter Disciples of Christ in Community (DOCC) program.

Also, Dean [Sam] Lloyd has commissioned the center to design a Sunday morning educational program at the Cathedral, an ongoing series of Dean’s Forums, usually at the 10 o’clock hour. Featured guests will be asked not only to talk about topics on which they are themselves the ‘experts,’ but also to address their expertise to broad topics of concern in the contemporary world - in medicine, science, education, spirituality, the arts, politics.

So the point is to learn from others some important things about how we understand ourselves and how we come to be shaped as Christians.
Yes; the language of Christian formation suggests a holistic perspective. Becoming a Christian is a lifelong journey, a process. And this means attending to the needs of those just starting out on their spiritual journey, as well as those who have already participated in religious experience elsewhere, but then moved on. It also means thinking about the continuing formation of lifelong Episcopalians, especially those coming to new points of growth and change in their spiritual journey.

And then there are people under forty. The church really hasn’t come to a consensus about how to interact with these younger adults because they’re not brand loyal. They’ll participate in an Episcopal parish and then, when something else catches their attention, they’ll try that.
Which works against the notion of nurturing one spiritual community.

Or at the very least it means that ‘community’ is going to look different than what we have come to expect. I remember some years ago in San Francisco, I was coming back from dinner on a Saturday night about 11:30, and I saw throngs of young people going into Grace Cathedral. They were going to a compline service, getting ‘centered’ before going out to begin their night’s activities. My evening was ending, theirs was just getting started. It was such a graphic reminder that even very traditional religious forms can interact across generational lines. And community increasingly includes ‘virtual’ online connections and conversations using interactive distance-learning technologies.

You’re covering a lot of ground.
We’re also considering what’s distinctive about this setting that should shape what we do. The Cathedral has this immense convening power to draw people. Are there ways to offer formational opportunities for them, even though their contact with the Cathedral may be very brief? Can we give them something that sends them home enriched and ready to grow in a way they weren’t before they came here?

We’re also looking at who is the Cathedral’s parish. There’s the old notion from the English parish—all the land you can see from the village church. Well, what happens when that’s Congress and the President? What does it mean to be a community of faith in that context? Especially at a time when religion has become a divisive element? That’s why I’m so pleased that a hallmark of Dean Lloyd’s time here is going to be a focus on reconciliation. Could the Cathedral be the place where those who have no other place to talk about really divisive issues come and talk, not just about their spirituality but within the context of spiritual life? Talk about the realities of the world we live in that they’re shaping public opinion about?

How does all this connect to the work the Bishop has asked you to do with the Diocese?
I’m helping put together a Christian Formation Committee. The Christian Formation Task Force did the groundwork, and we’ve just contacted the people who will be the core of the committee. The Christian Formation Committee will have its first meeting later this summer, chaired by Nancy Maestri. I’m proposing that the group begin with some modest goals—basic networking among those already doing Christian Formation in parishes; making resources available to them, including not only print and internet resources, but people resources, as well; and laying the groundwork, building an infrastructure, to support and encourage long-term stability in the area of Christian Formation.

I’ve also been asked to take a liaison role with the Commission on Ministry. In most dioceses, this one included, the Commission on Ministry has functioned exclusively as a commission on ordained ministry. Yet as a lay theologian I’m concerned with helping this diocese to put its people, time and financial resources equally into lifting up and preparing and supporting lay ministries.
If you start by asking, “Are you interested in ordination?”—that is very different from asking, “Is God moving in your life? Do you hear a call to respond to God in a way you haven’t before?” Discernment, I’m convinced, needs to be about exploring that—before we raise the question of ordination.

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