The first part of this two-part essay discusses the visionary leadership of Bishop Arthur Selden Lloyd, who served as executive director of the Episcopal Church's Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society from 1899 to 1919. Inheriting an inefficient and underfunded system for supporting missionary work, Bishop Lloyd developed a plan for administrative and financial reorganization and implemented a national campaign to promote information, fundraising, and spiritual growth throughout the Church.
Campaign and “Most Important Legislation Ever”
The campaign was formally launched at Easter 1918, with letters from Lloyd and Bishop Daniel Tuttle published in all the church newspapers. The effort was accompanied by a major survey of church needs, which ultimately determined that the church needed to double the number of missionaries and triple its annual funding.
Colourful full-page advertisements were ordered, and Sunday school materials and plays were prepared. The Rev. Frank Hartfield, rector of St. George's Church, Newburgh, New York, took advantage of the militant spirit of the time by organising a recruiting committee of all church members as a conscription committee, which issued cards to families in each parish informing them that they were being “drafted for service”. The Rev. F. W. Nabe, a priest of Blue Ridge, Virginia, composed the official seven-verse election hymn: AureliaIt ended with a moving prayer.
Then we sing to You in a happy chorus: Christ our Lord. / All power awakens, and we are freed from every sin. / We know You are before us. We feel Your strength within. / Be with us, guide us, help us. For You to win the world.
F. C. Morehouse, editor of The Living Church, became a major supporter of the effort, and in many of his columns he detailed specific needs: $120,000 for a seminary in Nanking, $100,000 for a boys' boarding school in Cuba, a chapel for the growing number of student missionaries at the University of Illinois, automobiles for missionaries in rural northwest Texas, and so on.
The campaign was heartily endorsed at the General Conference, held in Detroit in October 1919. The approval of the church's first three-year budget included extensive financial support for the effort over the next few years. The joint conference on the campaign, held on October 15, was especially moving for those who had worked and prayed so long to make the campaign a reality.
“The General Conference brought about something I have never seen before. The Spirit of God took control of that great group of people in one day,” Lloyd said. “I have never in my life seen the power of God's Spirit manifested among Christians as I saw at that joint session in Detroit. I knew that day that the campaign was following God's will and that it would do what it set out to do. It was proof that if the church had the chance, and if it was given the chance, it would do what Christ commanded.”
Morehouse was similarly excited.
The most senior member of the General Conference had never seen anything like it before: the day of Pentecost had finally arrived. The Church of America came together in one place, of one heart and mind, and we almost visibly witnessed the descending of divided tongues of fire, and the presence of the Holy Spirit permeated us all.
Shortly thereafter, the conference approved a series of canonical changes that consolidated the common affairs of the church under a new body, the “Bishops and Council” (now the Executive Council). Bishop T. Frank Gaylor of Tennessee was elected president of the council, suspended diocesan affairs for three years, and immediately assumed what would become the regular responsibilities of a bishop.
Morehouse hailed the canon establishing the new council as “the most important law the American Church has ever enacted” and noted its “great significance in instantly mobilizing the power of the whole Church for continued action.” The Reverend George P. Atwater, a prominent Ohio clergyman, declared, “The national consciousness has been awakened. We are now “There is one Church in America, not geographically dispersed churches. National thinking, national action, and national cooperation will produce glorious national accomplishments.”
TLC also recorded this “Glorious National Achievement” every week for much of the year after collecting and counting donations on “Mobilization Day” on December 7, 1919. These lists, still inspiring today, highlight the shift in mentality that accompanied successful fundraising efforts.
The January 31, 1920, “Mobilization Day and After” column noted that since the campaign began at St. John's Church in Ames, Iowa, Sunday attendance had doubled and 22 young people had committed themselves to lifelong service in the church, six of whom had been ordained. At St. Paul's Church in Kent, Maryland, donations were secured for a new parsonage, a pipe organ, and a $300 increase in the pastor's salary.
A month later, at St. Athanasius, a black church in Brunswick, Georgia, 52 women joined the altar guild and eight boys and three men joined the choir. Ascension Church in Sierra Madre, California, quadrupled pledges, and two new missions in Uvalde and Del Rio, Texas, raised a total of $54,000 for their missions, or $270 per communicant ($4,832 in 2024 dollars). At a “sleeping mission” in Armour, South Dakota, where services had been held only once a month for 20 years, parishioners guaranteed the new pastor's full salary, bought a home for the pastor, and made plans to build a new church.
Initial estimates that the campaign would raise $55 million (just over $1 billion in today's dollars) for the diocese and the nation were exaggerated. However, a 1922 report on the state of the church noted that the church's annual funds for missionary work had doubled in the previous three years and parish income had tripled. Existing debts had been paid off, 187 new missionaries had been sent to the field, and Sunday school enrollment had increased by 24,000. Throughout the church, parishes launched summer camps, college ministries, and training institutes for teachers and social workers.
“The national campaign has accomplished one of the most tremendous tasks the Church has ever faced in establishing among our people the principles and practices of Christian stewardship. The whole Church has a broader view of its main purposes and responsibilities,” the 1922 report stated.
Although Lloyd had by then retired from his long-standing position at Church Mission House, most of the remaining proposals were implemented over the next few years. Dioceses quickly consolidated their trustees and set up new governance structures along the lines of the “bishop and council” model, and gradually adopted the “partnership” model, whereby dioceses levy a single tax on the parish and give a portion of it to the Church of England.
In 1925, the House of Bishops elected John Gardner Murray of Maryland as its first patriarch dedicated to leading the Anglican Church. Murray, who was instrumental in the nationwide campaign, proposed “Pay, Pray, Do” as the slogan for the Episcopal Church. Other members of the campaign gained fame in the decades that followed, helping to promote an ethos of bold, unified action. The stewardship campaign, held each fall in most dioceses, is a faint shadow of the Pentecostal moment that rocked the Episcopal Church more than a century ago.
Lessons for structural change today
Recreating a national campaign is not a realistic solution to the problems the Anglican Church currently faces, but when we talk about cutting funding and simplifying structures, it is worth being careful to avoid the problems the current system once sought to solve. Too much bureaucracy can be fatal, but so can poorly coordinated efforts. If we make our funding system too complicated or dependent on the biases of those in power, our Church will not be able to meet the challenges before us.
Sectarianism is as much a temptation today as it was a century ago, and while we need to put more resources into local missions, we must also find other meaningful ways to pursue common action across the church as a testimony to the unity that is Christ’s call and gift.
The Anglican Church thrived in times of great crisis by precisely gauging the passions of the historical moment, drawing on the most cutting-edge organizational theories of the time, and by seeking out talented lay and clergy leaders, many of them young people, offering them a bold vision and giving space to apply their talents.
While there is little evidence that we are in the midst of a national unification transition, many of the challenges we face are shared by other faith-based organizations and the nonprofit sector. Our restructuring plan should seek the best possible advice, drawing on models that have proven successful elsewhere. It should bring in leaders with expertise and allow room to try different solutions. At least some of these should be young leaders, so that we have leaders who will carry our new vision and new system forward into the next generation.
The national campaign was ultimately fruitful because it was a spiritual movement rooted in prayer and faithful preaching and issuing a challenge to mature disciples. It sought to expand missionary efforts at the local, parish and national church levels. In Lloyd's words, the church trusted God's ability to act among people, believing that “given the opportunity, we will do what Christ commanded us to do.”
The 1919 preachers had the advantage of appealing to themes at the heart of the gospel: the call of the Great Commission, the inspiring spectacle of Pentecost, and the abundant gifts of the Holy Spirit. Finding the right biblical themes and rhetorical devices to motivate organizations to consolidate and reduce budgets may be more difficult, but focusing only on logistics and methods misses a huge opportunity. If our new system is not ultimately intended to lead unbelievers to Jesus and to galvanize faithful people into the work of pastors, it will have no value or lasting longevity.
My prayer is that the Holy Spirit, who once descended upon the General Chapter as its “omnipresent presence,” bringing unity, joy and hope, will come among us again as we boldly face the challenges of new times of crisis. Archbishop Neve's prayer is still worth singing: “Be with us, guide us, help us, that you may win the world.”