I've definitely noticed, in moving from a city area to a more rural area, that the relationship with my bishop is very different. In the city my bishop oversaw a much larger number of parishes, and while I knew he would make time for me if I asked, there was little attention from him in general. In the country my bishop, although he looks after a much larger geographical area, has many fewer clergy under his care; and he rings for things like wishing my daughter a happy birthday.
I think bishops having fewer parishes, but being able to oversee them more directly, would probably be a good thing for accountability and support. Interestingly, we're now also all being required to have a spiritual director and a supervisor (previously this was only recommended). I find both of those places for accountability and support invaluable.
I agree entirely! I am, as you know, a huge fan of episcopal polity (I naturally like congregational polity also, but it does not scale - the recent trend of megachurches which are naturally congregational or otherwise independent opening satellite campuses seems wrong to me; I feel like these “satellite campuses” should instead be constituted as parishes, with the main church becoming in effect the cathedral), but a major problem arises when the dioceses are too large and clergy do not have easy or direct contact with their bishop.
The Assyrian Church of the East, which I mentioned to you previously as being an Eastern church you might actually want to visit, since they practice open communion (anyone who is baptized and believes in the real presence is invited to partake in the Church of the East) has struck me as being a church where it is extremely easy for priests to contact their bishop, indeed, even the Catholicos, and this has remained unchanged despite Mar Awa Royel, who I had the pleasure of meeting when he lived in California, having relocated the Patriarchate from Chicago back to its historic home in Iraq. Additionally, many larger churches such as St. Mary’s Cathedral in Los Angeles have a Chorepiscopus, or Choir Bishop, who is kind of equivalent to an Archpriest, but the difference is that Chorepiscopi have limited episcopal authority, usually the ability to ordain readers and other persons in minor orders.*
Conversely, the Coptic Orthodox Church had a severe problem with Patriarchal Extra-Diocesan Areas, which encompassed most of the United States. So whereas the priests of Coptic churches in the Diocese of Los Angeles under Bishop (now Metropolitan) Serapion, and Coptic churches in the Diocese of the South, benefitted from frequent contact with their bishops, and hierarchical divine liturgies were common. However, the extra-diocesan areas were under the personal authority of the Pope of Alexandria (who actually lives in Cairo, unlike his Greek Orthodox counterpart), and this had the effect of there being little or no episcopal guidance or supervision. Priests could not easily reach the Pope for guidance, because being the leader of the largest Arabic speaking church, the largest church in the Middle East, the largest church in Egypt and the second largest Oriental Orthodox church, with responsibilities ranging from dealing with the corrupt and Islamic-biased governments in the region, to ecumenical relations with other Middle Eastern churches, to facilitating the work of the larger Oriental Orthodox communion, to presiding over the Holy Synod of bishops and monastic hegumens (abbots), to defending the rights of Christians in Egypt, he had a full plate. There were “General Bishops” in the extra-diocesan areas (which encompassed most of North America), but they did not have any actual authority. Consequently, neo-evangelical groups whose values were contrary to those we might broadly associate with the Traditional Theology forum, and more specifically, those of the Oriental Orthodox faith, gained a foothold, and parishes started having praise and worship bands and selling decidedly non-Orthodox books like A Purpose Driven Life. This also started happening in Egypt, in places such as the impoverished pig farming community of Muqattam. I believe I mentioned that specific case previously.
At any rate, Pope Tawadros II got the memo, and duly created a set of shiny new dioceses, and as a result things are much better.
This whole episode however I think proves your argument that dioceses or diocese-equivalents should be small enough so as to facilitate frequent communication between the priests and the bishop.
Conversely, when I last looked into the UMC, I felt like they had too many District Superintendents and not enough Bishops, and the size disparity between a District, which is akin to a diocese, and the relatively small number of Conferences, which in size are like Anglican archdioceses or even provinces, was a bit too vast. I think it is important that the bishops also have easy access to an archbishop or metropolitan (in most churches, metropolitans outrank archbishops, but in the Oriental Orthodox churches, they are equivalent, and in the Greek, Cypriot, Romanian, and Albanian Orthodox churches, Archbishops outrank Metropolitans, interestingly enough, which is why the primates of the autocephalous Orthodox churches of Cyprus and Albania, and the autonomous Orthodox churches of Finland, Sinai and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North America are Archbishops).
*I believe they can also reconsecrate the altar, which is useful, because Assyrian altars become deconsecrated as a result of any number of mishaps, for example, accidentally pouring oil instead of wine into the chalice (although like most eastern churches, they have something like the Byzantine antimension or the Syriac Orthodox tablitho, on which the Eucharist can be celebrated, even if the underlying altar is offline and awaiting a bishop to reconsecrate it; I like to rib my friend Fr. Ephrem about how his church (the Assyrian church) has the most sensitive and tempermental altars in the world, which deconsecrate if you look at them the wrong way.
