The final day of our General Conventions (this is my 10th) is always bittersweet. It’s part legislative body and part family reunion. The final day is when we start hammering away on getting everything bolted down, but it’s also the day when you see the halls and exhibits being broken down and packed up. We won’t be together again in the same way for three years… We did a bunch of things (as the kids […]
The spontaneous decision to stop the process until better common ground could be found is what was so striking to me this year.
I’m grabbing a few minutes between sessions on this second day of our meeting to post some quick impressions of what it’s like here at this unusual General Convention. We’re a year late, and unexpectedly shortened in our meeting, and rather than the leisurely pace of the first week of Convention typically, we’re hammering our way through the work we have before us. There’s a focus here that usually only emerges about halfway through in […]
Perhaps you heard that we elected a new Presiding Bishop yesterday? That was pretty big news. The first African-American Presiding Bishop in the history of the Episcopal Church, the first YDS-Berkeley seminary grad in that office, and the first, first ballot election in a very long time. You know what else? It’s also the first time in a long time that the election wasn’t about finding a way to hold the various factions of the […]
Convention is underway. This morning began with an early morning run, coffee on the go and a 7 AM hearing focused on a proposal to bring the full resources of modern technology and media strategy to sharing the Gospel as widely as possible. There’s a proposal before Evangelism and Communications to use up to 3 million dollars in the coming triennium to create an online experimental evangelism initiative. We’d be creating downloadable resources, training people […]
I’m attending my fifth General Convention, this time in Salt Lake City where we are being hosted by the Diocese of Utah. (This is the smallest diocese, in terms of membership, to ever host a General Convention, and it looks like it’s going to be one of the very best ever.) I’ve been a deputy (elected as priest) to four conventions. This is my first as a bishop. The experience is largely similar: long distance […]
Tomorrow we will begin this year’s Fall House of Bishops meeting for the Episcopal Church. We’re meeting this year in Taipei, in the Diocese of Taiwan, a diocese of the Episcopal Church. As I mentioned this to people in Rhode Island, there was some surprise that Taiwan was part of our Church – but over the years, as our mission work in the Episcopal Church in the US took us further and further afield, we […]
In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve not had much to say about the recently concluded General Convention. Which is unusual for me. I started blogging back in 2003 during my first General Convention and I’ve been pretty good at posting regular notes during all the subsequent General Conventions. But this one was different; both for me personally, and I think in a few important ways for the whole of the Episcopal Church. This was a […]
As chair (for a little while longer at least) of the deputation of the Diocese of Arizona to General Convention, Bishop Smith invited me to share some reflections on the upcoming meeting in Indianapolis. “Beginning next week, bishops and deputies from each diocese of the Episcopal Church will be meeting in our once-every-three year General Convention. This Convention, the 77th in our history, promises to be different from ones in recent memory. It’s going to […]
What would it look like for us as the Episcopal Church to be willing to give a bit more freedom to dioceses and congregations to find structures for governance that make sense in local contexts?
