All posts filed under: World Mission

The stories of the elders

Religion / World Mission

Yesterday, in our meeting of the House of Bishops here in Alaska, we were treated to two conversations with elders of the Athabaskan people. One, a 96 year old woman who told us of her life in the seasonal Fish Camps and sang to us songs she had composed to mark important moments in her life. The other was an Episcopal priest and tribal chief who had served a community for years and now in […]

Fairbanks via Seattle

Climate Change / Travel / World Mission

The Fall 2017 House of Bishops meeting is being held in Fairbanks Alaska this year. Held in Fairbanks is sort of a misnomer. We’re spending part of our time in Fairbanks, and the main meeting site is in Fairbanks, but Alaska being Alaska, we’ll be spending time away from the city – far away – too. Some of the bishops are going to be loaded on to mail planes I’m told, to fly out to […]

Episcopal Migration Ministries: why it matters so much

Current Affairs / World Mission

We had a power presentation made to the bishops of the Episcopal Church earlier this week during our annual Spring meeting. The travel ban and the associated complications in the refugee resettlement process are affecting all of the nine organizations in the US that manage the resettlement process. Of the nine agencies that work in refugee resettlement, five are faith based. I’m hoping to have more to say about this all soon – especially here […]

The mission of education in Taiwan

Travel / World Mission

Today, my first full day in Taiwan as part of the House of Bishop’s meeting, was spent taking a tour of St. John’s University. The university was originally planted in Shanghai by the then bishop of Shanghai – The Rt. Rev. Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky, one of my favorite heroes on our Episcopal Church’s calendar of saints. I found this plaque in English describing the work of Bishop Schereschewsky and his role in founding the […]

Fall 2014 House of Bishops meeting

General Convention / Travel / World Mission

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 […]

The App you ought to have

Current Affairs / World Mission

Do you have an iPhone? An iPad? Do you support the One Campaign? I spent time in Swaziland. Many of my friends are either from the Sudan or work with people in the Sudan. Here in Phoenix we have a number of cathedral members who work on the southern Mexican border with Guatemala. In all those places the situation is dire because an epidemic of preventable diseases, lack of basic infrastructure and extreme poverty. The […]

It’s time to rethink America’s policy on nuclear weapons.

Current Affairs / World Mission

There’s an article in the Wall Street Journal today by a number of former Cold War leaders (including George Schultz, Sam Nunn and Henry Kissinger) that calls for the U.S. to rethink its M.A.D. nuclear weapons policy. Not a dove among the lot. While you can’t access that article without a subscription, you can read the open letter at the http://www.nti.org Here are some of the key paragraphs: “Today, the Cold War is almost 20 […]

Swazi government threatens torture against “foreigners”.

Swaziland / World Mission

I haven’t written much about Swaziland recently as the situation in that small country in Southern Africa hasn’t changed very much. But I received this article from the primary English language newspaper this morning. The short version appears to be that the Swazi King is becoming increasingly frustrated with the low level unrest in the populace. There have been increasing calls for governmental reform as the economic and public health situation has deteriorated. Rather than […]

Learning to listen to the locals

Swaziland / World Mission

What follows is an essay I just wrote for a Diocese of Arizona project which is collecting reflections from people who have been involved in various MDG projects over the past. Our diocesan MDG committee is going to publish these both in hope that other in the diocese might be inspired to get involved, and also so that local parish and mission committees might use them to guide their own decision making process. (I’ll try […]