Tag Archives: GC78

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General Convention June 25

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I spent most of the day yesterday traveling to Salt Lake City. What imagea beautiful city, I had great views of the mountains and the lake as we descended.

I was able to catch much of the Presiding Bishop candidates presentation. This was held in the House of Deputies, I think for the first time. They showed videos from each candidate, who then had a few minutes to speak, followed by Q and A. The election is Saturday. Bishop Curry from North Carolina has to be the front runner, but history tells us handicapping this race is dangerous. Never know what happens behind closed doors in the House of Bishops.

It took three forevers for my room to be ready, so I wandered the downtown SCL area a bit. It’s pretty warm here (97), but it’s a dry heat! Actually it was way more comfortable than South Florida.

The deputation from Mississippi met briefly to work on a resolution we will present to committee today. This is a great team, folks! It is a joy and privilege to work with them. More on this resolution once it is submitted and in the pipeline.

Last night I attended the first legislative hearings for the Special Committee on Marriage. They heard testimony on A037 (submitted by our Task Force on Marriage to continue and expand the work), C007, C009, and D026. The latter three have to do with changing liturgies to be inclussive for same-gender marriages. Tonight they take on A036, which we are the Task Force submitted, calling for canonical revision of the canon on marriage. More on that later.

If you go HERE, you can see the text of resolutions and track them as they are edited by the committee and eventually by the House of Deputies and House of Bishops.

After the hearings we had a wonderful reunion of our Task Force on Marriage team, almost all of us are here. We shared dinner and talked strategy and, as always, laughed a lot! They even sang Happy Birthday to me – a day early. Yep, today is my birthday!

General Convention is a marathon so I am off to the races again. Today I really look forward to seeing a bunch of old friends from around the church. I will try to check in both with the marriage committee and the social justice one, as I am interested in anti-racism resolutions. I am hoping we can put additional funds into anti-racism training and put some teeth into encouraging ALL our leaders to attend. To that end, we need more trainers trained and updates to our materials, which costs money. Money we need to spend!

Blessings to all. Comments are welcome!

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Praying our way to General Convention

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I am hoping you are joining with me in saying one of the Daily Offices, or whatever form of daily prayer you prefer. Clicking on Prayer Instructions on the left will take you to links for various ways you can use online resources to help, if you prefer. The Prayer Blog itself includes the daily cycle of prayer for St. Paul’s in Delray Beach, where I serve as Interim Rector, but I hope others will join with me in daily prayer.

As we approach the 78th General Convention, I hope all Episcopalians will join with the Acts 8 Movement and thousands of others to pray each day leading up to June 25th when convention officially begins. Please see this link and join with us if you can. Praying together is the best way we can all be connected as this important time in our church approaches.

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Update from Province IV Synod

I am at Kanuga with a good portion of the deputation from the Diocese of Mississippi. Province IV (consisting of dioceses in North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky and Louisiana, although the Diocese of Western Louisiana is in a different Province) of the Episcopal Church meets here every year for Synod, but on GC years it is much more heavily attended. We were told this was the largest Synod gathering ever for the Province. As several folks have commented, there seems to be a new energy and a wonderful spirit of hope, cooperation, and rededication to following Christ and moving more clearly away from the things that have caused conflict in our church and towards mission and growth.

This new attitude was evident in some very real ways. Yesterday, as members of the Task Force on the Study of Marriage, I joined with Joan Geiszler-Ludlam (East Carolina) and Bishop Andrew Waldo (Upper South Carolina) for a two part presentation on the work of our task force. In the afternoon we gave an overview of the work and pointed people to resources, discussed the resolution we submitted to change the marriage canon, and took a few questions. Last night for almost two hours we held a breakout session where we mainly just threw out some questions for the group (of over 70 people) to discuss. While we tried to bring the conversation to focus on marriage, it really was all over the map on issues of human sexuality. It was a very good conversation which bubbled up and flowed where it wanted to go. As a participant noted, it was striking how respectful the conversation was and while some very real concerns were raised, there was no hint of animosity or hard feelings. I think people felt safe expressing themselves and even, perhaps, learning from each other. There is obviously a lot of energy around this topic and I am sure it will occupy much time and attention at GC.

The other two hot topics for #GC78 (the twitter hashtag for General Convention this year) will be the election of a new Presiding Bishop, and the resolutions coming from TREC (Task force to Reimagine the Episcopal Church). I will have more to say on both of those topics soon.

Meanwhile it’s almost time for the Kanuga bugle to call us to breakfast, followed by a morning meeting and a long drive home. More to come…..