May 12, 2016—On May 1, the Rev. Robert Sessum, a ten-time deputy to General Convention from the Diocese of Lexington, was awarded the House of Deputies Medal by President Gay Clark Jennings during her visit to the Church of the Good Shepherd in Lexington.

“Bob has held an amazing array of leadership positions in the Episcopal Church and given thousands of hours of service over more than three decades,” said Jennings. “He has always been a steady hand on the wheel through stormy ecclesiastical seas. That’s true here in the Diocese of Lexington, it’s true in the province and churchwide, and it’s true in the Anglican Communion.”

Sessum, who was rector of the parish for nearly 17 years, served on the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church, as president of Province IV, on the Standing Commission on Anglican & International Peace with Justice Concerns, the Standing Committee on the Structure of the Church, and as the Episcopal Church’s clergy member of the Anglican Consultative Council. He is currently a director of Kanuga Conference Center, an Episcopal camp and conference center in North Carolina, and a member of the board of the Archives of the Episcopal Church.

During her visit, Jennings and Sessum presented a forum on the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC). Sessum was the Episcopal Church’s clergy member of the ACC from 1999-2005 and attended his final ACC meeting as a visitor because Episcopal Church representatives were not welcomed as voting members in the wake of the consecration of the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire. Jennings has been the Episcopal Church’s ACC clergy members since 2012 and recently returned from a meeting in Lusaka, Zambia, at which ACC members declined to enforce consequences against the Episcopal Church sought by the primates of the Anglican Communion in response to General Convention 2015’s adoption of marriage equality.

“All of us who have followed Bob in this work are grateful to him for representing the Episcopal Church so honorably to the rest of the Anglican Communion during his tenure on the ACC,” Jennings said.

The House of Deputies Medal was established in 2012 and is awarded to laypeople and clergy who have given distinguished service to the House of Deputies and the Episcopal Church.

The Most Rev. Michael Curry, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, was previously the bishop of the Diocese of North Carolina. He roots for the University of North Carolina Tar Heels.

The Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, president of the House of Deputies of the Episcopal Church, grew up a couple of buzzer-beating half court shots from the Syracuse University campus. She roots for the Orange.

The two teams square off Saturday night in Houston for a berth in the men's college basketball championship game, but the real action takes place staring now!

Today we tip off the Team Curry v. Team Jennings challenge. Whichever squad raises the most money for Episcopal Relief & Development by tipoff (8:49 pm Eastern time on Saturday) wins the coveted (though previously unknown) Selfie Memorial Trophy, named for Episcopal Relief & Development's famous Selfie the Goat.

Additionally, if Bishop Curry's team loses, he must present the trophy to President Jennings in the House of Deputies at the 2018 General Convention in Austin where a choir of bishops will serenade the deputies with the Syracuse University alma mater. If President Jennings's team loses, she will present the trophy in the House of Bishops, and a choir of deputies will sing the UNC alma mater. As either of these is an outcome devoutly to be wished for, consider contributing to both sides!

Donate online to Team Curry.

Donate online to Team Jennings.

Remember, you can donate to both teams, because no matter who takes home victory, the real winners are the people who benefit from Episcopal Relief & Development's worldwide programs that strengthen communities by fighting poverty, hunger and disease. Learn more about Episcopal Relief & Development.

Dear Bishops and Deputies,

At General Convention this summer, our church made the strongest commitment in a generation to racial justice and reconciliation. As the leaders of the House of Bishops and House of Deputies, we were tasked by Resolution C019 to lead in this holy work, and thus to enable every diocese, ministry, and baptized person in our church to live and bear witness to the teaching of Jesus to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:37-40), by respecting the dignity of every human being, and working to transform the unjust structures of society.

To honor that call, we gathered on February 3 and 4 in Austin, Texas, to share our own gifts and stories, to learn some of the church’s historic and current activities, and to begin to discern a way forward. Rather than proceed with quick fixes or instant program, we adopted two essential practices: deep listening to stories and patient commitment to mutual transformation over the long haul.

Today, we write to welcome sisters and brothers in both Houses and ultimately all Episcopalians to join us in this ministry. The pain of racial injustice and division has wracked our church and the many communities where we both proclaim and embody the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our collective prayer and action can begin to heal what is broken and nurture the Beloved Community that is God’s dream for all.

At this stage, we look forward to convening one or more church-wide gatherings where many voices can share about racial justice and reconciliation, including the myriad racial, ethnic and cultural realities that play out across Latin America, Europe, Asia and deep into indigenous communities on this continent. We have also asked the Presiding Bishop’s staff to research options for the following:

- A gathering for listening with Anglican partners in the Global South, with particular attention to colonial and neocolonial patterns of relationship

- Vehicles for sharing stories, developing relationships, and listening to the Other

- Age-appropriate formation and education opportunities for dismantling racism

- A summary of the church’s current ministries and gifts for racial justice and reconciliation

- A census or audit to gain a clearer understanding of the church’s demographic make-up and its historic and current participation in systems of racial injustice

Please join us in spending the remainder of this holy season of Lent in prayer, asking God to prepare our hearts to share and to receive the stories and truths that challenge each of us most. Join us in looking to transformation well beyond a single triennium or even the nine years of a primate’s term, beyond the United States alone, beyond new statements and policies. We share the longing of our Lord Jesus Christ for metanoia -- to turn, to be reborn as a Church engaged in behaviors, commitments and relationships that reflect the love of the One who called us to be one.

In the deep love of Christ,

Presiding Bishop Michael Curry	President of the House of Deputies Gay Clark Jennings
House of Bishops Vice President Mary Gray-Reeves	House of Deputies Vice President Byron Rushing
House of Bishops Vice President Dean Wolfe	House of Deputies Secretary Michael Barlowe

 Download this letter.

 Leer en español.

 

Good morning—

The last time we met, just over three months ago, I said some things. I said some things about standing on the threshold and about longing for change and about embracing our elastic identity.

I said—I looked this up to be sure—that “The world might swirl around us, but we know who we are, and we can stretch our identity to accommodate the changes we need to make.” And I said, “I’m pretty passionate about these huge changes fermenting below the surface of our common life.” “I’m feeling pretty elastic this triennium,” I said, “and I’m ready to get started.”

So, it’s entirely possible that this three-month roller coaster ride we’ve been on was a result of me tempting fate. I said that I was up for some huge changes and a chance to stretch, and apparently the universe heard me. We certainly have had a chance to stretch since November, haven’t we?

First of all, I want to give abundant thanks to God and the doctors and nurses and physical therapists and occupational therapists and Sharon Curry and everyone else responsible for our presiding bishop’s swift return to health after his little mishap. Michael, we are so grateful for your swift and sure recovery and the calm reassurance you gave us, with able assistance from Michael Hunn, all the way along.

Second, I want to commend you all, and especially the staff members here with us and those at home, for the grace and forbearance you have shown during the ongoing investigation into matters that led to three staff members being placed on administrative leave. I’ve been very fortunate enough to be with staff at several meetings recently, and I am grateful for the considerate ways that you are working with each other and with volunteer leaders of the church to advance our common mission. Thank you for standing on the threshold with such courage.

And third, I want to thank you, Michael, for the wisdom and steadiness with which you guided us all through the recent primates meeting and its aftermath. While confusion reigned and rumors swirled, you helped us understand, to renew, that we are still full members of the Anglican Communion, that our mission relationships with Anglicans across the world are strong, and that what binds us together is far stronger than what threatens to separate us. I will take your spirit with me when I travel to Zambia in April as the Episcopal Church’s clergy representative to the Anglican Consultative Council, where you can be assured that I will participate fully with a glad heart, a strong spirit and pride that the Episcopal Church fully affirms the dignity and worth of all of God’s children, including our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender sisters and brothers.

Now, the roller coaster has come to a stop and the full moon is over, and in the next few days together, we’ve got some work to do to bring about those huge changes that we’ve been talking about. Thanks to many of you who have been working very hard since our last meeting, we will be ready at the end of the meeting to approve the budget for 2016 and, by doing so, take concrete steps toward remaking our commitment to evangelism, racial justice and reconciliation, toward investing in evangelism and church planting, and toward supporting more effectively our Latino and Hispanic congregations.

Dear Deputies and Alternate Deputies: 

The Rev. Gay Clark Jennings
President, House of Deputies

Dear Deputies and Alternate Deputies:

Many of you have received the news that the meeting of Anglican primates that has just concluded in Canterbury has voted to issue what it calls "consequences" to the Episcopal Church for our full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in our common life.

This news may be painful for some of us, particularly for LGBT people who have been excluded too often and for too long by families, churches, schools, and other institutions mired in homophobia. It may also be hurtful or unsettling to those of us who value our mission relationships with Anglicans across the Communion.

I want to assure you that nothing about what the primates have said will change the actions of General Convention that have, over the past four decades, moved us toward full inclusion and equal marriage. And regardless of the primates’ vote, we Episcopalians will continue working with Anglicans across the globe to feed the hungry, care for the sick, educate children, and heal the world. Nothing that happens at a primates’ meeting will change our love for one another or our commitment to serving God together. I commend to you Presiding Bishop Michael Curry's powerful statement on just this theme.

The practical consequences of the primates’ action will be that, for three years, Episcopalians will not be invited to serve on certain committees, or will be excluded from voting while they are there. However, the primates do not have authority over the Anglican Consultative Council, the worldwide body of bishops, clergy and lay people that facilitates the cooperative work of the churches of the Anglican Communion. I serve as a representative to that body, along with Bishop Ian Douglas of Connecticut, a four-time deputy before his election as bishop, and six-time Deputy Rosalie Simmonds Ballentine of the Virgin Islands, and I am planning to travel to Zambia for our scheduled meeting in April and to participate fully.

Five years ago, Christmas day found me cradling a one-week old baby in my arms. A newborn, black baby boy holding all of the promise and hope of the future in his quivering, adorable, needy little body. At the time, I believed that to be the most vulnerable time of his life. But the epidemic of gun violence in our country has disavowed me of this notion. 

City streets, classrooms, shopping centers, health facilities, movie theaters and churches are all likely venues for what society calls “random” gun violence. Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Laquan McDonald, and countless others helped me to understand that with each passing birthday, each passing Christmas holiday, my son’s life becomes that much more vulnerable. Watching and hearing the grieving parents of children killed at the hands of the state or by acts of homegrown terrorism, I can’t help but ponder the hopes and dreams they had for babies who grew up to die too soon. In the birth of Jesus, the Word made flesh, God knows this pain perhaps more intimately than most of us. It is a thread—sometimes thin—that gives me comfort and even hope amidst the tragedies of gun violence, the protest chants of #BlackLivesMatter, and the seeming intractability of racism.

On the days when violence and warfare threaten to overwhelm me, that thin line is a reminder that God is always bringing new life and possibility into places that seem to have been abandoned by hope. It is in looking back from the shadows of the cross that the holy night we’ll soon celebrate finds its real meaning. Like Jesus’ birth, God’s saving work goes unnoticed—at first—by much of the world, but it is happening just the same.

Christmas reminds me of how much God was willing to take a chance on us—on humanity. God loves us enough to enter a world filled with beauty, pain and promise and invites us to do likewise. That is, to take a chance on humanity and believe that the next person who might transform the world might be born today. That person may be the young black man we pass by on the other side of the street out of fear. It may be the person of another faith (or none) that we are unable to see as an ally in the cause for peace. Indeed, the miracle of Emmanuel—God with us—is that the next person to transform a moment, or transform the world could be you or me. With each passing day as my son grows older and steps more fully into God’s full future, this is the thread of hope that allows me to sleep at night and embrace the possibilities of a new day.

The Rev. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows is a three-time deputy and serves as the director of networking in the Diocese of Chicago.

Dear Deputies and Alternate Deputies,

Presiding Bishop Michael Curry has just released a letter to the staff of the Episcopal Church Center informing them that, on Wednesday, he placed on administrative leave Chief Operating Officer Bishop Stacy Sauls, Deputy Chief Operating Officer and Director of Mission Samuel McDonald, and Director of Public Engagement Alex Baumgarten. "This is a result of concerns that have been raised about possible misconduct in carrying out their duties as members of senior management of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society," writes Bishop Curry.

You can read the letter online.

I join Bishop Curry in asking that you pray for all who are involved in this situation and that we all refrain from speculation while the investigation proceeds.

Thank you, as always, for your faithfulness as leaders of the Episcopal Church.

Faithfully,

Gay Clark Jennings
President

Dear Deputies,

Earlier today, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry was taken to the hospital after preaching at Bruton Parish Church in Colonial Williamsburg and exhibiting some word-finding difficulty. There he was diagnosed with a subdural hematoma—a small collection of blood between his brain and his skull—and transferred to a hospital in Richmond for treatment. Tomorrow morning he will have surgery to relieve the condition.

I spoke with Bishop Curry before he was transferred to the hospital in Richmond, and he assured me that he is in good spirits and confident in the care he is receiving. The Rev. Canon Michael Hunn, canon to the Presiding Bishop for ministry within the Episcopal Church, was with Bishop Curry all day, and reports that he is expected to make a full recovery in a week or so. Mrs. Curry will join her husband in Richmond in the morning.

You won’t be surprised that Bishop Curry has already enlisted Canon Hunn and his nurse to join him in making a video from his hospital bed. You can see it online. I hope that seeing him in such good form will help relieve your mind as it has mine.   

Please pray for our beloved Presiding Bishop, for his caregivers and surgical team, and for his family. Tomorrow will bring more news, and I will share it with you as soon as I can.

Faithfully,

The Rev. Gay Clark Jennings
President, House of Deputies

Other Episcopal participants in the Elmina Consultation included the Rev. Broderick Greer, Bishop Jeffrey D. Lee, Dr. Dora Mbuwayesango, Sara Miles, Kathleen Moore, Jim Naughton, the Rev. Keith Patterson, Bishop Sean Rowe and Rebecca Wilson.

The group, which has met three times in the last four years, issued a statement at the conclusion of the gathering, called the Elmina Consultation. African scholars, church leaders and activists from eleven countries in sub-Saharan Africa have been involved in the three consultations, which have also included Episcopal Church bishops, clergy, and laypeople invited by the Chicago Consultation. Baker, Grisham, and Perry are co-conveners of the Chicago Consultation, along with Deputy Jennifer Adams, and Jennings is a founding member.

“We call upon our faith communities to make either public commitment or private arrangement to serve as places of sanctuary for those who live under the threat of violence for working on behalf of the gospel,” reads the statement. “We understand this group to include LGBTI people, women and men living with HIV, ethnic, racial and religious minorities on both continents, and those who are potential victims of gender violence.”

Baker, who also participated in the group’s 2013 consultation in Limuru, Kenya, said that the Elmina Consultation “helped me realize that animus in Africa toward gay and lesbian persons was not necessarily indigenous but rather was imported and inflamed by activists in the U.S.” Relationships among Anglicans, he says, can help undo the damage. “The sustainability of the Anglican Communion is not dependent on relationships between primates,” Baker said, “but rather on relationships that are forged between individuals working across the Communion to draw us closer to the kingdom of heaven.”

At the gathering, participants discussed Resolution A051 of the Episcopal Church’s 2015 General Convention and, in their statement, called upon the Episcopal Church to fulfill it. The resolution supports using resources developed by African Anglican leaders and organizations working to curb anti-gay and anti-transgender violence and building relationships with African Anglican scholars whose biblical interpretations affirm the dignity and humanity of LGBTI people.

As we continue to process the events of the day--the continued protests over the killing of black men at the hand of police and generally lament the poverty, disease, mudslides, and other disasters these days, this Advent, seem darker than usual.  And I don’t think it’s my mood.  Advent is supposed to be dark—this period when we intentionally look forward to the second coming of Christ with all of the upheaval that comes with it. But this is a bit much. 

We are given scriptural texts specifically chosen for this third Sunday of Advent and though there are nice words in here—rejoice! freedom! Oil of gladness!—I find no comfort. Let’s take a look at this passage from Isaiah. 

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me to preach good news.   At first blush, Isaiah sounds remarkably comforting to us—and we so want to be comforted—all of us.  Isaiah’s message told by the unnamed prophet is “to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion…”

After years spent in exile, after a period of being called back home, after confronting the monumental task of rebuilding a broken and dispersed community of people called Israel, all of the promises that come before in the 60 previous chapters of Isaiah—promises written over many, many years by different prophets—these promises are still being made.  The people still mourn and grieve because there had been no glorious kingdom of God established after the exile as they anticipated. They still needed comfort. And we live now, in a world into which Jesus has already come once—this Jesus who preached on these texts in his first sermon in the Temple and declared that all of these promises were being fulfilled as the listeners heard him.  We hear these words in the light of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Eric Garner in Staten Island, the second anniversary of the massacre of the innocents in Newtown, CT and I’m clear, are you not, that not only do we still want to be comforted—we are still in exile.  We have not yet found our way back. The superhighway that Isaiah spoke about in last Sunday’s passage is like the Eisenhower at the evening rush—going nowhere fast.  We want to cry freedom, we want an end to the mass incarceration of young Black and Latino men, we want the year of jubilee—the year of the Lord’s favor—and we want comfort for those very many who are in mourning.

Being comforted and being comfortable are different things.  Advent time—this time we are in—is not about being comfortable.  Advent is about waiting for Christ’s return, it is about waiting for the consummation of all things when all people, all of creation will be reconciled to each other and to God.  Advent is about finding our way back—home.  It is about loving a God who made a home, here among humanity, in the person of Jesus. So when I’m asked, what “can we do” in the wake of Ferguson and the rest; what can we do, when the protesting is over—all I can say is that it is complicated.  Sure there is advocacy work to be done and policies to change and reforms to effect.  Ultimately, though, the answers to that question—which I believe is aimed at getting at the structural and systemic forces that make institutional and hence, individual racism and privilege so difficult to dismantle—the answers to the question will vary with each of us.  But let me tell you what I’m doing.  It’s a small little thing called “going home.” 

So let me say, by way of confession, that over the past few years I’ve been slowing coming out as a kid from the projects.  I cannot express enough what a big deal that has been for me.  It is an admission that has me examining my own internalized racial oppression, identity, feelings of abandonment—and my own acts of abandoning my community in the name of survival—and I hope ultimately giving me the courage to use what little privilege I have as a multiple-degreed, Ivy-educated black professional to actually do something to make a difference.

At the age of ten my family moved to a housing project in Staten Island—not too far where Eric Garner met his fate. We left Brooklyn and relocated to a place where my own innocence of people of many races and backgrounds living together more or less peacefully was shattered. This was the place where I had to learn to navigate the White adults spitting on me and calling me the N-word as I walked home from school each day and the Black school kids wanting to fight me because I spoke funny and used words they didn’t understand. I hated this place. I took solace in the library and the classroom and dreamed of getting out.  Each night gunshots would ring out on the basketball court below my window as I did my homework. I strategized and dreamt about a different life—frankly, a Park Avenue classic six apartment was the dream. I saved my allowance and later after-school job money so that I’m pretty sure I was the only teenager walking around the projects in a Brooks Brothers navy blue, brass-buttoned blazer.  Success meant getting out and never looking back.  But as it turns out, going back just may be my salvation. 

For me, confronting the pain, violence, and for many, hopelessness of that place is critical in order for me to take all of this talk of racial reconciliation and social justice from an academic exercise that I can study and read about till there’s no tomorrow, to an experience of true compassion, empathy, and solidarity. This is about me amending the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter to #AllBlackLivesMatter. All Black lives—especially, especially, the ones seen as expendable and disposable because of where they live, how they speak, what they wear. I don’t have time to do it, I’m hearing and remembering stories I don’t want to hear or remember. But this little bit of “putting myself back together” and finding wholeness, will be, I pray, a key to me effecting that wholeness that I desire for the whole community. This is about intentionally entering the brokenness to find that actually, those who made it out are not the only survivors.

This is also an exercise in Advent hope. It is about paying attention and believing, in spite of the “evidence,” that in the darkest of days, a light shines forth. From broken and abandoned dreams, hope is birthed. It is about trusting that transformation comes from unexpected places—whether it is the backwater of Nazareth or the housing projects of Staten Island, or the streets of Englewood. In her book The Liturgical Year, Joan Chittister says of Advent, “… this is the season that teaches us to wait for what is beyond the obvious. It trains us to see what is behind the apparent. Advent makes us look for God in all those places we have, until now, ignored.”

I don’t know what “going home” looks like for you. Maybe it is a hard, difficult look at the places that have made you who you are and being curious about it. Maybe it is looking at the place where you live and move and have your being right now, and asking yourself, is this life you’re living and creating, helping to effect the change you desire for the world. Returning home—moving toward wholeness-- is what God most desires for us and the pathway as Isaiah and other prophets make clear, will not always be simple, clear or easy. But each time we go to those places—whether it is a street address or the part of your heart that has been hollowed out by complacency, sorrow, fear, and anguish—each time we go to those places we have to look oh so carefully lest we miss what God is doing in front of our very eyes. 

About a week ago I finally made it over to the Holocaust Museum in Skokie—I pass it all the time but never made it in. I’d been urged by friends from church and the community to check out the exhibit on race. It is a well done exhibit that takes the anthropological approach to reinforce the idea of race as a social construct but that also explains the evolution of physical features that account for the diversity in the human family. It also has what seems to be hours of video of personal testimony from folks speaking of discrimination, bias, and genocidal violence because of racism in this country. The exhibit is a good one but, frankly, didn’t tell me anything I didn’t really already know. It reminded me that what is happening to Black men today is part of a long string of racial atrocities. I left feeling a bit exhausted and a bit resigned that it was ever thus, and ever shall be. After I exited the exhibit I made my way to the gift shop. I thought I might check out the permanent exhibit about the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust but I didn’t want to take in more depressing narratives—I was full up. As I entered the gift shop a man pointed to a table where another, older, White man was siting and he asked me, “Would you like to meet a Holocaust survivor?” So I gave the only answer I could give.  “Of course.  Of course, I do.”

Earlier this month, the Executive Council awarded Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM) with a $44,910 Constable Grant to increase the involvement of Episcopalians in the Church’s refugee ministry. 

The Constable grant will support “Share the Journey,” a program that encourages Episcopalians to advocate for just solutions for all refugees and offers education and formation that “deepens and enriches lives of faith through prayer and mission as Episcopalians meet Jesus in incarnational relationships with their refugee neighbors,” says Allison Duvall, EMM’s program manager for church relations and co-sponsorship.  “As a vehicle to understand complex global situations and the resettlement process, Share the Journey will deeply explore the specific refugee crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has seen some of the world’s worst violence and human rights abuses in recent years.”

While EMM has previously resettled only small numbers of Congolese refugees through its network, the United States has now committed to resettling up to 30,000 Congolese refugees over the next three to five years.

“The Super Bowl will bring more glitz and glamour than perhaps any other event New Jersey has ever hosted," wrote Newark Bishop Mark Beckwith in a January 24 op-ed in the Star Ledger. "And, as Super Bowl history has demonstrated, it will bring more suffering and darkness - in the form of human slavery - than we can possibly measure."

According to the Episcopal Public Policy Network, the Super Bowl is “arguably the single largest sex trafficking incident in the United States.” To combat human trafficking during the Super Bowl, New Jersey Episcopalians have been raising awareness and joining with other advocates to take action. Last week, Lynette Wilson of Episcopal News Service wrote about efforts in the Dioceses of New Jersey and Newark, including efforts spearheaded by Deputy Laura Russell and Executive Council member Martha Gardner.

The Diocese of Newark has posted on its website prayers for victims of human trafficking and links to government and advocacy coalitions working against the problem. The Episcopal Church website also includes resources on human trafficking, including a video of the Presiding Bishop speaking at a 2013 churchwide conversation on human trafficking.

Sawubona, Yebho. This is a salutation you would hear if you were to travel to Johannesburg and Cape Town, the cities where my family live and where I was born and raised. The Zulu greeting, "Sawubona" means "I see you" and the response "Ngikhona" means "I am here." As always, when translating from one language to another, crucial subtleties are lost. Inherent in the Zulu greeting and our grateful response is the sense that until you saw me, I didn't exist. By recognizing me, you brought me into existence. Sawubona ("We see you") is an invitation to a deep witnessing and presence.  At its deepest level this "seeing" is essential to human freedom, and at the heart of freedom for South Africans was Madiba.

I remember The Trojan Horse Massacre on Thornton Road, Athlone in October 1985. All of us were at school and needed to run home because the army and police were out to get students who were protesting the government by burning tires in the streets. I remember the "whites only" signs on the beaches as we drove past in my grandfather's brown Valiant station wagon and searched for the handful of "blacks only" beaches. I remember police coming into the rectory at St. John's Church on Belgravia Road, Athlone looking for my uncles and any students who were hiding from the security forces. The church took the lead in turning out the lights on Wednesday nights and we would stand in the streets with lit candles singing, crying and remembering all who had died. These are some of the wounds that Madiba and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission helped heal.

Members of Generation X are frequently portrayed as too cynical to commit themselves to creating institutional change. But the description doesn’t fit Deputy Sarah Lawton of the Diocese of California.

“There’s work for all of us to do in the public square,” says Lawton, who was awarded the House of Deputies medal on October 26 by President Gay Clark Jennings.

In presenting the award at the diocese’s convention at Grace Cathedral, Jennings praised Lawton for her commitment to the social justice work of General Convention and emphasized the importance of advocacy in today’s church.

“I think that we are called, now more than ever, to work for Gospel justice and raise our voices for those who have no voice,” Jennings told the delegates. “The imperative to proclaim generous Christianity is greater now than it has ever been in my lifetime.”

After several days visiting farms and villages in the heat and humidity of northern Ghana, the group of Episcopalians led by the Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, president of the House of Deputies of The Episcopal Church, welcomed the rain not only as relief from heat but as an answer to the prayers of local farmers whose crops are suffering from climate change and depleted soil. According to Episcopal Relief & Development, 90% of families in northern Ghana are dependent on farming to earn a living.

ADDRO (Anglican Diocesan Development and Relief Organisation), Episcopal Relief & Development’s partner in northern Ghana, works directly with farmers whose traditional farming practices no longer produce enough food to feed their families. Maize, soybeans, millet and yams are all common subsistence crops in the regions of Ghana where ADDRO is active, but its farming programs focus on maize and soybeans, crops that with improved management can result in significantly increased yields.

Ciudad de Mexico

Buenos días. Es un honor el haber sido invitada por el Obispo Touché-Porter y el Canónigo Ramos-Huerta para estar con ustedes en este importante sínodo, y estoy feliz de ser la portadora de afectuosos saludos para todos ustedes de parte de la Iglesia Episcopal. En el noventa y cuatro, yo era diputada de la Convención General que estableció el convenio entre nuestras dos provincias autónomas,  y me alegra el poder expresar personalmente mi compromiso con dicho convenio.

Yo sirvo como la presidenta de la cámara de diputados de la Iglesia Episcopal, la cual cuenta con un cuerpo legislativo de ocho cientos ochenta miembros, y junto con la Cámara de Obispos, conformamos lo que viene a ser nuestra Convención General. La Convención General es la autoridad máxima en la Iglesia Episcopal.  Recientemente, la Convención General ha iniciado conversaciones amplias acerca de cómo reformar la estructura y la misión de la Iglesia Episcopal para poder responder mejor al llamado que Dios mismo nos está haciendo en este Siglo Veintiuno. Honestamente, y tomando en cuenta este momento en nuestra historia común, la Iglesia Episcopal tiene mucho que aprender de la Iglesia Anglicana de México.

En la Iglesia Episcopal estamos batallando con dejar ir algunas de las estructuras corporativas y sus formas dominadoras que, francamente, no nos han convertido en los mejores vecinos en muchos de los casos. En efecto, estamos procurando un entendimiento más claro acerca de nuestra propia identidad como pueblo de Dios, de forma tal que podamos establecer con ustedes en México, y con toda la Comunión Anglicana, redes de trabajo, colaboraciones y relaciones misioneras que sean más firmes, comunes y auto-sostenibles.

I am deeply honored by this opportunity to speak to you tonight. Thank you for your warm welcome and hospitality. It is a privilege to be with you and learn more about the vital ministry of EAM and its members throughout the church we love.

Last month, Tom Brackett, the Episcopal Church’s missioner for new church starts and mission initiatives, posted a question in the Five Marks of Mission Facebook group. He asked, “Does anyone know of an anti-racism training or process that goes beyond saying ‘No!’ to racism to saying ‘Yes!’ to the Beloved Community?”

His question garnered more than 50 comments, and the conversation went on for several weeks. If you read the post—anyone can join the Five Marks of Mission Facebook group and read it—you’ll see that its participants are wrestling with a question I hear about more and more often as I travel around the church: How can we learn to talk about race and racism in the Episcopal Church in new ways that will help us break out of old categories and old dichotomies?

After I read the conversation that Tom had convened online, I talked with some leaders who are people of color about their experiences in the Episcopal Church. This evening, I want to talk with you about what I’ve heard and invite you to join the conversation.

At the insistence of George Jessel, Groucho Marx joined the Friars Club.

He found club life not to his liking, so he sent a telegram to the club secretary resigning his membership. The telegram read, "I wouldn't belong to a club that would have me as a member."

Today I feel akin to Groucho.

When I convened the Honorary Degrees Committee for the Board of Trustees of this seminary, I didn't qualify for an honorary degree. So, I want to begin by thanking my successor, Bob Steel, for lowering the standards and letting me in.

I told a friend that Dean Ragsdale had 'phoned to say the board had voted to grant me an honorary degree. He asked, "What's it for?"

Well, I didn't know. It never dawned on me to ask the President and Dean why I might be given an honorary degree, which shows that humility would not be one of the reasons. I'm really looking forward to hearing the mandamus tomorrow and learning why EDS might give me an honorary degree.

“Women’s issues can help transcend cultural boundaries, especially when we get together to talk,” said Russell in a recent interview about the Indaba process on gender-based violence organized by Anglican Women’s Empowerment (AWE) in partnership with the Anglican Communion’s Continuing Indaba program. “In a short time, we made friends and connections and cemented a lot of relationships.”

Wilderness Tips for Episcopalians:  Leading the Church in a Post-Christian World

Not too long after I was elected president of the House of Deputies, I got a call from Rob Radtke, who is the president of Episcopal Relief & Development. He asked if I would lead a pilgrimage this summer to some of the programs that the Episcopal Church supports in Ghana. These programs fight poverty and help prevent malaria and other diseases that kill nearly 8% of the country's children before their fifth birthday.

Of course I said yes. Episcopal Relief & Development is one of our church's most essential and effective ways of doing mission. How could I say no?

And then I got the packing list.

So now, because I believe in our baptismal promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons, and because I believe that our relationships with Anglicans across the globe are the essence of the Anglican Communion, I have a corner in our guest room where I am storing an increasingly large stash of gear. I have a bandana that has been treated with mosquito repellent. I have a water bottle with a built-in filter. I am on the lookout for bug spray with more DEET than I knew you could buy and I need to arrange for a dizzying array of medications and immunizations. Plus, there has been talk of crocodiles. I don't do reptiles, especially large reptiles.

My belief in how we are called to respond to the Gospel is taking me way, way outside my comfort zone.

Comprobaron y reforzaron esa tesis todas las secciones e intervenciones de la conferencia. Desde la primera ponencia a cargo del doctor Víctor A. Feliberty-Ruberté, de la Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico, que durante casi una hora nos asombró a base de estadísticas y gráficas mostrando el crecimiento del pueblo hispano en este país, hasta al discurso final del reverendo Simón Bautista que, cargado de preciosista oratoria, probó y demostró que definitivamente los hispanos somos profetas, misioneros, evangélicos, sacramentales y espirituales. ¿Quién no puede quedar sobrecogido ante tal cúmulo de dones? Efectivamente, ¡el ministerio hispano, desde ahora en adelante será heraldo del crecimiento episcopal!

The most impressive element of this particular conference, however, was the abundant presence of English-speaking persons. This was the key element of the whole conference because it demonstrated without a doubt that Latino/Hispanic ministry does not require any more proof of citizenship in the Episcopal Church. It is categorically considered to be a key element in the growth of our church.

All of the sessions and presentations of the conference proved and reinforced this thesis. Dr. Víctor A. Feliberty-Ruberté from the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico started by astonishing us for almost an hour with statistics and graphics that demonstrated the growth of Hispanics in this country. The final discourse by the Rev. Simon Bautista, Latino missioner in the Diocese of Washington, was an eloquent presentation to prove and demonstrate that Hispanics are definitively prophets, missionaries, evangelical, sacramental, and spiritual. Who would not be overtaken by such a wealth of gifts? Without a doubt, from this day forward Latino/Hispanic ministry will be the herald for Episcopal growth!

Download this chart: Canonical Structure Chart

What is the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society?
In 1820, the General Convention adopted a constitution for "The Protestant Episcopal Missionary Society in the United States for Foreign and Domestic Missions" in order to provide a means--by raising and distributing funds -- to support missionaries in states and territories in which the Church was not yet organized. This first constitution, however, was deeply flawed. Right from the beginning the governance of the DFMS was at issue in terms of the rights of laity and bishops and who would have seat and vote on the board of directors. The 1821 Special General Convention looked at this salient concern along with one relating to GTS. Acting on the Presiding Bishop's request, General Convention adopted a new constitution and a new name: The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.

Parishes elect a vestry to govern the affairs of the parish in conjunction with the rector, who is sought and elected by the vestry.

Parishes also elect lay delegates to attend an annual diocesan convention with all the diocese's clergy and bishops. Diocesan conventions vote on the major policy decisions of the diocese, set the budget for the diocese and, at times, make statements about issues in the church and in civil society. Diocesan conventions also elect bishops to help lead their dioceses.

Diocesan conventions elect deputies as members of the House of Deputies of the Episcopal Church's triennial General Convention. The General Convention sets the mission priorities, budget and policies of the Episcopal Church for the next three years. It approves changes to the Church's Constitution and Canons, and broadly defines the standards of worship.