I spent the last week at the House of Bishops meeting at Camp McDowell in Alabama. Almost all the active bishops and some of our retired colleagues were present as we met for a week of prayer, study, discussion, and relationship-building. Topics included centering prayer and Benedictine spirituality, Christian nationalism, church property, updates from the Presiding Bishop, a presentation on Episcopal church and clergy statistics, immigration, and the clergy discipline process. I left every day feeling exhausted—but also upheld by colleagues and friends.
We were assigned to our new table groups for the next three years, so the bishops of Texas, Louisiana, Virginia, and Maine will be my conversation partners. I look forward to learning from them and sharing stories about Arizona.
I sense from the House a willingness to engage in some big questions, about the viability of congregations and even entire dioceses; about the role of the church in the present moment; about how we best form disciples in our congregations to follow Jesus; about how we live justly into our identity as an international, multi-lingual church and House of Bishops—the Episcopal Church includes the dioceses of Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Ecuador, Taiwan, Cuba, and Honduras.
And now I am in Sewanee, Tennessee, visiting the School of Theology at the University of the South. We do not currently have any residential students at Sewanee, but several of our Postulants for the priesthood will be joining their ACTS program in 2025, and there may be current students who will be “released” by their bishops and would be available to serve in Arizona in the coming years.
