When Episcopalians converged on St. Stephen’s Memorial Church in Lynn on Nov. 6, they got a warm welcome and a glimpse of city ministry as they took up the business of Diocesan Convention that brought them there.
About 650 delegates and members of the clergy attended the annual convention.
With the usual two-day schedule pared down to just one this year, the convention moved through its business with unusual dispatch, leaving time to celebrate the best work of the past year and consider how the diocese is being led to answer God’s urgent call.
Tracy J. Sukraw
Bishop M. Thomas Shaw, SSJE gives his meditation.
“All of today, the resolutions, the budget, the elections, the reports—all of it is about our common life, our life together,” Bishop M. Thomas Shaw, SSJE told the convention in his morning meditation.
Shaw spoke of the encompassing expanse of God’s beauty. He also reflected on how God in Christ is drawn to places of suffering and need so that all might be healed and transformed.
“We must not think that God wants to go first to the places of good within us, where we’ve done His will, where we’ve got it all together. For if we do, we’ll miss the point of what it means to be in Christ,” he said. “Christ’s desire to go to the most painful part of our lives reveals also where Christ is calling us to be in the world as well.”
Answering God’s call
Tracy J. Sukraw
Members of the Life Together young adult intern program greet the convention.
The day’s varied series of reports was a highlight for many convention-goers.
During their program’s report, the 22 interns and fellows from the diocese’s Life Together young adult program, in their red “Why do you do what you do?” T-shirts, formed a long bright line across the sanctuary as their peers Ben Whaley and Mary Beth Mills-Curran told inspiring stories of personal transformation.
Equally enthusiastic in their testimonies were family and summer campers who took part in the report on the Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center.
In his report, Bishop Bud Cederholm told the congregation “We are God’s partners, sometimes called God’s stewards, and God is depending upon us to maintain and heal this fragile earth, our island home.” He asked the convention to embrace the Genesis Covenant adopted by the Episcopal Church’s General Convention in 2009, and requested observance of a “creation season.”
The convention approved resolutions in response, one “urging congregations to explore the Genesis Covenant, which calls us to commit to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions from every facility we maintain by 50 percent by 2020” and another asking “that parishes commit to using the season of late Pentecost as a ‘Season of Creation’ and designate portions of the plate offerings during this time for the Green Grants Initiative.”
Bishop Gayle E. Harris reported on her recent mission to Israel and Palestine where she spent three weeks investigating ministry needs and opportunities among Anglican Christians there.
Tracy J. Sukraw
The sisters of the Order of St. Anne--Bethany were honored on the occasion of their order’s centennial anniversary.
The bishops honored Chris Meyer of St. Paul’s Church in Newton Highlands for his ongoing service as coordinator of the diocese’s volunteer Congregational Business Consultants; the sisters of the Order of St. Anne on the occasion of their order’s 100th anniversary; and the Rev. Debbie Little Wyman, whose work as founder of Ecclesia Ministries and common cathedral with the homeless in Boston has inspired similar street ministries across this country and beyond.
And, the convention helped launch the newly redesigned diocesan Web site, www.diomass.org, as part of a report on ongoing communication work.
So voted
The convention approved without discussion the balanced $6.3 million operating budget for 2011, which is down 2 percent from 2010.
Convention also approved changes to the diocesan canons to bring them into compliance with revised Episcopal Church canons on clergy disciplinary procedures, known as Title IV.
The convention went on to pass a resolution requesting that the Episcopal Church’s General Convention amend the wording of a particular section of Title IV so that diocesan bishops must meet the same requirements as all other members of the clergy when it comes to reporting possible offenses.
One person, the Rev. Cheryl Minor of All Saints’ Church in Belmont, spoke against the resolution, citing concern that the changes to Title IV and their potential consequences are not fully understood.
“The vastly expanded definition of what could constitute an offense in the revised Title IV means that our bishops need latitude, they need this opening to make up their own mind about when and when not to report. We need to step back from this action, study, learn more, live with the changes and then make wise statements to the larger church,” she said.
Tracy J. Sukraw
Bishop Gayle E. Harris (left) and parliamentarian Byron Rushing (right) join the applause in honor of Bishop Bud Cederholm (center) on the 10th anniversary of his election as bishop.
In other business, the convention:
• Remembered in prayer the people of three churches that have closed: the Church of St. Luke and St. Margaret in Allston, St. Alban’s Church in Lynn and St. Paul’s Church in Millis, along with St. Paul’s Church in Brockton, which is in the process of closing;
• Approved measures regarding annual clergy compensation and benefits;
• Heard a report from the Slavery and Reconciliation Task Force, including plans for a Pentecost celebration on June 12 at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston; and
• Elected deputies to represent the diocese at the 2012 General Convention in Indianapolis. They are, in the lay order, Byron Rushing of St. John St. James Church in Roxbury, Fredrica Harris Thompsett of St. Barnabas’s Church in Falmouth, Samuel J. Gould of St. Stephen’s Church in Lynn and Betsy Madsen of the Church of the Advent in Boston; and, in the clerical order, the Rev. Jane S. Gould of St. Stephen’s Church in Lynn, the Rev. Canon Mally Ewing Lloyd, Canon to the Ordinary, the Rev. Karen Brown Montagno of St. Cyprian’s Church in Roxbury and the Rev. Patrick Gray of Christ Church in South Hamilton. Alternates will be elected at next year’s Diocesan Convention.
--Tracy J. Sukraw
See more photos on the diocese's Facebook page.
Resolutions in final form and results of uncontested elections are available here.
The 2011 budget and other convention materials are available here.