New Presiding Bishop

It isn't my day to blog either, but on a day when our Convention has chosen to elect a female Presiding Bishop, I want to contribute as well. The whole event is still filling a bit surreal for me, but as a young woman of the church, I am ecstatic over the events of the day. As many of you know, the ECW is celebrating simultaniously the 30 years of ministry of women in our church. When GC first consented to the ordination of women in the Episcopal Church, I was a mere 4 or 5 months old, and now at the age of 30 I was priviledged to see our church call a woman into the office of providing bishop, something I wondered if I would ever see in my lifetime...much like wondering if we will ever have a female President of the United States.

The thing that struck me in the aftermath of the news of Bishop Schori's nomination by the House of Bishops is that in the whole of the House of Deputies, only one Deputy spoke up against her election. I expected much more outcry to be honest. What I heard instead was a constant testament to her faithfulness, leadership, committment (and ability to speak Spanish)! She is a woman comitteed to our church, our church's priorities and our mission, both domestic and international.

I pray that as a church, we support her as our Presiding Bishop, lifting up to God the challenges that lay before her. I pray that we continue to acknowledge and lift up the ministry of women as fully capable and gifted members of the church. I don't think I've ever been prouder to be a member of the Episcopal Church, a community that looks at the gifts and talents of people, not the gender of our leaders.

I am so proud to be a member of a community that continues to lift up women, young and old!

New Presiding Bishop Elected

As some of you may be aware, the House of Bishops have elected the Right Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori as the 26th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and the House of Deputies has confirmed. This was a historic event that I felt privileged and honored to be apart of and I am sure the rest of the deputies felt the same. The energy and enthusiasm in the house today was overwhelming and you could definitely feel the outpouring of the spirit.

I would invite your prayers for our new Presiding Bishop. If you are interested in learning more about her here are some links:

Current Presiding Bishop's statement on the election:
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/75383_76165_ENG_HTM.htm

Profiles of the nominees:
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/documents/PB.Booklet.EnglishFinal.pdf

Ballot results:
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_76156_ENG_HTM.htm

Video interviews of the candidates:
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_74145_ENG_HTM.htm

Second Legislative Day 6/14

First, let me apologize for this update not going up until Thursday morning. I am quickly learning that there is much to occupy our time at convention!

Day 2 brought some great experiences my way. I started my morning in the World Mission legislative committee which I am a part of. It has been truely eye-opening discovering all of the ways that World Mission works for us. I'm not ready to go out as a full-time missionary by any means, but I am seeing the need for mission in our church, and know that it needs to be a priority in our own diocese. The thing that struck me deepest during our meetings is that it is not necessarialy the Episcopal church seeking out these relationships, but our foreign partners, companion dioceses, and anglican churches that are also seeking closer communion with us. I think that's important to hold onto in this post-Windsor era...other nations continue to want closer bonds with our church despite differences of opinion about the actions of the 2003 G.C.

Our Eucharist in the morning was done mostly in Spanish, including a beautiful sermon. Copies in English were distributed for those of us who are not Spanish Speaking. It was a great worship experience.

In the legislative end of things, it was a long, sometimes frustrating, day. We were able to accomplish a few things like electing Bonnie Anderson our House of Deputies President, but were stymied by technology for a major portion of our second session. As frustrating as that was, I think that it is important for us to use the technology for voting because when people do understand it, the turn around on votes will be much, much quicker.

The end of my day was spent in a PB&F meeting (Program, Budget and Finance) listing to many deputies, Bishops, and visitors plea for the budget items that they felt were important. I was overwhelmed by how many really valuable programs they were advocating for. I shared with Bishop Waggoner on our way back that I didn't know how his committee would make their decisions, and I didn't envy him at all having heard those pleas. I, myself, didn't get a chance to speak on behalf of my resolution A116:Short-term missions, due to a calling of the evening at 10. Over 120 people had signed up to speak, so it was impossible to get everyone in, although the chairwoman made sure that all issues had been heard at least once before she sent the hard-working PB&F home.

Convention continues to teach all of us new deputies much. Pray that God works through both of the Houses as we continue with this work.
Pia Longinotti

First Legislative Day-6/13

Today was a full day.

As with most early convention days we started with early morning Committee meetings. I am serving on the Communications Committee with Brian Prior from Church of the resurrection, Spokane Valley. Most of committee work involves tweaking, clarifying and amending resolutions before the get to the convention floor. There is also an opportunity for individuals to go to these meetings and testify. Our committee finished our initial batch of resolutions and now is in recess until the second round.

We officially opened the Convention with our first daily morning Eucharist and bible study. The preacher was the Presiding Bishop, Frank Griswold, and presider was the President of the House of Deputies, George Werner. Each day we will have this opportunity to come together and celebrate our common life together in the context of a Eucharist. This provides an opportunity to reflect on and prepare for the work to be done.

After the Eucharist we started off our business session. Most of the first days sessions involved the business of just getting started (welcome speeches, election of a secretary, certifying a quorum etc.). Once we got that out of the way we had the privilege of being greeted by the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu. He had a powerful story to tell about his own experiences and the opportunities we are presented with. He also brought greetings from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. If you are interested in reading his message you can find the text of it here.

The afternoon was filled with more committee meetings and another legislative session. After the legislative session our deputation met for our nightly caucus. These meetings provide a great opportunity for us to learn what is going on in other parts of the convention that we are unable to attend.

After the caucus we had time for a short dinner and then it was off to a U2charist (featuring videos of Bono and an outstanding sermon by Bishop Michael Curry) or to a hearing by the Special Committee. This committee has been setup to handle all resolutions that pertain to the Windsor Report and our response to it. I chose to go to the U2charist and am unable to report on what happened at the committee meeting. Hopefully we can post an update or reflection to that meeting tomorrow.

After the evening session it was time to unwind from a long day and prepare for the next one.

Behind the scenes

We now have only 11 days until our deputation starts leaving for Columbus. In order to provide some perspective on the inner workings of General Convention, Ken Beck, a member of Dispatch of Business provided this reflection on his work and history with the General Convention.

Ken Beck, House of Deputies Dispatch of Business Staff

While not an elected Deputy, I do have the privilege of representing our Diocese in a different way. This will be my ninth General Convention as the staff coordinator for the House of Deputies Committee on Dispatch of Business. There are many things to be done in nine days, and each deserves due consideration. Dispatch is responsible for making that happen.

It's important that everyone trust the legislative process. If we can't trust the process, we can't trust the result, and that hurts all of us. In Dispatch we like to say "We don't do content; we just do process." That's our job in Dispatch, to maintain the integrity of the process.

My primary duty is preparing calendars for the House of Deputies and its daily agenda. Since any resolution must be adopted by both Houses deliberating separately and requires a committee hearing and report, it's my job to ensure that each is procedurally "ready" for the House and, working with members of Dispatch, that the printed text is accurate.

During the day we continue to process committee reports for calendars. We also draft and propose special orders of business for events to occur at specific times and special rules of debate for high-profile issues. Changes often occur late in the day, so later drafts are emailed to to the Chair of Dispatch for discussion with the officers in the early morning, when documents are finalized so they can be printed for the House.

When I started this job in 1982 we did it all by hand using forms, pens and typewriters. We compiled a procedure manual so each of the dozens of people in the "paper chase" completed each step consistently. We now use a computer network, which saves paper and time, but the process remains the same. We work constantly with the president, vice-president and secretary of the House and the legislative committees so that the Convention can complete all its work.

I'm not the only one who has represented Spokane in the administrative part of General Convention. Anne Franke West, Willie Storey, Gloria Lund, Margaret Rehberg and Sandy Robison have also served in the Secretariat. Our Diocese has made great contributions to our church's General Convention, and I'm honored to be part of that ministry.

Presiding Bishop interview videos online

For those of you with a high speed internet connection or the paitence to wait for the download, you can now view 5 minute video interviews for the nominees for Presiding Bishop on the Episcopal Church's website here.

General Convention Forums

I wanted to thank everybody who came out for our regional forums. It was a pleasure to meet with you and share a little bit about what the deputies will be doing over the next couple of months. We had a great turnout and a lot of good discussion. I hope we can keep the lines of communications open and answer any questions that you might have.

We are just getting this site off the ground and I hope to have some more posts here very soon. In the mean time if you have any comments about the site design or questions please let me know. I look forward to hearing from you.

Welcome

Welcome to the General Convention Reflections site. We will be publishing news, reports, reflections and comments about General Convention 2006. Soon you will also have the opportunity to subscribe to an email list to receive updates to this site.

In the meantime, if you have any questions, please email bryank@spokanediocese.org.