The College for Bishops

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Bishops, Episcopal, photography

Tree at the Virginia Diocesan Center at Roslyn

We spent the past week traveling to, participating in, and returning from the first session of The College for Bishops. During the first session, bishops elected during the previous year, along with their spouses, are introduced to each other and what one can expect as a bishop and spouse in the Episcopal Church. These people become your “class” and we will see a lot of each other in the coming years.

The Chapel at the Roslyn Center overlooking the Kanawha Canal and James River.

Our class consists of 13 couples, including 8 female bishops, a lesbian couple, and two gay couples. The Dioceses represented are: Georgia (ours), Missouri, Taiwan, Michigan, Southern Virginia, El Camino Real (California), Montana, South Dakota, Vermont, Northern California, Maine, San Diego (California), and a Suffragan bishop of Texas. A suffragan is an assisting bishop to the diocesan bishop. There are 111 dioceses in the Episcopal Church, which is part of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

View from the altar in the chapel at Roslyn.

Frank’s election comes at an exciting time as we will be able to attend the 15th Lambeth Conference in Canterbury England. The Lambeth Conference is a decennial assembly of bishops of the Anglican Communion convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The first such conference took place in 1867. Because of complications, the 2018 conference was postponed until this year. Lucky for us! We are really looking forward to meeting bishops and their spouses from all over the world.

Finally, we also had an article featured on the Grow Christians blog this week. You can see that here: When Spiritual Practices Become Springs in the Desert.

 

 

XI Bishop of Georgia

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Bishop, Diocese of Georgia, Episcopal

It has been a busy week as we got ready for and attended the 198th Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia. As Canon to the Ordinary (Assistant to the Bishop), my husband, Frank, and I  had to leave early with the rest of the staff to help with preparing our convention site at Georgia Southern University (where my husband and I met as students 37 years ago).

On Thursday, I attended a Creation Care Committee workshop on tree planting at the Botanic Garden at Georgia Southern University after visiting with my mother and taking her to lunch at a local restaurant. We planted four trees, beginning the Committee’s initiative to plant 222 trees in the Diocese by 2022 (see Revelation 22:2).

That evening, we attended Evening Prayer at Trinity Episcopal Church where I was Baptized, Confirmed, and one of the Diocese’s first female acolytes. It is also the church that sent my husband to seminary and where he was ordained to the Priesthood in August of 2000.

We decided to take a trip down memory lane that night and went to Dingus Magee’s, the restaurant where we had a lot of our early dates. Then we returned to the hotel to rest before the morning’s big event: the election of the 11th Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia in which Frank was one of the five nominees.

Following the opening Eucharist, we were led to an empty room to await the counting of the ballots. Imagine our surprise when the entire Standing Committee filed in and informed us that Frank had been elected on the first ballot! It is still sinking in. Frank will be consecrated by Presiding Bishop Michael Curry here in Savannah in May of 2020.