The Task Force for Reimagining the Episcopal Church has its “Churchwide Meeting” tomorrow night, October 2nd.
Here is the schedule from their website: All times are Eastern Standard Time
7:30 pm The Very Rev. Craig Loya — Welcome & Prayer
7:40 pm The Rt. Rev. Michael Curry — Biblical Perspective on TREC’s Work
7:50 pm Bp. Curry & The Rev Jennifer Adams — Question, Answers and Comments
8:05 pm The Rev. Dr. Dwight Zscheile — Historical / Theological Perspective
8:15 pm Dwight & Ms. Margaret Shannon — Question, Answers and Comments
8:30 pm Ms. Katy George — Organizational Development Perspective
8:40 pm Katy & Mr. Dennis Sullivan — Question, Answers and Comments
8:55 pm The Rev. Miguelina Howell — Perspective from our Current Structures
9:05 pm *** Short Break***
9:10 pm The Rev. Kevin Nichols, Moderator: Question, Answers and Comment
The Rev. Jennifer Adams
Canon Judith Conley
The Rev Leng Lim
Mr. Thomas Little
The Rt. Rev. Sean Rowe
The Rev. Dr. Dwight Zscheile
9:50 pm Ms. Sarah Miller — Closing Comments and Prayer
Webcast locations:
www.reimaginetec.org
www.nationalcathedral.org
www.episcopalchurch.org
www.generalconvention.org
Webcast question and comments will be taken by: email at reimaginetec@gmail.org, Twitter at #reimaginetec
Live Audience questions and comments will be taken by live microphones as well as by 3 by 5 cards provided.
The Rev Michael W Hopkins, offered a response to TREC today, ahead of the meeting, excerpted below:
In 1976, a GC of some moment, one of the resolutions passed affirmed that gay persons were children of God and equal in receiving the pastoral attention of the church. How did that resolution get there? The short answer is that a movement had begun among members of the church, lesbian and gay, to find one another and seek to organize for mutual support and to work towards ensuring that their visibility as lesbian or gay people in the church could not be called into question.
What is important is that a movement was started. We call it grassroots now, and it was indeed that. But then how do we get from the movement to the resolution of GC? It was the openness of our system. A GC large enough that allies of lesbian and gay people could get elected as deputies, and, within a couple of GC’s, lgbt people themselves. And these people had access to the system, i.e., a resolution process that was relatively easy to initiate and an open hearings policy that allowed people other than deputies and bishops to speak.
These two factors—a prior movement and a process with much flexibility and openness—were a crucial reason why the Episcopal Church was among the first denominations to open the ordination process to lgbt people and to work relatively quickly toward a blessing for their unions, and, as we continue the journey, to equal marriage. It took more time in other denominations because their equivalents of GC were much more closed, and it took far longer for lgbt people to be elected to serve in their governing bodies.
This is a critical story to be remembered when we are considering shrinking and streamlining GC, Executive Council, and other church bodies. I fully recognize the very logical arguments about cost and cumbersomeness. Yet both have been a contributing factor for any number of justice-related issues in the church to be heard and acted upon. It’s not obvious to me from the TREC report that positives and negatives of the current system have been carefully weighed. If the church had had fewer people as decision makers and a much more streamlined process (which cannot possibly happen without someone exercising greater control), it is not clear to me that we would be where we are at least on lgbt issues. The resistance in the system to dealing with issues of human sexuality, even in the current system, were very strong, and, as one of the leaders of that movement in the late ‘90’s and early ‘00’s, I had plenty of people in positions of power ask me, even beg me, to slow down, and very annoyed and angry that there was not much they could do about it. If a movement wants to be heard at our GC it is almost impossible to stop it. That is one of our glories. We should exercise significant discernment about whether to change that dynamic.