Youth@council

This coming weekend -starting tonight- we will be attending the Episcopal diocese of Southwestern Virginia's council in Roanoke, Va. It's the equivalent of the CofE's diocesan synod but it happens once a year over a full weekend. I've been asked to be chaplain to the youth event that shadows council as well as to contribute a workshop to the main council on Saturday [I'll be facilitating a simple labyrinth in fact]. For the "youth@council" event I'm leading worship, preaching about the eucharist and leading a workshop on basic mediation techniques. I've had some at-distance involvement in planning worship too. Tracy will be leading a workshop [twice I think] on creative intercession leading which should also feed into the corporate worship.

It's a small diocese in terms of participating churches [57 or so] and so in English terms it's remarkable that there are something like 112 youth coming [and that was number limited]. There is a greater sense of Episcopal /Anglican identity than in our post-denominational English scene.

Apparently -for the first time since the current bishop started here- there is going to be some debate at council which could involve conflictual views. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, it revolves around the apointment of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. The way to refer to this is "since last summer" -that seems to be the code phrase for the appointment and its aftermath.

I gather that the SwVa diocesan funding has taken a turn for the worse with parishes finding it harder to meet their pledges following indivuduals and families [and sometimes congregations] finding themselves unwilling to subsidise a national church decision that they have problems with. Some are saying that such opposition is only about 10% of the church. However I wonder whether that would rise if there was a realistic possibility of realignment and the legal issues of property were resolved in favour of local congregations. I'm also aware [not around here at the moment though] that there are a number of congregations in the USA of breakaway churches which still look to the Anglican tradition and may even include 'Anglican' in their titles. I wonder how possible it could be that such groups could be part of a realignment as some have suggested could be on the cards. It's hard to tell and it all depends on who you talk with but it's clear that they're still in a wait-and-see stage.