Holy Trinity, Tiverton in the Sakonnet Times

By Tom Killin Dalglish As of Thursday, January 26, 2012
The Sakonnet Times

TIVERTON — Three centuries have passed since a lone minister served his scattered flock across the river by horseback, and this year, Holy Trinity Church has reason to celebrate.

The Episcopal church, whose roots are on Aquidneck Island but whose home now overlooks the Sakonnet River at 1956 Main Road, turns 300 years old in 2012...  Click here for the full Sakonnet Times article and photos.

The Latest e-RISEN: 1/27/2012

You can view the latest issue of eRISEN, our biweekly email events calendar, at the link below:

eRISEN: 1/27/2012 issue

Want to subscribe to the eRISEN mailing list? Want to submit your event? Just visit eRISEN on our website.

Mission Task Force Update: Convocation 2012

From Risen Magazine's Winter 2012 Issue

By The Rev. Dcn. Ricky Brightman

Right now I know it’s difficult to think about MARCH but listen up – Convocation 2012 is coming and it will be different this year. There’s one unified topic – "Feeding the Hungry". We will be together for two days with an opportunity to feed our bodies and souls so that we will be better able to move out and feed others! Save the dates of March 9 and 10.

On Friday evening we will gather at St. Luke’s Church for a creative and inspiring worship service to be followed by a fabulous party and a community supper made by people in our parishes and brought together to share with everyone. Don’t leave the kids at home, they are welcome to worship and dine with us, and there will also be child care provided. As at all parties, there will be surprises. Come and enjoy.

On Saturday morning we will gather at the Marriott in Providence for worship, learning and sharing - all in a variety of different ways. Our Convocation leader will be Sara Miles, author of "Take This Bread" and "Jesus Freak: Feeding, Healing, Raising the Dead". In these books, Miles describes her own experience of attending to and serving others at her own church, St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco. While talking about feeding the body(ies), Sara also recounts the many ways she and others have been both host and guest in ministry. She will participate in our worship and learning in several ways.

We have also planned smaller group sessions : Planning and Offering Transcendent Worship; Feeding of the Physical Body; Radical and Intentional Hospitality; The Spiritual Feeding of Children and Youth. Some sessions will be repeated.

We hope you will put these dates on your own calendar now and save the time. Convocation is being planned this year by the Mission Task Force, a small working group that represents a diversity of churches in our diocese. We continue the work we began a year ago as we endeavored to develop a Diocesan-wide Mission Focus of "Feeding the Hungry".

Throughout this past year we have communicated with parishes about what activities they are engaged in and are doing well – soup kitchens and food pantries, as well as some new community gardens.

We know Convocation 2012 will further engage us in our efforts to feed the people we encounter in our daily lives as well as in our parishes. We hope to recognize good old ideas, explore new ones, provide a forum for sharing, and inspire us to move forward as "Episcopalians Feeding the Hungry". Look for further information on the Diocesan website or the talk-force blog, join our email list, or speak personally with a member of the Mission Task Force: Ricky Brightman (St. Luke’s EG), Buck Close (St. George’s), Bill Locke (St. Paul’s, Pawtucket), Jennifer Pedrick (Epiphany), Modesta Pellot (St. George’s), Melody Shobe (Emmanuel, Cumberland), Susan Wright (Ascension, Cranston).

What are YOU hungry for – food and shelter – understanding - companionship and community – knowledge – truth and honesty – relationship with God - a way to recognize and share your own gifts? We look forward to growing in meeting the hunger in ourself and in those whom God is inviting us to feed.

Bishop Search: Timing, Location Change for Some Transition Events

The Search & Nomination Committee and Transition Committee are announcing changes to when and where some of the upcoming transition events will occur.

The Walkabout of finalist candidates for bishop now will occur May 11 – 12 instead of May 18 – 19. The locations are still to be determined.

The June 2 Electing Convention will be held at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Pawtucket instead of St. Luke’s, East Greenwich.

And the Celebration of Bishop Wolf’s Ministry now will take place from 5 to 8 p.m. on Sunday, September 23, at St. Luke’s, East Greenwich.

Jonathan Daniels House: Building the Kingdom of God with the People of S. Providence

From RISEN Magazine Winter 2012 issue

By The Rev. Edmund Harris

Jonathan Myrick Daniels was a 26-year-old seminarian when he heard the televised appeal of

Martin Luther King Jr. for students and clergy to join the struggle for civil rights. Inspired by the words of the Magnificat about the God who "hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek," he knew he had to travel to Selma. Once in Alabama, he took up the work of building the Kingdom of God: integrating local Episcopal churches, registering African- American voters, tutoring children, and galvanizing relief agencies. After being released from jail for joining a picket line, Daniels was shot and killed while pushing an African-American teenage girl, Ruby Sales, out of harm’s way.

Although Daniels is recognized as a martyr of the Civil Rights Movement, few people know that he spent time ministering in South Providence before traveling south. Sheila Conway, who grew up in the Roger Williams Public Housing complex and attended Christ Church on the lower South Side, got to know Daniels when he worked at Church House, which offered programming for neighborhood youth. Conway vividly remembers the last time she saw Daniels. "Daniels was in town to say goodbye to friends and my family could not attend the gathering because a family member was ill. He made a point of stopping by our apartment to pray for healing," she recalled. "There was such a sense of calm." In August of 1965, a college student involved with Church House knocked on the door to personally tell them that Daniels had been killed.

Conway is now part of a new initiative in the Diocese to establish Jonathan Daniels House, a residential service community for young adults. As part of the Episcopal Service Corps, an expanding network of over twenty service communities for young adults in cities across the country, Jonathan Daniels House will welcome 4-8 young adults to South Providence, hopefully in the fall of 2013. Participants in Episcopal Service Corps communities live intentionally in Christian community, work alongside service agencies embedded in local communities, and engage in vocational and spiritual discernment for a period of 9-11 months. They receive a modest stipend to cover living expenses as well as health insurance, and are supported by a program director and mentors.

The idea of Jonathan Daniels House is the fruit of a yearlong study conducted by the South Providence Task Force. The Task Force considered how the Episcopal Church could maintain an active presence in South Providence following the closure of Church of the Epiphany there in 2009. As the Task Force considered how vital ministry of the Episcopal Church might emerge from the needs and hopes of communities in South Providence, including ways the Diocese might partner with existing organizations there, the possibilities for collaboration crystallized around the idea of planting a residential service community for young adults.

As members of the Task Force shared with Diocesan Council in June, a community like Jonathan Daniels House would have a wide-reaching impact in South Providence, forming diverse new communities of people, and expanding the reach of existing organizations and programs. Such a community would also have a significant impact on the life of the Diocese, nourishing a regular young adult presence, galvanizing parishes and diocesan organizations to become involved, and connecting the Diocese to the wider Church in service. "We can think of no better way to continue the work of justice and reconciliation for which Daniels lived and died," they said.



For more information on Jonathan Daniels House, including how you or your church might become involved, contact The Rev’d Edmund Harris at Edmund@epiphanyep.org or 401-434-5012

Search Process: Reflections and Impressions

Today’s post is another in a series of reflections and impressions from members of the Search & Nomination Committee and Transition Committee. This post is from the Rev. Canon Jonathan Huyck, rector of Grace Church in Providence and a member of the Search & Nomination Committee. Visit www.episcopalrisearch.org for more information

I’ve been serving as a member of the Bishop Search & Nomination Committee for our diocese for the last six months, and each phase the committee has gone through has been like a new chapter. As I write this, members of the committee are fanning out across the country to visit our candidates in their home churches and to meet with the people with whom they work closely. At the same time as these visits, we’ve also gone further than the initial three recommendations the candidates initially submitted and are engaging in what we on the committee call “deep referencing.” We’re speaking one-on-one with the candidates’ current and former associate rectors, former rectors, current and former bishops, etc. We know that nothing can tell us more about how someone would act as a bishop in the future than how they’ve been as a priest in the past. How did they treat that associate rector they supervised in the ‘90s? How helpful were they to their rectors when these candidates were themselves associate rectors in the ‘80s?

At the same time that we are trying to learn all we can about these candidates by talking with current and former colleagues, they are themselves in deep discernment. It may be easy enough to put in an application, but when the chances are 50-50 that you’ll actually end up on the slate for election to be the Bishop of Rhode Island, you start to discern a little harder! I have no doubt that our “quarterfinalists” are doing their own prayerful reflection as well as even deeper research into who we are here in Rhode Island and whether our diocese would be a good fit for their skills and interests.

If you’re wondering where it was that I went on my visit, the answer is that I went nowhere. Nowhere, because just two weeks before I was to fly west for an interview, the candidate in question withdrew from the race. And then there were nine. This happens often in bishop searches, and is, in fact, a sign of the deep discernment our candidates are doing just as we do our “deep referencing.” Although I was disappointed to see a strong candidate go (they’re all strong, at this point), I’m glad he had the wisdom to see now rather than later that he was not called to be the Bishop of Rhode Island at this time.

This stage is hard work, but it’s also great fun. We are getting to know some wonderful priests across the country, but what’s more, we’re getting to know each other on the committee in a more meaningful way. As one of our members said recently, “This is the most fun I’ve had in the diocese in years!” As someone still relatively new to the diocese (18 months), it has been wonderful for me to get to know my fellow Episcopalians – both lay and ordained – through this intensive process. There is a palpable excitement within our committee and a spirit of cooperation and mutual affection that augurs well (I rarely get to say “augur”) for the future of our diocese, hopefully with a wonderful bishop to channel that positive energy for the building up of the Kingdom of God here in Rhode Island!

The Latest eRISEN- January 17th 2012

You can view the latest issue of eRISEN, our biweekly email events calendar, at the link below:

eRISEN: 1/17/2012 issue

Want to subscribe to the eRISEN mailing list? Want to submit your event? Just visit eRISEN on our website.

Trinity, Cranston Earns Press for Turning $100 in Gift Cards Into $4,000

In the Warwick Beacon
12/28/11

Trinity Church makes Christmas special with $4,000 in donations
By Meg Fraser

At a Diocesan Conference, Trinity Church in Pawtuxet Village was given five $20 Stop & Shop gift cards. The Bishop issued a challenge for the parish to triple it, to distribute $300 worth of food to families in need.

By the end of mass the following Sunday, Trinity had collected $650 to distribute. By the end of the week, it was up to $900. And by the time Christmas rolled around, the Episcopal church had given out more than $4,000 worth of food and money... click here for full Warwick Beacon article