A Statement from Bishop Knisely

Earlier this week, I stood with members of the Rhode Island community at the Jewish Community Center in Providence and joined with our Jewish neighbors lamenting the horrific attacks on civilians in Israel and praying for peace. Since that evening, the news has grown increasingly dire and I am fearful, as are many, that this conflict will continue to escalate and spread across the Middle East.

Israel has a fundamental right to exist and to protect itself. And all life is sacred and must be preserved. I ask your prayers for de-escalation, for a humanitarian response, and for an end to the violence and unimaginable suffering in the Holy Land in this hour.

I ask you also to be careful to avoid any attempts to turn this horrible and complex situation into a simple binary us versus them narrative. Our Jewish neighbors are in danger, in deep grief and shock. One synagogue in Providence has been threatened. That sense of fear may spread in the coming weeks to our Muslim neighbors and their friends as well.

I also want to urge you to be aware that an increasing amount of disinformation is being posted to Social Media. When you are seeking understanding, please turn to professional journalists who have checked facts rather than initial reports from unknown observers. Be careful not to spread disinformation unintentionally.

The Bishops of the Episcopal Church have heard from Archbishop Hosam Naoum, Primate of the Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East. He has asked us to pray urgently for the opening of a humanitarian corridor into Gaza. He has also asked us to support the Gaza Appeal of the American Friends of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, which is providing critical support to Ahli Hospital in Gaza. (https://afedj.org)

I invite Episcopalians across the state to join with me in prayer this weekend. Archbishop Hosam has written a prayer that we can use.

O God of all justice and peace we cry out to you in the midst of the pain and trauma of violence and fear which prevails in the Holy Land.

Be with those who need you in these days of suffering; we pray for people of all faiths – Jews, Muslims and Christians and for all people of the land.

While we pray to you, O Lord, for an end to violence and the establishment of peace, we also call for you to bring justice and equity to the peoples. Guide us into your kingdom where all people are treated with dignity and honour as your children for, to all of us, you are our Heavenly Father.

In Jesus’ name we pray.
Amen.

+Nicholas

Convention 2023

Registration is Open!

This year, our Diocesan Convention will take place via Zoom on Saturday, October 28. The Convention Eucharist will be held Friday, October 27 at St. Luke’s, East Greenwich.

On the afternoon of October 27 the Rev. Dr. Andrew McGowan, Dean of Berkeley Seminary at Yale, will give a presentation, which will be followed by an informal dinner and a Ministry fair. All are welcome to the presentation, dinner, the Eucharist, and the following reception. Please register at this link to help us prepare.

Registration information regarding the business meeting of Convention has been sent to all persons eligible to participate. If you believe that you are eligible, but have not received a registration email, please contact convention@episcopalri.org.

The meeting will be available to view here on our site on the Convention page.

Convention 2023

Diocesan Convention will take place on October 27 and 28, 2023. All of the information you will need in advance can be found on the Convention Page of our website. The business meeting of Convention will be available for viewing on that page as well.

How EfM has informed my ministry

Recent Sunday readings from the Old Testament have focused on stories from Genesis. Pre-EfM, Genesis was, for me, simply the book that started off with day 1, day 2, day 3, etc… of the Creation story. I wouldn’t get much farther in reading before nodding off or wanting to find something else to do. EfM changed that. Perhaps it was spending the money and/or committing the time but reading the
Bible became something I looked forward to. The textbooks, which weren’t always riveting, and working with the other participants made the Scriptures come alive. Class discussions, prayer, and reflections energized the familiar words. They became real, meaningful, and full of life. I came to realize that they speak to us today. I found stories that were filled with humor, drama, love, and conflict. These stories that are thousands of years old and from a land far different than 21st Century Rhode Island offer insights, clarity, wisdom, and inspiration to my life today. The ancient stories help me to better understand events in my life and the world. I see God’s continuing role in guiding and directing Creation.

The EfM course weaves together study of the Old Testament, New Testament, church history, and theology in weekly sessions where the participants engage in stirring conversation, creative prayer, and deep reflection. A recent Sunday reading told the story of Jacob wrestling with God. The story ends with Jacob limping and receiving God’s blessing. I read a commentary recently that suggested that Jacob was wrestling with his faith. Thought of in that way, the story resonates for us today. For the Christian, isn’t life a constant wrestling match with faith? We struggle with our faith and we may even be bruised at times, but ultimately we receive God’s blessing. EfM has taught me to look at life in this way. We are in constant interaction with our Creator. It isn’t always easy and at times there may even be some difficulties. Being a member and a mentor in EfM has enriched my life in many ways and opened a whole new dimension of faith. Daily I see God’s hand in the world around me and I realize that God engages with each of us through prayer, the Scriptures, the Church, the people we encounter, and the world at large. EfM has helped me to see those many interactions, to understand them, and to value them.

John Lord, a former EfM participant and mentor

If you are interested in learning more about EfM, please contact The Rev. Susan Wrathall, or Jane Jellison. A group is in progress at St Mark’s in Warwick, and another group is planning a fall start at Trinity North Scituate.

Episcopal Church Creation Care Supports Climate Resistance on Aquidneck Island

by Nancy Bryan

Six congregations in Portsmouth, Middletown and Newport will partner with the diocese’s creation care ministry in a climate resistance pilot project that has won $18,000 in grant funding from The Episcopal Church’s Task Force on the Care of Creation and Environmental Racism.

“One of the central focuses of our work will be on the well-being of environmental justice communities on Aquidneck Island, what kinds of impacts climate change is going to have on these communities, and how Episcopal churches can help,” said Emily Eggington Skeehan, a member of St. Mary’s, Portsmouth, and project manager of the Aquidneck Island Parish Resilience Pilot Project.

The grant funds were allocated by the 2022 General Convention. The task force selected twelve grantees, including the Diocese of Rhode Island, based on applications submitted in the spring, and the grant awards were approved by the church’s Executive Council at its meeting in Providence in June.

In the next year, the diocese’s creation care ministry team will use the grant funds to help the six participating congregations be prepared for climate emergencies and ready to address the needs of their most vulnerable neighbors during extreme weather events.

“For example, churches could stock cots, sheets, toiletries, and non-perishable food, consider installing showers in a bathroom, and work with local emergency management so that people know that they can come to that particular church,” the grant proposal reads, noting that due to environmental racism, “low-income communities … have less capacity to bounce back from severe weather events than more affluent areas.”

Other grant-funded activities will include parish formation programs and creation-centered liturgical events, including two water-focused pilgrimages. One, planned for this fall, will visit Aquidneck Island watersheds. Next spring, the second will explore the Atlantic Ocean and the arms of Narragansett Bay surrounding the island.

The creation care ministry team also plans to hold its third annual Conference for Creation Care in the autumn of 2024, at which it will present the results of its Aquidneck Island project.

The team’s second conference will take place on September 23 at All Saints, Providence. Learn more and register online.

ECC’s City Camp Enriches Summer

For nearly 40 years, children from the Olneyville section of Providence have had the opportunity to spend part of their summer at ECC’s City Camp, a free day camp for children ages 6 to 12 that includes both field trips and the games, fun, and relationship-building of more traditional summer camps.

Marisa Rainey first came to City Camp in 2011 as a counselor. “City Camp made me want to be a teacher,” she says. After several years of serving as the program’s director in the summertime as director of City Camp and teaching middle school math in Roxbury, Massachusetts during the school year, Rainey is now ECC’s full-time summer camp and program director.

“I knew I wanted to work with kids, but I didn’t know how,” she says. “That summer, I was the only female counselor, so I had all the girls. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the 11- and 12-year-olds talking about their lives and families and school, but disheartened by how little they liked math. I wrote my college admissions essay about that and became a middle school math teacher. Except for the summer after college when I worked for Teach for America, I’ve been at City Camp ever since.”

“Service to the community is a pillar of ECC, as is the belief that every child deserves chance to go to camp,” Rainey says. “As an educator, I know that kids fall behind without camp and the activities and connections it offers.” City Camp, she has been delighted to find, runs in families, and she now meets younger siblings and family members of previous generations of campers participating in the program.

While City Camp offers children exposure to activities they might not otherwise experience, Rainey says that counselors benefit as much as campers. City Camp “is not about us giving an experience to others. It’s about all of us having an experience together.”

Although City Camp 2023 lasted just two weeks due to a staffing shortage, Rainey hopes to return soon to the camp’s typical six-week program. To support the program, ECC accepts donations of water bottles, healthy snacks, and other items on their wish list. Granola bars and other breakfast items are particularly helpful, because while Rhode Island’s Summer Food Service Program covers lunch for each camper, its hours of operation do not qualify it to receive breakfast funds.

Congregations interested in supporting the program or hosting a lunch in 2024 can email Rainey at Marisa@episcopalri.org.

Rhode Islanders Attend Episcopal Youth Event

From July 4-8, seven youth from the Diocese of Rhode Island attended the Episcopal Youth Event in Baltimore, Maryland. This event, usually held every three years, is a gathering of youth ages 15-19 from around the world who assemble to learn, laugh, and worship together.

The Rev. Scott Lee and his wife, Ashley, served as their chaperones.

Together with their chaperones, the Rev. Scott Lee and his wife, Ashley, the Rhode Island contingent traveled with youth from other dioceses in Province 1 of the Episcopal Church, including the Dioceses of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. The arrangement, Lee says,  provided Rhode Island youth with an opportunity to create strong bonds with other Episcopal youth from New England. “They laughed together, worshiped together, and were able to hold serious conversations with one another about faith,” he says.

Worship is often a highlight of EYE, and this year was no different. “While the worship services were absolutely Episcopal services, they were unlike anything happening in our churches,” Lee says. “Young people have an energy about them and when that energy is driven by faith, it is profound.”

Aspiring Preacher Formation

Aspiring preachers from across the United States and Canada gathered earlier this summer for a week of focused formation on preparing sermons. Established in 1998, the Preaching Excellence Program is a central ministry of the Episcopal Preaching Foundation, which aims to enhance and inspire great preaching.

Drake Douglas, a Postulant in the Diocese of Rhode Island attended this year’s program. “To spend such meaningful time both relishing and grappling with the holy task of faithfully sharing God’s Good Word, and to do so in community with other new preachers is pure gift,” Drake shares. “It’s a sincere privilege to learn from these talented and caring souls, and I’m grateful to have a growing network of support for what I hope will be a life-long practice of preaching.”

Seminaries from across the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada nominate students to participate in the all-expenses paid week. Noted theologians and preachers from across the church led workshops and small-group discussions. A central part of the program is preaching to feedback, so participants gave and received comments and critiques on their sermons. Workshops this year included Instant Preaching, Trauma-Informed Preaching, Instant Preaching, and A New Priest’s Journey.

Since its founding, the Preaching Excellence Program has offered formation in sermon creation and delivery to more than 2,000 seminarians, including two who later became presiding bishops. Other programs sponsored by the Preaching Foundation include a Lay Preaching Training Initiative, local partnerships with dioceses and seminaries, the Preaching Congregation, and conferences for deacons.

To learn more about the Preaching Foundation, visit PreachingFoundation.org.

Books Through Bars Finds a Home at St. Barnabas, Warwick

Books Through Bars Finds a Home at St. Barnabas Warwick

Late in 2021, Providence Books Through Bars, an all-volunteer organization that sends books to people in prison all over the country, knew they needed a different space from which to work. For almost a decade, the group had been working out of a volunteer’s garage. But lack of heat or access to facilities made the work of sending over 1,000 packages of books to inmates across the US difficult. 

Volunteer Therese Zink was worshipping at St. Mark’s, Warwick at the time, and asked the Rev. Susan Wrathall whether space might be available in an Episcopal church building. Wrathall suggested St. Barnabas in Warwick where the Rev. Scott Lee, the church’s rector, was happy to make room for the program. 

Hosting Providence Books Through Bars “extends the congregation’s ministry to care for those in prison. It allows us to live into the call to love others as Christ loves us; to care for others in the ways that Jesus makes clear in Matthew 25,” Lee says. “It allows us to acknowledge that this is part of our call as Christians and a simple way to tell people ‘you are not forgotten.’” 

At St. Barnabas, Books Through Bars moved into a space four times larger than their previous garage home early in 2022. The new “upgraded” space, as Zink calls it, includes ample room for book storage and tables for packaging and labeling. The location, on the first level of the building, allows volunteers to move in and out without carrying bins of packages up or down stairs on their way to the post office.  

Dr. Zink, a professor of family medicine at Brown University, says the parish is a great host. “Several vestry members worked with us to find the right space. Having access to internet and cell phone service is critical to our work,” she says. “I’ve … moved my membership to St. Barnabas because I was so touched by the engagement the vestry and Father Scott exhibited in the possibility of hosting Books Through Bars.”   

In its new digs, Books Through Bars has dedicated one room to fiction, and another to non-fiction and its mailing operation. The organization maintains a database of inmates’ previous choices along with the regulations and restrictions at specific prisons. The group has between 5,000 and 8,000 titles on hand at any one time, and mails approximately 500 books a month in packages of two to four paperbacks each. 

Books Through Bars is open to volunteers on Sunday afternoons following worship and coffee hour at St. Barnabas. The congregation has welcomed volunteers to attend coffee hour, and the group has reciprocated by hosting coffee hour for the congregation.  

Teens in the congregation find the program a good fit for their community service hours, and two high school volunteers from another part of the city have begun attending the 10:00 service.  

Books Through Bars accepts donations of paperback books, but not hard covers. Inmates – on average 150 or so each month – write to request books within a certain genre or area of interest rather than by specific title. One prisoner, with an interest in reading “the classics,” has requested and read about 1,000 books. 

Financial donations help cover mailing costs and the purchase of books not already on the organization’s shelves. Manga and anime are both popular genres that frequently require purchase.  

Providence Books Through Bars was founded in 2003 by Dirt Palace, a Providence feminist artists’ collective, and is a 501 c3 non-profit. It is associated with the national Books Through Bars organization.  

Creation Care – Summer 2023

Meet Reverend Dante A. Tavolaro, Rector of St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Greenville, RI. Dante joined St. Thomas Church in June  2020, just as COVID became a factor in all of our lives. Nevertheless, as a “first time” Rector, he has found his role in this great parish to be fun, sometimes challenging, and often surprising…especially with the start of COVID.

Fortunately, Parish Life has returned to more normalcy and he’s thrilled to see that parishioners are again active and even more involved in their church. One surprising outcome from COVID is the development of a new project, now a permanent fixtures in parish life, that might not have been anticipated or recognized for its potential reach. Although many parishioners continued to send their annual or monthly contributions, “Zoom Worship” minimized the regular Sunday collections. Consequently, the Parish was struggling to pay bills.

However, a group of parish leaders concerned about the future of the community came up with a wild idea and approached Dante with their plan to open a Thrift Shop. After a good deal of discernment, the Vestry gave the approval to launch this new ministry to raise funds for the parish, help many in the community, and encourage the reuse of goods. Not only has it become a successful fundraiser for St. Thomas, it has also been a driving force in reuniting St. Thomas parishioners and the community of Greenville. The Thrift Shop and its outgrowth of projects has led to a refugee ministry, a partnership with other community outreach organizations while providing a sense of community for people looking for connection with others, and a (hopefully) emerging program with the local high school honor society.

But, you might ask, what does this have to do with Creation Care beyond reusing older goods and helping teenagers get their service points? Through what began as a small project has led to greater connections in the Greenville community, a greater awareness of how our use of goods affects our environment as well as how our individual use of earth’s resources affect everyone. The thrift store project has also brought the community to see how some locations—even within this village—suffer more environmentally than other areas due to environmental mistreatment.

Dante serves on the Board of the Rhode Island Environmental Education Association (RIEEA), an organization committed to developing Environmental Awareness through a variety of formal and informal Education Programs such as working with teachers and community organizations to provide environmental literacy for their communities, support organizations in making connections with others doing the same work, working with state legislators to pass legislation that supports Environmental Education in RI, and provide opportunities for individuals to get involved in meaningful projects of Environmental stewardship. In this role he hopes to encourage more Communities of Faith become deeply involved in finding ways to protect our environment.

Dante’s work is not a new effort on his part, however. He has always been a strong supporter and investigator of environmental concerns. While in Junior High School, he explored our relationship with watersheds and ecology and developed projects to better understand the health of the Blackstone Valley River. More recently he has partnered with Shareen Knowlton, Director of Education at Roger Williams Park Zoo to create projects around environmental concerns as an avenue to encourage Creation Care. His concern for the environment leads him to speak regularly about this fragile earth, our island home, identifying steps to reduce our individual footprints while encouraging others to care for “Our Earth” on systematic levels as well. He believes in the church’s untapped potential for awareness of environmental concerns making strong connections between the Cross and the need for faithful people to make sacrifices in their own life out of our responsibility as stewards of the earth. During the COVID shut down we witnessed how quickly creation could begin to heal. The Church could encourage her members to make the difficult sacrifices to give creation room to heal again. He also believes that there are opportunities to work with local elected officials to enact public policy which privileges care of creation.