Feeding Body and Soul on Campus

In his address to the 232nd Diocesan Convention last October, Bishop Knisely challenged the diocese to invest in ministries for young adults that form a “pipeline” of ministry. At Rhode Island College, the University of Rhode Island, and Providence colleges including Brown University, congregations and clergy are answering that call. 

Both the Rev. Savannah Ponder, who serves at the Chapel of Saint John the Divine in Saunderstown three-quarters time and as chaplain at Rhode Island College (RIC) one-quarter time, and the Rev. Drake Douglas, vicar at St. Augustine and campus chaplain for the University of Rhode Island (URI), are new to the diocese and are finding benefits to serving both congregations and chaplaincies.  

“Here on campus, I offered Ashes to Go which included education about ‘what was going on here’ and the opportunity for conversation,” says Ponder, who came to Rhode Island from the Diocese of Connecticut, a year ago. “Students appreciated the chance to remember people they had lost, to acknowledge the loss and grief even if they’re not quite sure what God means to them. That night, we celebrated the Prayer Book liturgy with congregants who have been doing this for years and are formed by Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent. The conversations I held in both places informed each other. The questions from young adults on the RIC campus interrogate what is core and what really matters.” 

Douglas graduated from Yale Divinity School in May and was ordained to the priesthood in July. His call to St. Augustine and URI, where he served as an administrator before seminary, coincides with the beginning of the academic year. This month, he will begin a schedule of noon liturgies on Tuesdays and Thursdays for students, faculty, and administrators as well as a Wednesday evening service and meal especially geared to students. A grant from the diocese’s Congregational Development Commission will support the new program.  

His previous career instilled in him a sense of “how deep-thinking this generation is,” he says. “They are looking for something hard but worth it.”  

Ponder concurs. At RIC, home to many non-traditional students, she has found that “people are open to learning, growing, asking hard questions — deeper questions of meaning. The questions are those that often go unasked by those who feel they ‘should know’ that answer already after a lifetime in church: how do I fit into the world? Who is God for me?” 

While Ponder had strong campus ministry experiences in college, Douglas was formed in early adulthood more by the “absence of something” after leaving the conservative denomination in which he was raised.  

Campuses, he says, are “ripe mission fields, full of young adults ready to consider something big. It’s the perfect time to showcase what we [as the Episcopal Church] can do. St. Augustine was built to be a chaplaincy, but every congregation can be a mission field for the formation of the next generation.” 

While students are asking existential questions, they also need to be fed. Ponder and the Rev. Benjamin Straley, who has served as rector of St. Stephen’s, Providence and campus minister at Brown and Rhode Island School of Design since 2020, are capitalizing on as they expand their campus ministries. 

A brown dog is being greeted by studentsAs a “religious life affiliate” on the Brown campus, Straley offers a Wednesday evening liturgy and dinner that attracts both local students and other young adults. “We allowed the old acronym EMBR (Episcopal Ministry at Brown and RISD) to die away and now refer to the group as ‘St Stephen’s Young Adults,’” he says. Besides food for body and soul, students are drawn by Straley’s three-year old half husky-half Australian Shepherd, Grace, whose exploits are chronicled on her @graceatbrown Instagram account. 

Brown students and other young adults also volunteer on Saturdays at the parish’s Epiphany Soup Kitchen, which feeds as many as fifty people who come “looking for a meal and community” each week, Straley says. 

Ponder, who this year is forming a closer relationship with RIC’s residential life team, will be offering a monthly dinner in the college’s four dorms that house about 1000 students. “The meals will be designed to create a space for community for students and a place to ask the deeper questions,” she says, as well as “a dignified way” to provide meals for students who are experiencing food insecurity.  

A food pantry funded entirely by Episcopal Charities also supports RIC students without enough to eat. Located at RIC’s Unity Center, which Ponder describes as “a brave space on campus for all students to engage in meaningful and critical conversations that challenge systems of oppression,” the pantry is stocked by students Ponder takes to the store to buy goods that can feed their peers who lack access to a stove or the ability to cook. 

“In the hierarchy of needs, if students are food or housing insecure, they aren’t going to learn well,” she says. “This is the important witness that the Episcopal Church has here. We feed a lot of students.” 

The diocese’s investment in campus ministry is an opportunity to lay a foundation for the future, Ponder says. Her own campus ministry experience “helped with the things you might not learn in class: how to honor and respect others, how to work with folks you may not really like; how to make friends,” she says. “I think it’s invaluable work. We are scattering seeds and won’t know what will take or what will reemerge a decade from now.” 

EDUCATION FOR MINISTRY (EfM)…are you being called?

EDUCATION FOR MINISTRY (EfM)…are you being called?

My name is Jacki Zahn, and I am a parishioner at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Greenville.  I wanted to give you a little information on Education for Ministry (EfM).

I love learning new things, especially History. Because I never got the chance to go to college after high school, I went “later in life” and graduated from Rhode Island College at the age of fifty-six with a History Major.

As a former Roman Catholic, I took an Inquirer’s class with my Episcopalian friend Betsy at Christ Church in Lincoln.  I attended another one at Calvary Church with Fr. Bradner when my husband and I were received into the Episcopal church.

I yearned to learn more about my faith, spirituality, and the history of the church so when Rev. Susan Carpenter, at a women’s retreat years ago, informed us about EfM, I knew I was being called.  I started the four-year program with mentor Donna Tornatore at Trinity Church.

It was a “life changing” time in my life.  The first year was a challenge, studying the Old Testament, writing a spiritual autobiography, and acknowledging that the “black and white” in my life was in fact “gray”.

EfM is a four-year learning certificate program of the University of the South (Sewanee).  It was started in 1975; it encompasses study, worship, and theological reflection in a small group setting.  I finished my four-year program in December of 2018 and completed my mentor training in March 2023.

I will be mentoring EfM here at Trinity, starting in September.  It will be a small group, 6 to 8 members, and meeting on Saturday mornings.  The concentrations for the four-year program are Year 1, Old Testament; Year 2, New Testament; Year 3, Church History and Year 4, Spirituality/Theology.  The cost of the program is $325 annually plus the cost of books.  (If the cost is an issue, there are some grant opportunities available.)

I have been praying for you over the past few months…are you being called? If you want to learn more about the Education for Ministry (EfM), please contact me, by email or 401-651-6401.

Jacki Zahn

Face -to-Face with our Faith: Ascension, Cranston hosts an Agape Meal 

When a supply priest isn’t available to celebrate the Eucharist with the English-speaking part of Ascension Cranston’s congregation, the parish uses the liturgy of the word. But Jean Field, a licensed preacher and member of the congregation, wondered what might “feed the hunger” that she perceived on Sundays without Eucharist.  

Bishop Knisley, who was formerly a priest in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where ties with the Moravian Church in America are strong, suggested a Moravian Agape meal, which is also called a lovefeast. The Episcopal Church and the Moravian Church have been in full communion since 2011, and Agape meals are one way that Moravians seek to strengthen bonds and fellowship within their church. An Agape Meal—the Greek word is used in the New Testament to describe self-giving love, and the practice has its roots in the early church—is not a Eucharist and doesn’t require a priest. (A Moravian order of service and a United Methodist order of service are available online.) 

As she planned the meal in Cranston, Field decided to refer to it as a gathering rather than a service and held it in the church hall rather than in the nave. “We didn’t want it to look like a ‘pretend’ eucharist,” she said. “We wanted it to look like a gathering around a table.” 

In Cranston, the agape meal included traditional and contemporary hymns from the 1982 Hymnal, Lift Every Voice and Sing II, and Wonder, Love and Praise, along with more contemporary praise music. Two lessons were drawn from the day’s lectionary readings, and participants shared their reflections as part of the liturgy. The Prayers of the People, from Form II in the Book of Common Prayer, were expanded so that people could add their own petitions. 

“I wrote some key questions that people might bounce off because I was worried people might not respond to the scriptures, but they did,” Field said. “The gospel for the day [July 14] was Herod and the beheading of John (Mark 6:14-29). One of the lines saying that Herod didn’t want to do this was what one of our members picked up on; such a great reflection. She said ‘I wish that he had followed his heart.’ There’s a sermon in that one sentence!”  

Another woman responded to the Old Testament lesson about David dancing by noting that she was from Africa and she misses dancing during the service.  

“People’s lives opened up bigger than they had to each other.,” Field said. “It was awesome.  

“Part of what the Agape meal did for us was that it brought us face-to-face with our faith,” she said. “Very often, faith is put in our face: we’re listening to someone talk about our faith rather than letting it well up from what we hear and what is within our hearts. In an Agape service, you pray from your heart. We used a standard form of prayer, but then we opened hearts and people poured out their concerns and their love.” 

The parish held another lovefeast on August 11 and plans to hold them sporadically in the future. Field appreciates that Agape meals provide opportunities for congregation-wide participation, noting that Ascension’s ushers and altar guild served the meal and other members were readers, musicians, or offered reflections and prayers.  

 “The meal needs to be hosted,” she said. “People need to be guests at an agape table.” 

On Queen Anne Sunday, St. Paul’s, Wickford breaks out the “contested” silver 

The Queen of England sent St. Paul’s, Wickford a present three centuries ago, and being thrifty New Englanders, they are still getting some use out of it.

The gift, sent by Queen Anne in 1709, comprised a two-piece silver communion set, a Bible, a Book of Common Prayer, a book of homilies and a set of paraments, or liturgical textiles. The communion set was on the altar on Queen Anne Sunday, August 4, as St. Paul’s  celebrated its founding in 1706 with a Eucharist in the Old Narragansett Church.  

The old church, which does not have electricity, was the parish’s home from 1707 until the current church was built nearby in 1847. During its earliest years, the parish was involved in a bitter dispute 20-year dispute with Christ Church in Stratford, Connecticut over Queen Anne’s gift, says Ruth Ann Lewis, a long-time member of the parish and the docent coordinator at Old Narragansett.  

According to “Queen Anne’s Gifts to ‘Old Narragansett’ or The Case of the Contested Church Silver,” an article by Joseph W. Hammond, the controversy began in 1710 when the Rev. Christopher Bridge, St. Paul’s first priest, was reassigned to a church in Rye, New York due to “difficulties” with the Rev. John Honeyman at Trinity Church, Newport. The nature of these difficulties is not clear, but they led Henry Compton, then Bishop of London, to declare that Bridge had “committed an insolent riot upon the Church of Rhode Island.”  

Bridge’s departure created a vacancy at St. Paul’s that lasted nine years. During that time, the queen’s gift was “reassigned,” to Christ Church in Stratford, Connecticut, Hammond writes. When St. Paul’s next rector, the Rev. William Guy arrived, the effort to reclaim the gift began. It would continue for almost two decades as increasingly emotional letters from the two parishes to three successive bishops of London (two of whom died during the controversy) crisscrossed the Atlantic.   

Finally, in June 1729, the Rev. Samuel Johnson of Stratford wrote to the Bishop Edmund Gibson of London saying he would return the gift to St. Paul’s. “I was obliged to use a great deal of Resolution & Self-denial on this Occasion,” he wrote, “but I hope Time will by Degrees compose the Temper of those of my people who have been greatly exasperated on this Account.” 

The silver was back on the altar, augmented by a silver tankard that was not part of the original gift, on Queen Anne Sunday when Bishop Nicholas Knisely preached and presided at the service using portions of the eucharistic liturgy from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. 

Women’s Oral History Project

To commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the ordination of women to the Episcopal priesthood, the Diocese of Rhode Island has undertaken an oral history project that features interviews with five history-making women who have deep connections to the diocese.

The women interviewed were:

  • The Rev. Jo-Ann Drake, the first woman from the diocese to be ordained to the priesthood. (Her ordination, by Bishop Frederick Belden, the tenth bishop of Rhode Island took place in the Pennsylvania parish where she was serving as a deacon.). Watch for the interview coming on August 5.
  • The Rev. Canon Linda Grenz, canon to the ordinary from 2013 to 2019, who was present at both the ordination of the Philadelphia 11 on July 29, 1974 and the 1976 General Convention where the Episcopal Church approved the ordination of women to the priesthood. Read and watch the interview.
  • The Rev. Elizabeth Habecker, former member of the diocesan Standing Committee, who was the first woman ordained in the Diocese of Maine. Watch for the interview coming August 5.
  • The Rev. Elizabeth (Libby) Nestor, priest and emergency room physician, who was the first woman ordained within the diocese. Watch for the interview coming August 5.
  • The Rt. Rev. Geralyn Wolf, the diocese’s first female bishop. Read and watch the interview.

“One of the gifts we will leave the future generations of the Episcopal Church is an account of the experience of pioneering women who pushed us to recognize their call to ordained ministry in spite of fierce opposition in the wider church,” says Bishop Nicholas Knisely. “And it’s important that we allow them to tell their own stories, giving the gift of their voice and experience to the generations to come.

“That, in a nutshell, is the idea behind this Oral History project, particularly for the people of the Diocese of Rhode Island. It will give us a way to reflect on how these women responded to the Holy Spirit in moving us to a new place where all people could respond to the Spirit’s stirring in their hearts. I hope people take time to reflect on these stories. And, perhaps, even consider a similar oral history project with the elders in your own congregation.”

The interviews were conducted by the Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg.

image: The Resurrected Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene, St. Paul’s, Pawtucket

Final Thoughts on General Convention 81

The elections of the Rt. Rev. Sean Rowe as the next presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, and the reelection of Julia Ayala Harris were perhaps the biggest news events emerging from the 81st General Convention, which ended on June 30 in Louisville, but Bishop Nicholas Knisely and the diocese’s deputies say that only begins to cover the good news coming from the convention.

For Deputy Olive Swinski, the highlight of convention was being able to participate in the Under 40 Caucus, a group of dozens of young deputies that emerged both as a political force and a supportive community. “At times it can be lonely being the youngest person in a room, so it was inspiring and life giving to be in a space with other young people who care about the governance and structure of the Episcopal Church,” she says.

For Deputy Scott Avedisian, one of the high points of the 81st General Convention, which ended on June 30 in Louisville, actually began when the convention met in Austin six years ago.

At that meeting, the Episcopal Church boisterously welcomed the Diocese of Cuba back into its ranks. But due to challenges created by the COVID pandemic, the Cuban deputation couldn’t attend the 80th General Convention in Baltimore, so the gathering in Louisville was the first post-reunion opportunity for the Cuban diocese to participate as full members of the convention from start to finish.

Avedisian’s other convention highlights also centered on the theme of coming together, and included the juncture of the Dioceses of Eastern and Western Michigan, which created the Episcopal Diocese of the Great Lakes, and the designation of Navajoland as a missionary diocese.

Those two events, along with the reunion on the Dioceses of Eau Claire, Fond du Lac and Milwaukee into the new Diocese of Wisconsin, were greeted with outpourings of enthusiasm at convention.

Deputy Dante Tavolaro, rector of St. Thomas Church, Greenville, made his mark on convention by proposing a successful amendment to the resolution establishing the group of four cities from which the site of the 2030 General Convention would be chosen. His amendment rose out of a widely shared concern that the safety of LGBTQ+ people, people of color and those who might be pregnant be taken into consideration in choosing a site for the convention.

Tavolaro’s amendment did not alter the existing group of finalists: Kansas City, Missouri; Minneapolis; Pittsburgh; Portland, Oregon; and San Juan, Puerto Rico. But it requires that the church’s Joint Standing Committee on Planning Arrangements and the Office of the General Convention to “take into consideration the legal protections and safeguards for vulnerable members of our community attending General Convention,” and it requires the two bodies to “prayerfully and seriously consider current rates of violence against the LGBTQ+ Community and Communities of Color when selecting potential host sites for General Convention.”

“I’m proud of what our deputation did and how hard they all worked,” Bishop Knisely said.

The convention was surprisingly effective, Knisely said.

“It’s hard to keep track of what’s happening in the rush of the daily schedule, but when I step back and look at all that was accomplished, it’s pretty impressive and right up there with some of the other consequential conventions I’ve attended,” he said.

The “big take-away” though, was not what did happen, but what didn’t, the bishop said.

“We went into the convention with real concerns that the level of conflict between passionate advocates for issues around the election of the officers of convention, around questions of Israel and Palestine, for Prayer Book reform and for fairness in the disciplinary process for clergy was going to derail the conversation in multiple ways. But that didn’t happen,” he said.

“What did happen was thoughtful, careful compromise between people across the church. That, to my mind, is Anglican via media at its very best.”

 

Celebrate!

The Philadelphia Eleven Screening

Click here to register 

July 29 will be the 50th Anniversary of the Ordination of Women to the Priesthood in the Episcopal Church! We will remember and honor the first of those women with a screening of a documentary, “The Philadelphia 11“, on the evening of Friday, July 19, 6:00pm at St. Paul’s Church Parish Hall in Wickford.

There will be an introduction and words from The Rt. Rev. Nicholas Knisely, The Rev. Canon Dr. Dena Cleaver-Bartholomew, The Venerable Grace Swinski, Archdeacon and Ms. Linda Guest, Chair of the Rhode Island Chapter of the Episcopal Church Women. Light refreshments will be served during the evening.

Parking is available behind the Parish Hall. St. Paul’s Parish Hall is diagonally across the street from St. Paul’s Church.

 

The 28th Presiding Bishop will be the Rt. Rev. Sean Rowe

The Rt. Rev. Sean W. Rowe of the Episcopal Dioceses of Northwestern Pennsylvania and Western New York was elected the 28th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church on the first ballot today at the church’s 81st General Convention in Louisville, Kentucky.

Rowe, 49, received 89 0f 158 votes from the House of Bishops which gathered for the election in Christ Church Cathedral. His election was later confirmed by the House of Deputies in a vote of 778-43 Rowe’s nine-year term, succeeding Presiding Bishop Michael B. Curry, begins November 1.

“I am excited by where the work of discernment has led us as a church today,” Bishop Nicholas Knisely said. “Bishop Rowe is one of the most incisive thinkers in the House of Bishops. His explicit challenge to us is that we must face and no longer try to avoid the hard choices that confront our denomination.

“I believe that Bishop Rowe’s election is a signal that we are prepared to do what needs to be done so that our denomination will have exactly what it needs to share the Gospel and serve the world in the decade ahead of us.

“We have been blessed by the leadership of Bishop Curry whose contagious faith brought us to this challenge and this opportunity. Now it is time for us to prepare and make ready everything we will need to meet the journey that is ahead of us.”

The other nominees in the election were Bishops J. Scott Barker of the Diocese of Nebraska, Daniel G. P. Gutiérrez of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, DeDe Duncan Probe of the Diocese of Central New York and Robert Wright of the Diocese of Atlanta.

“I sometimes think of this moment in the Episcopal Church’s history in terms of the history of my region of the United States,” Rowe told the convention in remarks after his election.  “I am from the Rust Belt, and in the economic unraveling that has befallen our communities in the last fifty years, I have been around to see things I love go away.

“My grandfathers were steel workers, and nearly my entire family worked in industry.

In the space of about three years in the mid-1980s, when I was in elementary school, I watched everything I had known evaporate. … People in our region are resilient, but we spent years resisting the change that was forced upon us, wishing things would go back to being the way they had been.”

The Episcopal Church, once politically and economically powerful, must also adjust to cope with declining membership, he said.

“If we are honest with each other and ourselves, we know that we cannot continue to be the Episcopal Church in the same way no matter where we live,” Rowe told bishops and deputies assembled at the Kentucky International Convention Center. “To participate fully and effectively in God’s mission we must reorient our churchwide resources—budgets and staff—to support dioceses, where ministry on the ground happens.”

Rowe holds a Ph.D. in organizational learning and leadership, and has long been active in “experiments for the sake of the gospel” such as having one bishop lead two dioceses. While serving as bishop of Northwestern Pennsylvania, he also served as provisional bishop of the Diocese of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania from 2014 until 2018. In 2019 he became provisional bishop of the Diocese of Western New York, which includes the Buffalo area, a position he still holds.

He is an advocate for streamlining the church’s structures and governance, a call he repeated in his remarks to the convention. But efficiency is not his primary goal.

“Make no mistake,” he told the convention, “reorienting our structures, our budgets, and our relationships will only matter if we do it for the sake of the gospel. Our goal must be to invest more fully in evangelism, racial reconciliation, and creation care at every level of the church.

“Thanks to the leadership of General Convention and Presiding Bishop Curry, we have embraced those core ministry priorities since 2015. Now our broken and hurting world badly needs us to address them even more strategically and more effectively.”

Rowe graduated from Grove City College in 1997 with a B.A. in history; from Virginia Theological Seminary in 2000 with a Master of Divinity; and received his Ph.D. from Gannon University in Erie in 2014. He chairs the board of trustees of Erie Day School, previously served on the Franklin School Board and serves on the Greater Buffalo Racial Equity Roundtable.

He is married to Carly Rowe, a Christian educator who is executive director of the Erie Episcopal collaboration. They have an eleven-year-old daughter, Lauren.