Celebrate Bishop Whittemore Month in May

Friends in Christ,

During the month of May, Whittemore month, help us make a difference in the West Michigan community with a financial gift to the Bishop Whittemore Foundation. Your gift empowers our efforts to provide grants supporting support communities in the Diocese of Western Michigan with their new ministries, building and accessibility projects, and more.

The Rt. Rev. Lewis Bliss Whittemore was the third bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Michigan serving 1937-1953. Bishop Whittemore was a talented administrator and gifted pastor, bringing the diocese out of a period of financial instability and laying the foundation for growth and advancement over the next several decades. This foundation was created in his name to continue his mission to actively support and encourage growth and advancement of the diocese, its parishes, and its parishioners.

Since its inception in the 1950s, the foundation has made a grant to every single congregation in the Episcopal Diocese of Western Michigan, incorporated as an independent organization. Our most recent grants benefitted the St. Thomas, Battle Creek Laundry of Love program; a ramp replacement and front step repair at Holy Trinity, Manistee; and the Breakfast Café at St. Mark’s, Grand Rapids.

You can find more information about the Bishop Whittemore foundation, our work throughout the Diocese of Western Michigan, information about our grant process, contact information, and ways to donate at whittemorefoundation.org.

We truly appreciate your prayers and consideration!

The Foundation Trustees
The Bishop Whittemore Foundation

The Rev. Valerie Ambrose – St. Mark’s, Grand Rapids
Robert Brower – St. Mark’s, Grand Rapids
Sarah Cross – St. Andrew’s, Grand Rapids
Bobbie Jo Gaunt – All Saints, Saugatuck
John R. Gork – St. John’s, Grand Haven
Anthony Henry – St. Philips, Grand Rapids
Reid Hudgins, III – St. Luke’s, Kalamazoo
Kyle Smith Irwin – St. Mark’s, Grand Rapids
William Malpass – Emeritus
Daniel Monyror – Sudanese Grace Episcopal, Grand Rapids
Walter Moore – St. Philips, Grand Rapids
Kevin Murphy – Holy Trinity, Wyoming
Martha Porter – Grace, Grand Rapids
Michael Redman – St. Mark’s, Grand Rapids
Joan Smith – Grace Episcopal, Holland
Robert D. Stanton – St. Andrew’s, Big Rapids
Wendy Stock – St. Mark’s, Grand Rapids
Thelma Temple – St. Paul’s, Muskegon
Randy Wegener – St. John’s, Grand Haven
Roger York – St, Mark’s, Grand Rapids

Join CCD for Healthy, Vital Congregations

Dear Ones of Eastern and Western Michigan,

Eastertide joy to you and yours.

As our registration deadline (June 1) approaches, I am taking this opportunity to again invite you and a team from your parish to participate in our second College for Congregational Development (CCD).

We are looking forward to building on the success of our 2023 diocesan CCD launch as we gather to take next steps in becoming more healthy, more faithful, and more effective congregations.

CCD is for parish teams of leaders—lay and ordained—who have a keen interest and capacity to learn, grow, and engage with others—and then to bring the content home to their local congregation. Together we will explore our current realities in ministry, discern where God is leading us next, and work on goals, strategies, and actions for how to get there.

However small or large your parish is, and whatever the joys and challenges you are currently facing, CCD offers opportunities to grow and connect with others in mutually supportive and encouraging ways.

Visit the CCD page of our website for more details on our 2024 week together. If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.

In Peace,


The Rev. BJ Heyboer
CCD Coordinator for Eastern and Western Michigan
ccd@eastmich.org

Click here for the original invitation to CCD 2024.

 

Commissioning Service for the AuSable Inclusion Center

Saturday, June 8 from 1-4pm

On Saturday, June 8th, all are invited from across the dioceses to come together to celebrate the planting and official launch of our New Episcopal Community, the AuSable Inclusion Center!

The Rev. Canon Nurya Love Parish, Canon for the Northern Collaborative, Beloved Community, and Creation Care, will preside over the Service of Commissioning and Holy Eucharist. After our liturgy, stick around for light refreshments and opportunities to learn more about our work and upcoming events. There is no cost to attend and no RSVP required!

The AuSable Inclusion Center is a New Episcopal Community in the future Episcopal Diocese of the Great Lakes, preparing to provide programming for rural LGBTQ+ people and those marginalized by their economic status, organized around four pillars: social/emotional support, material support, spiritual support, and education/advocacy. They will also support and resource parishes in the dioceses seeking to deepen their own invitation to this population through education, advocacy, and potential collaborations.

Questions about this event? Please contact ministry developer, the Rev. Beckett Leclaire, at bleclaire@eastmich.org or bleclaire@edwm.org.

LOCATION

The AuSable Inclusion Center
789 Ryno Rd.
Mio, MI 48647

ausableinclusioncenter.org

JOIN US TO PREP! An outdoor work day will take place the Saturday before our commissioning service. Click here to learn more and RSVP.

Unable to join the celebration but would like to support the new AuSable Ministry Center in other ways? Please check out our building wishlist and library wishlist. Financial donations are welcome also! Please click here to give online or write checks out to “The Episcopal Diocese of Eastern Michigan,” marked for “The AuSable Inclusion Center” and mail to the Diocese of Eastern Michigan, 124 N. Fayette St., Saginaw, MI 48602.

Catherine Cameron-Heldt to Retire

Friends in Christ,

With mixed emotions, we share that Catherine Cameron-Heldt, Western Michigan’s Diocesan Office Administrator, will enter her well-deserved retirement on May 31, 2024.

Catherine came on board our diocesan staff in September 2020, in the midst of a pandemic and without a bishop in place. Over the last three and a half years, she has strengthened our office processes and organization, provided crucial stability through various transitions, and has been the first point of relationship for anyone entering or calling our Grand Rapids office. We will truly miss her presence, humor, and contributions to our staff team, including in no small part her encyclopedic knowledge of the West Michigan dining scene! We send her off into retirement with our sincere gratitude and appreciation for the impact she’s made on both of our dioceses.

Invited to offer some words to the dioceses, Catherine writes, “I am so thankful to have served with and alongside the staff and the people of both dioceses. I could not have asked for a better opportunity. I appreciate you all. Thank you, from the bottom of my grateful heart.”

With the goal of filling the position with enough time for Catherine to assist with on-boarding, the Joint Standing Committees are working with the bi-diocesan personnel committee to review the current job description, publish the opening, and begin recruitment as soon as possible. We expect that the position will continue to be full-time and based in the Grand Rapids office, and acknowledge that some specific responsibilities and logistics may shift as we progress into our diocesan alignment over the next several months.

Please join us in offering our sincere gratitude for Catherine’s service amongst us and our celebration for her retirement. Catherine’s email address is ccameron@edwm.org, or notes can be addressed to her at the Western Michigan office at 1815 Hall St SE, Suite 200 Grand Rapids, MI 49506.

Easter Blessings,

The Standing Committee of Eastern Michigan:

The Rev. Donald Davidson
St. Paul’s, Flint

Jelecia Geraghty
St. Paul’s, Flint

Neil Hargrave
St. John’s, Dryden

Barb Ilkka, President
St. John’s, Saginaw

The Ven. Linda Crane
Grace, Port Huron

The Rev. Jerry Lasley
St. Christopher’s, Grand Blanc

The Standing Committee of Western Michigan:

The Rev. Valerie Ambrose
St. Mark’s, Grand Rapids

The Rev. Molly Bosscher
St. Andrew’s, Grand Rapids

Freya Gilbert
St. Paul’s, St. Joseph

Carole Redwine
St. Philip’s, Grand Rapids

The Rev Anne Schnaare, President
Grace, Grand Rapids

Ellen Schrader
Grace, Traverse City

Fred Skidmore
St. Andrew’s, Grand Rapids

The Rev. Eileen Stoffan
St. Paul’s, Muskegon

 

Photo: Angela Krueger (Assistant to the Bishop, Eastern Michigan), Catherine Cameron-Heldt, and Sara Philo (bi-diocesan Chief Financial Officer) smile for a photo at a joint diocesan convention.

Ecumenical Endeavors

“What difference does ecumenical work make?” was the question at a recent World Council of Churches meeting at the United Nations Church Center in New York. The question was raised by Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, the moderator of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and recent bishop of the Evangelical Church in Bavaria. The discussion which followed did not speak of doctrine, church identity, or even liturgical or polity alignment; but as they surveyed the great needs around the world —climate change, earthquake disaster, famine, and war — they proclaimed the need to work together for the healing of this world which is so beloved by our Creator, and concluding that ecumenical divisions are small, when compared to the work that can be done together; in advocacy, and service, and prayer.

The Standing Commission on Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations has proposed eight ecumenical and interreligious resolutions for the 81st General Convention of The Episcopal Church. They refer to and include interreligious relations in general, but specifically too: to Episcopal / Jewish relations, Episcopal / Muslim relations, to affirm the goal of full communion between the Episcopal Church and the United Methodist Church, to commend the dialogue between the Episcopal Church and the PCUSA, and a recommendation to adopt the proposal for exchangeability between ELCA and Episcopal Church Deacons.

The United Methodist Church will gather April 23 to May 2 for its General Conference. It will consider, among other things, a resolution “to affirm and implement a Full Communion Relationship between” The Episcopal Church and the United Methodist Church. According to the proposal’s rationale, “This resolution is the fruit of decades of dialogue and reflects the unique history of this relationship.” The United Methodist-Episcopal Church dialogue has been at work since 2002. The dialogue committee’s proposal for full communion, entitled “A Gift to the World,” is the theological foundation for this full-communion proposal.
 
This General Conference will be the denomination’s first since the COVID-19 pandemic began. According to David Field, the UMC’s ecumenical staff officer for faith and order and theological dialogue, there is some concern that the General Conference will not give ecumenical resolutions priority as it tackles legislation focused on internal denominational issues.

In mid-March, the New York State Council of Churches (NYSCOC) hosted its annual Ecumenical and Interfaith Advocacy Days in Albany with faith leaders from across the state gathering to be trained and lobby for a variety of issues facing their communities. Representatives from the Episcopal Diocese of New York were present to become more connected to other faith-based advocates across the state. Key issues for the NYSCOC include a variety of bills that are facing the state legislature during budget negotiations.

In 2023, the Racial Reconciliation Working Group of the Moravian-Episcopal Coordinating Committee hosted a webinar series entitled “Past Reckoning,” which explored the racial history of the Moravian and Episcopal churches. The 90-minute webinars have been reduced to roughly 40-minute segments to be used in an adult-education context in individual Moravian and Episcopal congregations or in a joint study.

Compiled by:
the Rev. Mike Wernick
Ecumenical and Interreligious Officer
the Episcopal Dioceses of Western and Eastern Michigan

AuSable Inclusion Center Work Day – The Great Outdoors

Saturday, June 1 from 9-5pm

Calling all weekend warriors, DIY divas, and green thumbs of all stripes! Join us at the site of the soon-to-be AuSable Inclusion Center for a day of gardening, repairs, and general sprucing-up to serve our mission in the community and prepare for the launch of our New Episcopal Community later in June.

The AuSable Inclusion Center is a New Episcopal Community in the Diocese of Eastern Michigan seeking to officially launch in June 2024. It will provide programming for rural LGBTQ+ people and those marginalized by their economic status, organized around four pillars: social/emotional support, material support, spiritual support, and education/advocacy through both online and in-person programming. They also envision resourcing parishes in the dioceses seeking to deepen their own invitation to this population through education, advocacy, and potential collaborations.

There are projects for a wide range of gifts and talents, but volunteers with a gift for woodworking and gardening would be especially helpful for accomplishing our tasks.

Supplies, snacks, lunch, and a killer playlist will be provided. We’ll be working from 9-5pm, come for the whole day or as long as you can!

Questions about this event? Please contact ministry developer, the Rev. Beckett Leclaire, at bleclaire@eastmich.org or bleclaire@edwm.org

SAVE THE DATE

AuSable Inclusion Center Commissioning Service, June 8th at 1pm, with light refreshments and celebration to follow!

Unable to contribute labor but would like to support the new Ausable Ministry Center in other ways? Please check out our building wishlist and library wishlist. Financial donations are welcome also! Please write checks out to “The Episcopal Diocese of Eastern Michigan,” marked for “The Ausable Inclusion Center” and mail to the Diocese of Eastern Michigan, 124 N. Fayette St., Saginaw, MI 48602.

LOCATION

The AuSable Inclusion Center
789 Ryno Rd.
Mio, MI 48647

RSVP

Please RSVP by May 25th so that we can plan ahead for food and projects.

There is no cost to attend; we’re grateful for your contribution to the planting of this new ministry!

STORYMAKERS ZOOM INFO SESSIONS

Bi-Diocesan Partnership for Gospel-based Formation Resources for Children and Teens

 

Our bi-diocesan Children and Youth Formation Team is excited to announce that we have partnered with StoryMakers, a non-profit creative studio that has published a formation curriculum that allows children and teens to engage with the Bible in creative and interactive ways.

The Storymakers curriculum follows the liturgical calendar, is in line with the traditions of The Episcopal Church, requires minimal prep time, and can be used in both large and small churches, as well as classroom settings.

We invite you to join members of our Formation Team and Brittany from StoryMakers for any of three informational Zoom sessions about StoryMakers and how it can work in your setting. These sessions will provide information on the curriculum for children and for teens, and will also allow time for Q&A.

Our partnership with StoryMakers offers churches a 50% discount, as well as full-service help. This means that you can be resourced by the curriculum, and you can be personally supported by members of the StoryMakers team in implementation and support for your congregation, your formation team, your volunteers and your children and teens to ensure the smoothest implementation possible.

About Storymakers

StoryMakers NYC is a nonprofit creative studio that designed and created a Sunday school curriculum for K-12th grade. Their goal is to help kids, teens, and grownups understand that God is with them, for them, and actively redeeming them. With unique whimsy and engaging social-emotional connectors, StoryMakers shares the Gospel with children who encounter our resources through their families and churches. Each adventure and resource is created to meet children and teens where they are. Join the StoryMakers team as they walk through what makes their curriculum unique and how you can get started with a year subscription for your K-12th graders, utilizing the bi-diocesan partnership code (EWMICH2023).
Questions? Contact Radha Kaminski, Youth Missioner for the Northern Collaborative at rkaminski@eastmich.org or rkaminski@edwm.org.

DATES & RSVP

There is no cost to attend any of the one-hour informational Zoom sessions. Please RSVP to receive your Zoom access link. There is no registration deadline. At least one of the Zoom sessions will be recorded for later viewing.

Thursday, May 16th at 2:30 pm – Click here to RSVP

Tuesday, June 4th at 7 pm – Click here to RSVP

Thursday, August 1st at 2:30 pm – Click here to RSVP

Sponsorship Funding Available for 2024 Pride Engagement

Easter Greetings!

For the third year, I am elated to invite the faith communities of the future Episcopal Diocese of the Great Lakes to share our message of God’s all-inclusive love with our neighbors through local Pride Festivals. This is an opportunity to show up in the world and share a message some may have never felt from the Christian church, “you are loved, unconditionally, irrevocably, and just as you are.”

June is “Pride Month,” though pride events happen throughout the year. Many communities, especially those in larger cities or county seats, will host Pride Festivals, whether in June or later in the summer. These celebrations of love and authenticity vary place to place but will often include parades, concerts, lectures, parties, and more as well as space for local organizations to come, set up space, offer solidarity, and connect with attendees seeking affirming companies, nonprofits, communities, and churches.

We are going to continue this year to sponsor throughout our area at a basic level, getting the name of The Episcopal Church out in these settings across our state. We’ll consider higher sponsorships if you, the local congregation, can commit to showing up in-person. By leveraging our sponsorship, we can work with you to ensure your community has access to the physical space to be present, engage, and offer invitation and love.

Already sponsoring yourselves? Let’s talk about how we can go further in supporting your efforts. Planning your own event? I want to know about it and contribute as we can. Several congregations from the same area at the same festival? Imagine the impact when all of the Episcopalians show up!!

To let me know that your congregation will commit to showing up in-person (or some other planned engagement with secular Pride spaces), please fill out the request form as soon as possible. Multiple requests for the same festival will be grouped together to collaborate. Applications will be addressed on a rolling basis, understanding that there are various dates for Pride Festivals — deadlines may hit and space may run out.

I look forward to seeing The Episcopal Church in the Mitten showing up once more to declare God’s love for all creation. Please be in touch with me with any questions or to talk together about possibilities for your engagement.

Yours in Christ,


Katie Forsyth
Canon for Evangelism and Networking
The Episcopal Dioceses of Eastern and Western Michigan
kforsyth@eastmich.org kforsyth@edwm.org

Photo: Members of Holy Spirit, Belmont participate in Grand Rapids Pride alongside several other Episcopal congregations.

The proceeds for our 2024 Pride T-Shirt (about $5 per shirt) helps to slightly off-set our costs for sponsoring local Pride events. This year’s shirt features a common quote from our outgoing Presiding Bishop: “If it’s not about love, it’s not about God!” Multiple colors, S-4XL. $34/shirt. Click here to purchase.

Thriving in Ministry

Friends in Christ,

As church leaders, we have heard you asking for more tools, more support to help your church community thrive. This year, we are thrilled to invite you to an opportunity to participate in a new vitality initiative of the dioceses, Thriving in Ministry.

Last June, a small group of Eastern and Western Michiganders traveled to Virginia Theological Seminary for a one week training to serve as our initial team of mentor/coaches for this two-year, cohort-based program. Together with participants in peer learning groups, we’ll engage and build capacity around connection and bridge building, engaging the local community, collaboration and lay leadership, setting and meeting learning goals, contextualizing the Gospel, new pathways for spiritual practices, assertiveness and conflict adeptness, and bridging the gaps between churchwide patterns and ethnic realities. Logistically, we will:

  • Gather in cohort groups, each composed of up to eight participants and two mentor coaches
  • Meet nine times per year (monthly, with a hiatus) for approximately two hours at a time over the two-year commitment
  • Meet one-on-one, participant-to-coach, for one hour of one-on-one coaching per month for nine months

This program has been considerably subsidized by diocesan congregational development funding. The cost to the participant is $425 per person per year. If this cost would impede your ability to participate, we have limited scholarship funds available–please request a scholarship on the application form.

Each peer learning group is made up of individual leaders from a congregation (you don’t have to attend as a team from one place). All gatherings will meet via Zoom unless the particular group requests to meet in-person. In this pilot year, we will accept 24 participants. The deadline to apply is April 15th and cohorts will begin meeting in early May.

As a congregational leader, we hope you will commit to this exciting program, continuing to build the congregational development capacity of our leaders and congregations. We look forward to working with you!

Sincerely,

The Thriving in Ministry Team
The Rev. Heather Barta – CR, Eastern Michigan

The Rev. Paul Brunell – Christ Church, Owosso

The Ven. Beth Drew – Archdeacon, Western Michigan

Dr. Nancy Foster – St. Mary’s, Cadillac; Former Interim Coach for Northern Collab, Congregational Development

The Rev. Pamela Lenartowicz – St. Mark’s, Atlanta and St. Andrew’s, Gaylord

With support from:
The Rev. Canon Sunil Chandy – Canon for the Central Collaborative and Coach for Digital Communities

The Rev. Canon Tracie Little, D. Min. – Canon for the Southern Collaborative and Coach for Adult Formation

The Rev. Canon Nurya Love Parish – Canon for the Northern Collaborative and Coach for Beloved Community/Creation Care

Bishop Skip’s Sermon for the Joint Special Convention

March 16, 2024
I Corinthians 13:1-13; Mark 9:14-29

I’ll bet that most of you have come here today to vote on whether or not our two dioceses will juncture. Hold that thought. I’d like to propose that the main event today is what we’re doing right now, that is, joining in the Great Prayer of the Church we know as the Holy Eucharist. This time of celebration intimately joins us to the one central sacrament, who is Jesus, as the outward and visible sign of who God is. If what we are about today is not first about who we are as God’s people in Christ, how we will live out our communion in Christ, and how above all things, even in our voting, we give honor, glory, and worship to him, we have lost our way.

Perhaps one way to get at this is by looking once again to that oh so familiar reading from Paul’s first letter to the Church in Corinth. It is read at many weddings. We understand why. But let’s look closer. What is the love of which St. Paul speaks, and to which he calls you and me in Christian community? Try this. Every time in that passage, when the word “love” appears, substitute these words: “The love of Jesus as shown forth in his cross and resurrection.” There’s not much room for mere sentimentality here. Paul’s meaning is death and new life in the living Christ. Trying on a few sentences, now we get: “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have the love of Jesus as shown forth in the cross and resurrection, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have the love of Jesus as shown forth in his cross and resurrection, I am nothing.” Jumping ahead in I Corinthians: “The love of Jesus as shown forth in his cross and resurrection does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful…it never ends…And now faith, hope, and the love of Jesus as shown forth in his cross and resurrection abide, these three; and the greatest of these is the love of Jesus manifest in his cross and resurrection.”

Given that, I offer you this thought as we approach, after worship, the prospect of voting. How will your vote, to juncture or not, show forth the love of Jesus in his cross and resurrection, and bring about, as best we know, the greatest possibility of being a community that tethers us to Jesus? In today’s Gospel, Jesus, Peter, James and John, have just come down from the mount of Transfiguration. They arrive to see a crowd surrounding the other disciples and an argument has ensued. What is the crowd’s response as Jesus arrives on the scene? Awe. Wonder. I’m looking for awe and wonder in this crowd, this gathering of God’s people, as the Christ shows up among us. Then back to the Gospel account, incredibly, a father breaks out from the crowd, looking for healing for his son. Sometimes, a moment of clarity as to what is necessary, comes as an epiphany. The boy’s father has that awakening and he approaches Jesus, hanging on to perhaps the one last hope he has for his boy. As the encounter unfolds, most of them thought the boy was dead. Ah, not when Jesus is around. Life erupts and so it does here today, no matter how we vote. We do have Jesus’ closing remark, however, which is, “This kind can come out only through prayer.”

What of our prayer now and all those leading up to today’s vote? I have made an assumption that we are here first to glorify God and do what we can to awaken our spirit to God’s Spirit already residing in us. Or to put it another way, we are here to open our hearts to the conversation of love and mercy that is always going on within the community of the persons of the Trinitarian God. So it is, we are here to discern, to open our hearts to the movement of God among us and within us. A reminder—”to discern” literally means, “to sift.”

Whenever I think of sifting I think of my father. He loved to garden. Across the street from our house was a lush woods with deep, moist, dark topsoil as its bed. I used to love to watch him push his hands into the soil, lift it up, and let it fall between his fingers. It was almost an act of praise, a thanksgiving, a eucharist if you will. The soil had a sweet, aromatic fragrance that infused the air around us and drew me into the dust from which I was formed. Dad taught me that the nutrients of that rich black earth were being prepared for this moment over millennia.

For the gardens of azaleas, boxwoods, figs, and roses, however, it needed further sifting. So he built a sifter, welding a large open grid steel cage, three feet by four feet, mounted on legs, into which one could shovel the earth taken by wheel barrel from the woods. A crank on one end would turn the entire contraption, and when there were chunks of earth inside that needed further breaking down, there was a second crank handle on the opposite end that rotated an interior forked blade that I would turn in order to break up the clumps. As all of this spun on an axis, a very fine mound of soil would build up under the sifter that could be taken to the garden into which the various plant life would be placed and rooted.

Where are you rooted? I invite you to carry this image into your ongoing discernment and eventual voting. We have received many words, written and spoken, over many years. We load it all into our sifters. Each of us is one in whom God delights. We honor our humanity, take all that has been offered us and place it into the sifter of our heart, mind, and soul. Maybe even now we will even have to break up a clump or two along the way, mostly within ourselves, anything that would indicate our own heart-resistance to the Spirit’s movement.

What we do now, like the father seeking his boy’s healing, is gaze upon the face of God as God gazes upon ours. We seek to be open to a quality of awareness where we know ourselves drawn by grace, know who we are as God’s beloved, and trust in the One who has called us forth, from the crowd, from the days we were born.

Now, be the sifter. Receive the richness of what Jesus has placed in you and before you. Listen. Breathe. Keep silence. Hope. Love.

Bishop Skip