As I write this diary, I am fully aware that this topic is not one that is of interest to the majority of people here. However, I have decided to post it for the few who might be interested, to let them know that I will be blogging about the General Convention of the Episcopal Church over at my blog Faithful Ohio. Secondly, in a big place like this, there’s every chance that someone else here is planning on being at convention too, and it would be cool to find that out before the fact rather than after I’d missed you.
The General Convention of the Episcopal Church is begins this week. I officially joined Episcopal Church shortly after the last convention, which was in 2003, and was excited to learn that the next convention would be right here in Columbus. To have things align like that really caught my attention. I was certain that this must be one of “God’s clues”, and that I was meant to be at that convention.
It’s hard to believe June 2006 is here already. Work and family and, well, life have conspired to keep me from focusing my attention on doing the research and writing I’d hoped to do in advance of this convention. Now that the convention is here (I just got my first e-mail update from the Diocese of Southern Ohio), clearly I need to make time. But, easing into this today, I will start by just saying “ditto” to what Sarah Dylan Breuer wrote at Dylan’s Lectionary Notes:
The Episcopal Church is likely to be in the popular as well as religious media a lot over the next three weeks, and I’m praying that it proves to be an opportunity for evangelism — for many who don’t think they want anything to do with Christianity because they think Christianity is all about Left Behind and the Religious Right to hear about Christians who welcome LGBT people as they are, who care about the environment and oppose war, who are more concerned with “the least of these” than what they imagine other people do in bed. General Convention 2003 was such an opportunity for evangelism for me — I got to talk with countless complete strangers in the weeks and months following about who Jesus is and what I believe God is up to in the world because people would see my “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You” bumper sticker or the cross I wear and would ask me about General Convention. Whatever else emerges from GC 2006, I’m banking that there will be many similar opportunities following it, and I hope that the media manage to get across some of the breadth and depth of what convention does amidst the inevitable headlines about sex.