BANNER
A Resource for Wellness in the Episcopal Church 
In This Issue
Post-Conference Resources
Called to Serve: A study of women in ordained ministry
CREDO Conferences in Haiti build Strength for the Journey

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February 8, 2011
7Greetings!

CREDO Conference Leaders hold annual planning meeting


Jill Mathis

Thirteen conference leaders for Episcopal CREDO and four conference leaders for Presbyterian CREDO met together for four days in January to prepare for the 2011 conference season that begins in April.  

 

Episcopal CREDO plans 27 eight-day conferences this year for plan participants in the Episcopal Church Pension Plan.

Forgiveness:

The Road to Liberation

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Post-Conference Resources

Forgiveness is complicated, yet essential to our emotional healing and wellbeing. It can be a return from hatred and alienation, bitterness and victimhood. Forgiveness can also bring a release from guilt, shame or self- blame. Forgiveness is not forgetting, condoning, denying or excusing, Rather, forgiveness is a conscious act of love and generosity despite the pain and suffering that has been caused. How can we understand this spiritual act of generosity, born out of hurt, transformed by freedom of spirit? What are the health aspects of forgiveness that can inspire a release of the negativity and bring us back into harmony with ourselves?

 

The Fetzer Institute advances love and forgiveness as powerful forces that can transform the human condition. The Institute engages with people and programs working to bring the power of love and forgiveness to the center of individual, organizational and community life. We create and support projects that serve as healing forces in a divided world,

that spread knowledge about how individuals everywhere can be more loving and forgiving in daily life. An online ritual for letting go is found through the Fetzer Institute website HERE.

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CREDO Post-Conference Resources 

 

 

CREDO is developing the CREDO Resource Center,

a cyber-place for rekindling your CREDO Conference experience with resources in the four component areas of Spiritual, Financial, Vocational, and Health. Forgiveness (above) is an example of a spiritual and emotional health resource that may help bring you back to your conference work.

 

Find the collection of CREDO resources HERE

.

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Church Pension Group and CREDO respond to General Convention call for examination of the role of Women in Ministry

In a three-year research project on the changing roles and impact of women in ordained ministry, the Church Pension Fund's Office of Research, Executive Council's Committee on the Status of Women, the Episcopal Church Center's Office of Women's Ministry, and CREDO Institute, Inc. collaborated on a survey titled "Called To Serve."

 

The study, released in a report in January, examines the service and compensation gap between clergy men and women, the level and causes of inequality, and special circumstances which women in ministry live and work.

 

The research was mandated by the 75th General Convention in 2006 by Resolution A140 "Women Clergy Retirement Needs," and Resolution D033 "Episcopal Clergy Wellness Report," which commended CREDO for its report, "Episcopal Clergy Wellness: A Report to the Church on the State of Clergy Wellness."

 

The new report, "Called to Serve: A Study of Clergy Careers, Clergy Wellness, and Clergy Women," is now available.

Haiti conferences covered in new Episcopal JournalHaiti SFJ Faculty

In a nation that perennially ranks as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, the earthquake in Haiti in January 2010 exposed a fragile fault line in the confidence of the Episcopal Church's leaders in Haiti, some of whom were too traumatized to enter buildings for fear of them collapsing.

 

Who would care for the caretakers in a country that suddenly lay in ruin? Where might church leaders, whose communities were in chaos, find a renewed sense of composure in a country whose woes were compounded by the spread of cholera and political crises?

 

CREDO held a series of four conferences during 2010, designed to offer the clergy and lay leadership in the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti respite and a route to personal and community restoration.

 

Read a recently published account of the Haiti
CREDO conference from Episcopal Journal
.