IN THIS ISSUE: 

• National Task Force to End Violence Against Women
• EWC Breakfast and opportunity to support others at convention
• Women Nominees for Bishop
• Faces of the Episcopal Women's Caucus Board
• Upcoming Conferences
• Two articles from a younger generation
•       Beyond Predictability by Miguel Escabar
•       Open Letter to Churches Seeking New Members by Lyda K. Hawes
• Book review: STILL:Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis

 At General Convention,

Your contribution will enable us to be present and "stand in the temple and tell" the stories of women in the church and the world.  Please be as generous as you can be.

Anyone wishing to make a donation to the work of the Caucus during General Convention or wishing to donate either frequent flyer miles or free tickets to support Deputies from impoverished nations/countries to attend GC is encourages to send their donation to:

Episcopal Women's Caucus,

1103 Magnolia St.,

South Pasadena, CA 91030.

attn: Chris Mackey-Mason

Mark the memo section of your check: EWV GC work donation or Transportation donation

REMINDER: EWC General Convention Breakfast ticket ($25 in advance) reservation may be sent to this address too! Mark the memo of the check to indicate EWC Breakfast

Great Tote Bag For Sale at EWC Booth at convention

 The Rev. A. Robert Hirschfeld, Rector, Grace Episcopal Church, Amherst, Massachusetts

 The Rev. Dr. William Warwick Rich, Senior Associate Rector for Christian Formation, Trinity Church, Boston, Massachusetts and

 The Faces of the Episcopal Women's Caucus Board

 L. Zoe Cole is a deputy to General Convention from Colorado. An assiting municipal judge in Lone Tree, Zoe combines her legal acumen and knowledge of Scripture, and is an articulate and eleoquent representative of 'the lasw and the

prophets.: She brings her skills and talents to the board with a special passion for collaborative eforts with other women's organizations.

  

Ordained in 1993, Babs M. Meairs has served as chaplain for the Department of Veterans Affairs, and retired as chief of the Chaplain Service at the VA San Diego Health care System. Babs has also served as filed coordinator for the Suffragan Bishop for Federal Ministries and Chaplaincies. She has served on the boards of Retiring Fund for Women in the Diaconate, Southwestern Network for Women's Ministries and the National Association of VA Chaplains. This is Babs second term on the Baucus board.

 

Terri Pilarski is currently the rector at Christ Episcopal Church in Dearborn, Michigan. She has served on the Women for Justice Working Group's Expansive Language Committee. Terry co-authored the ecumenical conversation guide that resulted, and and wrote the Episcopal version of the guide. She has created and led training events and diocesan workshops on the WordsMatter project and guide.

 

 

 

Denise Bentley's educational journey has led her to Bryn Mawr College, Fisk University, the University of Dijon and Vanderbilt University and from chemistry to French to law. Her spiritual journey led her from the Baptist church to the Presbyterian church to the Episcopal church, where she has been for more than 30 years. Her path as a Believer is one that causes her to afflict the comfortable as much as it causes her to comfort the afflicted. The Episcopal Women's Caucus offers something that is very important to her: the opportunity to walk her talk.

 

 

Carmen Guerrero is well known for her work as the Jubilee officer of the national church and work in multicultural and urban ministry development in the Diocese of Los Angeles. Her significant contributions in addressing racism, justice and faith and issue related to poverty at all levels are well documented.

 

 OtherMembers:Barbara Mann, Elizabeth Kaeton, Ann Van Dervoort, Margo McMahon, Gigi Conner

 Christine Mackey, Business manager and Karen Bota, Publications editor/webmaster

Beyond Predictability by Miguel Angel Escabar, Associate Program Director for Leadership and Training at the Episcopal Church Foundation

     With just a few months left until the November elections, it's no surprise that Democrats and Republicans are heatedly debating the role of religion in society. As a young adult who grew up in Texas and who graduated from high school in 2000, I can't imagine a world without the Christian Right. Nor, for that matter, can I imagine an Episcopal Church without the Christian Left. For better or worse, it appears as if our political divisiveness has permanently spilled over into our spirituality, and most churchgoers seem pretty comfortable with that. Yet periodically - during Lent, especially - I wonder about the longer-term impacts of this religious polarization. Who benefits from this kind of rhetoric?

     Not the Church, certainly.

      In a December New York Times editorial, the writer Eric Weiner introduced the country to the Nones. The Nones are the roughly 12% of the population - nearly 25% among youth - who are dropping out of religious affiliation entirely. Citing research on U.S. religiosity, Weiner writes that the Nones are disengaging because "we've mixed politics and religion so completely that many simply opting out of both." [This doesn't mean that Nones are necessarily atheists. Weiner describes Nones as the undecideds of the religious world, drifting and dabbling in everything from Sufism to Kabbalah to Catholicism and Judaism.]

     I read this article while flying home to Texas to celebrate Christmas with family, and I nearly jumped out of my chair when I read the term 'Nones'. The fact of the matter is that I was raised a None, by a family of Nones. The 'Christmas' I was heading home to celebrate included food, togetherness, and gift-giving, but it carefully avoided any mention of the birth of Christ. When I have asked my parents why we're so adamantly secular, their answers have always echoed Weiner's article: namely, that the Christianity they'd encountered was too political, too hypocritical, and too removed from the practical concerns they'd had while raising three kids on a police officer's salary.

     By the end of his article, Weiner argues that we need a Steve Jobs for religion, a person who can move us beyond the current religious landscape and help us create "a new way of being religious", one that is "straightforward and unencumbered and absolutely intuitive." I must admit that I began smiling a bit when I read this section of the article, mostly because it reminded me of what had drawn me to Christianity in the first place.

      The high school I attended in Texas was a religious & political landmine of sorts. Never mind the law or non-Christian students, Christian prayers were regularly said before football games and Christian speakers brought in for general assemblies. My friends and I rolled our eyes when fellow classmates walked out of biology class in protest against evolution, and we were horrified when the novel Snow Falling on Cedars was banned because it depicted an interracial relationship. Not surprisingly, this made my siblings, my friends and me very leery of any sort of religious involvement, and most of the people I know from then continue to hold to this line.

      For me, though, things took a different turn. In my junior year of high school, I began trying to critique what was happening all around me. I began learning about Christianity from a distance, at first simply as a way of countering classmates' grandiose claims. Ultimately, though, I became fascinated by the New Testament's depiction of Jesus and the early Church. I was shocked by the way Jesus critiqued the religious leaders of his day, by how he insisted that we reorient faith toward the outcast, and by the way he made a bureaucratic religious system "straightforward, unencumbered, and absolutely intuitive." He became, in other words, my Steve Jobs of religion, and this ultimately led me to take a second look at Christianity and the church.

      Christ continues to call each of us beyond indifference and out of our most predictable positions. This was the beginning of my journey into the Episcopal Church. But if Weiner's article is any indicator, it appears that people are searching for a more integrating, encompassing love than what they are finding in their local churches. The exciting news, I suppose, is that so many are thirsting for this sort of spiritual complexity. The challenge, however, is whether we'll ever be able to embody this paradoxical, unpredictable, sometimes contradictory, form of love. 

OPEN LETTER TO CHURCHES SEEKING NEW MEMBERS

Posted: February 27, 2012 | Author: Lyda K. Hawes

 http://seelydarun.com/2012/02/27/open-letter-to-churches-seeking-new-members/

My husband and I moved to the city a few years ago and have been 'between churches' ever since. We've been to visit quite a few of you and have some observations you may find helpful in encouraging more new members:

• No Public Humiliation - please don't make us stand up in a room full of total strangers and introduce ourselves. We want to be anonymous because we're not sure we want to see you again and, frankly, we're still seeing other churches. It's not you, it's us, and we just don't know you very well yet. (And, believe me, if we do decide to join you, you'll be lucky to get us to shut up, so enjoy the quiet while you can get it.)
• Acknowledge We Exist - Being anonymous is not the same as being invisible. We're probably going to be a little confused about what to do and where to go so having someone to greet us and ask if we have questions, or let us know if you do something you own unique way, is most appreciated. Plus, if you act like we're not there, we start to think we might as well not be there as it doesn't seem to matter to you.
• Put it in writing - spell out *everything* we need to know in the bulletin. When to sit, when to stand, where to find the words. Even if you have one of those groovy new digital displays, include in the bulletin what will and wont be on the display screen ('cause some of you like to mix it up and not everything goes up there.)
• No stalking - please don't run out of the church and down the street chasing after us to tell us you were glad to see us (and, yes, that really happened). When you act like it's a miracle of God that you have visitors, it freaks us out. We may or may not fill out an information card, but that doesn't mean we don't like you, it may just mean we found everything we needed on your website.
• Remember us - you get a gold star if we come back and you remember our names, but really just a friendly "nice to see you again" makes us feel like you noticed we were there (but remember the no stalking rule).
• Have a website - if you don't have a website, we wont be coming to your church. Nothing personal, but that alone tells us enough to know you aren't ready for new people. You can get a basic website for free and your own URL for about $25 a year. There is simply no excuse not to have one. (Unless maybe you are Amish, in which case you aren't even reading this post and we're probably not coming to your church for a variety of other reasons anyway.)
• When, Where, What - there are basically 3 things we want to know when we come to your website; when your worship services are held, where you are located, and what you believe. And we'd really like to see all 3 on the home page, but at least make them SUPER easy to find and no more than one click away. If you are having special services like Christmas Eve, Ash Wednesday, Easter (that visitors like us are likely to attend), please put those special worship times on the home page. We have encountered any number of church websites that seem to be more interested in looking pretty than actually being useful. You don't have to be fancy-shmancy super-tech in order for us to get what we need to decide whether to come visit. (Here's a great example of a simple, but effective, website from a church in Michigan that has all three covered on the home page.)
• Tell us what you really believe - be proud of what you believe and s-p-e-l-l it out on your website. Progressive? Great! Theologically conservative? Super! But what do those things mean in the life of your community? It's really helpful before we show up waving our rainbow flags to know that you'll be petitioning for an Intelligent Design curriculum in the local schools. And if that is your community's belief, that's wonderful, but we both know we're not going to be a good fit there so we might as well save each other the frustration. We're going to find out soon enough, so why don't we get that awkward part out of the way online. Besides there is someone out there who would love to find a community like yours if only they knew it existed.

Finding a new church home is not always easy, especially if the one you came from was such an important part of both your faith journey and your personal life. We were very, very close to our previous faith community and it's hard to think of anywhere else coming close. Or maybe we've never been to church and we want to explore that spiritual side of ourselves for the first time, but it's all so new and confusing. Or perhaps we're broken and we need a place where we can be broken and it's still okay. Any number of the things that might bring us to your doorstep can make it hard to do much more than show up, sit quietly in the back, and sneak out afterwards. But that's the beautiful thing about church communities - they bring new people into your life, they can open your heart and mind to new experiences, they can mend those deepest of wounds, and affirm your relationship with God.With all that on the line, don't let the little things mentioned above get in the way of connecting people to the Good News.

In Peace, Lyda & Brian

STILL: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis - Lauren Winner

STILL: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis by Lauren f. Winner, author of numerous books, including Girl Meets God and Mudhouse Sabbath, and on the faculty at Duke University School in Durham, North Carolina, describes how experiences of loss and failure unexpectedy slam her into a wall of doubt and spiritual despair: "My belief has faltered, my sense of God's closeness has grown strained, my efforts at living in accord with what I take to be the call of the gospel have come undone."

This witty and honest book explores  why, for Winner, in the midst of the overwhelming anxiety, loneliness, and boredom of her deepest questioning about where God is - the Christian story still explains who she is better than any other story she's ever known.

Harper press has produced a wonderful discussion and reading guide for small groups to use  in discussion. Designed for Lenten reading, it can really be used any time. Go to www.smallgroupguides.com and scroll down to STILL then press download.

The Episcopal Women's Caucus strives to offer views from different women, lay or ordained, throughout the Church and to hold up celebrations, events, achievements, or struggles that involve women. If you are interested in contributing - whether through an article you have written or a newsworthy item - please contact either Karen Bota, the editor of RUACH KDBota@aol.com or Gigi Conner, The Monthly Caucus gigipriest@prodigy.net

The Episcopal Women's Caucus is on Facebook and we have a website EWC WEBSITE. 
 

 Please feel free to pass along articles to friends or forward this email ... and let us hear from you.And if you are a member and would like to "re-up" your membership, please do so by filling out the coupon at the bottom of the page. If you are new to the Caucus and would like to be a member, please use the same form.