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[Episcopal News Service] The Diocese of Olympia, with congregations on the Pacific Coast side of the state of Washington, announced Oct. 28 that it will transition management of its $100 million investment fund to The Episcopal Church’s endowment, becoming one of the largest diocesan trusts under churchwide management. “For decades, our fund has been managed by volunteers overseen by the board’s Investments Committee,” the Diocese of Olympia’s board of directors said in a letter to shareholders. “While this has served us well in the past, the complexity of modern markets requires institutional expertise.” The change means the diocese’s assets will become one of the many custodial trusts managed within the churchwide endowment by the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, The Episcopal Church’s New York-based corporate entity. Episcopal Church Chief Financial Officer Christopher Lacovara provided additional context in response to an inquiry from Episcopal News Service. “We manage trust funds for more than a dozen dioceses and more than 150 congregations, plus trust funds for a variety of Episcopal charities and organizations,” Lacovara said. “The total program is $350 million, in addition to the [Episcopal Church] endowment of $500 million.” The Diocese of Olympia, in its online news release, listed several benefits of this new management plan. The diocese’s trust will be invested in assets that are aligned with The Episcopal Church’s “no buy” list and other corporate social responsibility initiatives. The Episcopal Church does not charge management fees, and it can better diversify the trust’s investments and ensure returns even in times of market volatility, the diocese said. And the investment returns historically have been better. The DFMS Trust has generated an average annual return of 8.3% since 1993, the diocese said, while the diocese’s own benchmark showed an annual return of 7.8%. “As faithful followers of Jesus in Western Washington, this change will help congregations better support mission-critical ministries throughout our diocese,” Olympia Bishop Phil LaBelle said in the release. “We are thrilled to partner with DFMS in this way.”

[Episcopal News Service] Every morning of the six-day 82nd General Convention in July 2027 will be set aside for worship, Bible studies, and small-group discussions with bishops and deputies at the same tables. The legislative agenda will encourage deeper discernment on key issues, including through a new structure with distinct committees focused on artificial intelligence, racial justice, and the Holy Land. And the Virtual Binder is gone. Instead, bishops and deputies can research and follow legislation by using General Convention’s newly designed software, dubbed the Governance and Legislative System, or GLS. “Its design makes resolutions easier to find and follow, clarifies the status of legislation and amendments and helps participants understand the business before them,” The Episcopal Church’s presiding officers said Oct. 28 in a letter outlining those and other expectations for next year’s churchwide gathering in Phoenix, Arizona. Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe and House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris, in their joint letter to the church, unveiled their vision for the 82nd General Convention with the theme of “Rising in Hope.” “As your presiding officers for General Convention, we are united in a vision for this work as a community of discernment,” Rowe and Ayala Harris said. “We want to create the conditions for the church to gather, pray, listen, build relationships and effectively carry out the responsibilities entrusted to us. We want you to arrive prepared to contribute and return home with a sense of purpose, connection, and hope for the work ahead.” General Convention is the church’s bicameral governing body, which divides its authority between the House of Bishops and House of Deputies. Every three years, hundreds of bishops and deputies gather in a different host city for a week of fellowship, formation, networking, socializing and the church’s core legislative work, including passage of the churchwide triennial budget plan. “We are so excited to welcome The Episcopal Church to the vibrant culture and life of Arizona,” Arizona Bishop Jennifer Reddall said in a written statement to Episcopal News Service as her diocese prepares to host the July 3-8 gathering. It will convene at the Phoenix Convention Center. The way the church gathers as General Convention has evolved substantially in recent years, particularly since the pandemic-delayed 80th General Convention held in 2022 in Baltimore, Maryland. It was shortened to four days while implementing a range of health precautions. The 81st General Convention in 2024 marked a return to a more traditional gathering in Louisville, Kentucky, though business was conducted over six days, still shorter than the convention’s historical length of eight days or more. The gathering next year in Phoenix will again be six days. Committees are now forming for online meetings that have become the norm in advance of the in-person meeting. Detailed plans are still taking shape after church leaders spent the past two years receiving feedback from General Convention attendees and considering ways of further reimagining the church’s governing structures and the gathering’s function. “How we gather, how we care for one another and how we make decisions all express what we believe about the church,” Rowe and Ayala Harris said. “In a culture that often rewards division and treats disagreements as contests to be won, we have an opportunity to practice something different. Our deliberations can make room for conviction, curiosity and the possibility that listening to one another will deepen our understanding.” In 2024, General Convention passed a resolution calling on the church to assess recent changes to the legislative process, the technology that supports legislative deliberations and the convention’s length, and then propose amendments to the bishops’ and deputies’ Rules of Order that would improve the convention’s work. Rowe and Ayala Harris appointed a committee to carry out those assessments, known as the General Convention Reinvention Steering Committee. It was chaired by Minnesota Bishop Craig Loya and the Rev. Scott Gunn, executive director of Forward Movement. One of the committee’s central recommendations was to find ways to foster deeper discernment at General Convention on a smaller number of key issues, Loya told ENS in an interview this month, and to “ground ourselves in Jesus and in the power of the Holy Spirit.” That grounding will happen in the mornings in Phoenix, Loya said. “We’re imagining that every morning of this coming General Convention will be spent in prayer and Bible studies with bishop and deputies.” The Reinvention Steering Committee presented its recommendations to the Joint Standing Committee on Planning and Arrangements, which is now leading churchwide preparations for the 82nd General Convention in collaboration with the presiding officers. As legislative process evolves, budget gets an overhaul Ayala Harris told ENS that the new vision for General Convention is also based on a fall 2024 survey of past attendees. Respondents said they enjoyed the sense of community, inclusive worship services and the democratic process by which the church made some historic decisions in Louisville. On the other hand, they cited challenges navigating the convention’s technology while struggling with time management in the face of what they said was an inefficient legislative process. Some procedural changes were adopted by House of Deputies through its Rules of Order in 2024. Before convening, deputies had spent several months reviewing and debating a series of proposed rules changes, and some of the more controversial proposals were rejected in Louisville. This year, the House of Deputies is not considering a comparable set of potential rules changes for the upcoming convention. With the current rules in place helping to streamline the process, “it really is just relying on legislative committee leadership and the culture of the house to be able to keep itself focused,” Ayala Harris said. At the same time, the Joint Budget Committee this year has been developing a draft churchwide 2028-30 budget plan aligned with the strategic vision outlined by Rowe last week in a presentation to Executive Council, which is the church’s governing body between meetings of General Convention. The council voted in favor […]

[Anglican Taonga] Hawai‘i Bishop Robert Fitzpatrick named nine church leaders as honorary canons of the Cathedral of St. Andrew in Honolulu, O‘ahu, during an Oct. 18 installation service marking the Feast of St. Luke. Most of the honorary canons are from the Diocese of Hawai‘i, but two are from the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia; Jenny Te Paa-Daniel and Fe‘iloakitau Kaho Tevi. Polynesia Archbishop Sione Ulu‘ilakepa attended the service to support Fitzpatrick at one of his final services at the cathedral before retiring at the end of November. During the service, Fitzpatrick described Te Paa-Daniel and Kaho Tevi as special friends and as “kumu,” which means “teacher” in Hawaiian. He thanked them for introducing him to many people and for welcoming him in Oceania and Asia. “They’ve offered me a seat at the table that has been a gift,” Fitzpatrick said. Read the full article here.

Artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be everywhere these days: in the news, in our internet search results, in many workplaces (to some degree), in our conversations, and much more. For people connected to the internet, it has become virtually inescapable. What should its place in our lives be? How is AI shaping us while we use it? What does it add or take away from our lives? Is it a helpful tool or a threat? These are some of the many questions asked and discussed at the Wisdom in the Age of AI conference held at Calvin University Oct. 8-10, 2026. Over 650 people from over a dozen countries around the world gathered on the campus for three days to...

The first installment of this series is available here . Nate Wright of Red Deer, Alta., grew up in a Pentecostal denomination where his parents and grandparents had deep roots. He also attended a Pentecostal Bible college, where he met his wife. After graduation, Wright’s wife (fiancée at the time) began serving as a youth director at Bethel CRC in Edmonton, Alta., and the couple decided to attend that church for four years and then join a Pentecostal church. During those years, Wright worked as a chaplain and later as the residence director at The King’s University in Edmonton. And by the end of four years he had realized, he said: “I’d fallen in love with Reformed theology and the...

Pella (Iowa) Christian High School (PCHS) recently welcomed students from the Netherlands for a three-week cultural exchange, giving Dutch and American students opportunities to learn about one another’s cultures, deepen their understanding of Christian education, and explore their shared heritage. “It gives you an opportunity to see things through their eyes, things that we just see as normal everyday things,” said PCHS parent Jodi DeVries. For Pella Christian, the exchange offered more than an opportunity to experience another culture. Rooted in the Reformed tradition and located in a community shaped by Dutch immigration, the school welcomed students from Greijdanus High School (GHS) in Zwolle, the Netherlands, to explore how faith, education, and daily life are expressed in different cultural contexts...

On 25 October, churches in Armenia met the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP17) with an encounter and a prayer. At the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, received the World Council of Churches (WCC) delegation. In the evening, the WCC led an ecumenical prayer at St Anna Church in Yerevan.

For the first time, organizers plan for The United Methodist Church’s top lawmaking assembly to take place across two locations, and in another historic move, one of those locations will be on the African continent.

[Episcopal News Service] As part of its yearslong effort in reckoning with its history of racism and role in upholding slavery, the Diocese of Southern Virginia has hosted a series of events throughout 2026 centered around reconciliation and repentance. The next event will take place at 10 a.m. Eastern on Nov. 2, All Souls Day, called “Lament. Repent. Reconcile. Heal.” The day will start with a morning worship service at Bruton Parish Church in Colonial Williamsburg honoring three enslaved Africans whose corporeal remains are permanently returning to Virginia after spending decades stored by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Following the livestreamed service, they will be interred nearby at the Utopia Quarter, a site for enslaved laborers located within the Kingsmill resort area, which was previously a plantation. Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe will preside, former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry will preach, and Southern Virginia Bishop Susan Haynes is leading and directing the service. The Rev. Jan Brown, a deacon of 10 years who served Bruton Parish for nearly nine years and has co-led the research of the ancestral remains and planning their repatriation, describes centering the service around the descendants as acts of being “mindful and respectful,” and giving their ancestors the “dignity and reverence they deserve,” she said. “There are people who say things like, ‘This was 400 years ago. Why don’t you let it go?’ First and foremost, these are humans, and they weren’t treated as humans by the church when they were alive. We have never named that sin properly and lamented our responsibility for having done so,” Brown, who is scheduled to be ordained a priest on Oct. 30, told Episcopal News Service. “The truth has not been told before, and it’s being told now, and we’re reckoning with it.  “We always say we want to repent, but you can’t repent if you haven’t lamented first. So, this is our season of lament.” Brown is the founder and executive director of SpiritWorks Foundation Center for the Soul. With diocesan support, the nonprofit created The Long Way Home: A Season of Reckoning, a 49-day season of formation, lament and repair that launched Sept. 14, Holy Cross Day, and culminates with the All Souls Day service. The diocesan observance “takes its name from the long, often invisible road that leads a community back to the truth of its own history and from the ancestors themselves, whose long way home is only now, after centuries, ending.” Clergy and lay Episcopalians throughout the diocese observed the season. Many of the descendants still live in the Williamsburg area, though others live elsewhere. Loretta Burwell, for example, lives in Atlanta, Georgia. A descendant of the Burwell family, she is a lay Episcopal elder who has been involved with archival research and repatriation efforts. “[Burwell’s] been very faithful, and she has told us that she considers this work her gift to her ancestors,” Brown said. The service’s liturgy will acknowledge the injustices many generations of Africans suffered while enslaved in Williamsburg from its founding in 1632 until slavery formally ended in 1865, when the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. It will also acknowledge slavery’s enduring legacy in the form of systemic injustices. The service will include readings from Scripture, music, prayer and reflection. Southern Virginia’s racial reconciliation journey is more than a decade in the making. In 2010, the Newport News-based diocese passed a resolution that created the Repairers of the Breach Task Force. The task force was named in reference to the promise of restoration and renewal depicted in Isaiah 58:12: “Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.” The task force regularly hosts racial healing workshops and other educational events that foster empathy and encourage Episcopalians to engage in racial and ethnic justice work in and out of church. Its website offers educational and liturgical resources for congregations and church leaders. In 2013, former Southern Virginia Bishop Herman Hollerith IV formally apologized for the diocese’s role in slavery and segregation in a service of repentance, reconciliation and healing. Haynes described the years-long work as “a really big deal,” especially when recognizing the harming of different groups of people “is not a very popular thing to do” outside of church. “It’s not just one diocese attempting to repair the relationship, but it’s the whole people, and it’s the whole church that is trying to stand against harming other groups of people,” Haynes told ENS in a phone interview. “This day of reckoning, at least for myself, is an act of love for my country, because I want my country to be whole and well and healthy. But in order to be whole and well and healthy, we’ve got to acknowledge past wrongdoings first.” The diocesan service comes as Colonial Williamsburg prepares to celebrate its centennial Nov. 14 and 16 as a living-history museum. Much of the museum’s own racial reconciliation work has included uncovering, restoring and centering the stories of the enslaved and free Black people who made up approximately half of Williamsburg’s population in the 18th century. The diocese’s reconciliation journey also included several years of archival research and working closely with the Let Freedom Ring Foundation, a Williamsburg-based nonprofit dedicated to preserving and protecting the site and artifacts of the First Baptist Church of Williamsburg, one of the oldest active congregations, founded in 1776, the birth year of the United States, by enslaved and free Black Americans. The researchers learned that additional 38 unknown enslaved Africans whose skeletal remains, at some point, were excavated from the nearby Pettus Plantation burial site and remain with the Smithsonian Institution. The names of their enslavers are known, though, because their names appear on the pews at Bruton Parish Church. The collaborators are working on repatriating their remains so they can be “properly” buried in Virginia, Brown said. […]

United Church of Christ General Minister and President/CEO, the Rev. Karen Georgia Thompson, has joined with several other national faith and civic leaders, including the Rev. William Barber, in lending her voice to a new campaign denouncing authoritarianism in the…

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