A Letter to the Diocese of Virginia from the Deputation at Convention

Columbus, Ohio
June 15, 2006

Dear colleagues in ministry in Virginia -

Greetings in the name of our Risen Lord, Jesus Christ.

I am writing to you on behalf of the Virginia deputation to General Convention. We have four clergy deputies, four lay deputies, and four alternates, as well as many Virginia colleagues present as volunteers doing important work for the church. Bishops Lee and Jones are extremely busy in their work in the House of Bishops and on the Special Legislative Committee ("Committee 26") and Evangelism Committee.

We are grateful for your prayers and messages to us. Though the schedule and volume precludes us from making an individual response, we do read your messages and appreciate your prayers for us and the church, as well as your concern for our work.

Our schedule is intense: committee hearings generally begin at 7:30 a.m., followed by worship, a legislative session, a brief time for lunch, more committee hearings, another brief break, and more committee hearings. For example, on Wednesday night, there were two long hearings; Committee 26 held a hearing in the Hyatt Hotel Ballroom, before over 1500 people, a hearing lasting until after 10 pm.

Although the press is focused almost exclusively on the Special Legislative Committee whose primary job is helping craft the response to the Windsor Report, your deputation has been extremely active in performing the work of the church at Convention. Some highlights so far include:

-- Bob Prichard and Cindi Bartol are serving on the Prayer Book, Liturgy and Music Committee. They are handling nearly 50 resolutions, some of which call for substantial new alternative service texts. Dr. Prichard's monumental knowledge of church history and how our liturgy came to be in its current form has been a great resource to the committee. Both Cindi and Bob have worked closely to help revise prayers for those considering entry into military service; a controversial prayer about sexuality was dropped because its theology was unclear.

-- Susan Goff is working on the education committee, and helping that committee remember that various new training mandates need to be balanced with the overall needs of the church, and the realities of obtaining an adequate number of volunteers and clergy adequately trained in the basics.

-- Sue Eaves appeared before the canons subcommittee to help point out the difficulties of the proposed complete re-write of the disciplinary rules, a re-write that would subject lay people to far more extensive disciplinary proceedings and also make it easier to remove clergy.

-- Jim Papile has been following the social and urban concerns committee and its consideration of proposals to study the impact of slavery, appropriate apologies for slavery and the segregated aftermath, as well as studies of possible remedial measures.

-- Bishop Jones has been active in helping the wider church learn how to plant new churches, as he has done so successfully for us in Virginia. This evening he was testifying before the Program, Budget and Finance Committee to help secure the needed funding for such work.

Victoria Heard, first clergy alternate, has been very active in assisting the Evangelism committee on church planting issues.

-- my work has focused on support for the church's missionaries as well as adding language to resolutions about torture to commit the church to help those in government service who resisted illegal orders to carry out misconduct. This effort is strongly supported by our military chaplains, a vital and underappreciated portion of the church;

-- JP Causey, as chair of the Committee on Dispatch of Business, has worked as if he were the Chair of the Rules Committee of the House of Representatives, keeping our large legislative body moving forward in a productive way. JP is working with over 800 of us amateur legislators to conduct the business of the church for three years in about nine days. That is a tall order and watching him work is like watching Tiger Woods play golf.

-- Rod DeArment, a lay alternate, and Debbie Rutter, a clergy alternate, have both done great service to our deputation by covering lengthy proceedings on changes in the structure of the church and on the consecration of new bishops; Holly Antolini, a clergy alternate, is working for Center Aisle. Rod has already served for one session as a deputy, "platooning" in order to give one of us a rest. He will see more service as a voting deputy in future sessions;

-- the staff of Center Aisle publishes a daily newspaper, much appreciated by the deputies and bishops to the Convention. Consider this important mission work by Virginia to the rest of the church; one of our best missionaries, the Rev. Lauren Stanley from Sudan, has returned for this work, given her professional journalism background.

These people are doing the work of the church in an important, creative, and effective way. Hats off to our Virginia press colleagues and to Bishop Lee for this initiative, going back to the 2000 General Convention in Denver.

-- Russ Palmore and Bishop Lee are serving on the Special Legislative Committee to respond to the Windsor Report. They are in the eye of the storm, the focus of intense attention and scrutiny. We are fortunate to have sent our best in Virginia to that Committee.

Their hearings are heavily attended and closely watched as they review nine resolutions from the Special Commission which reported in April as well as many from individual dioceses, deputies, and bishops responding to the Windsor Report.

As you probably know, the Windsor Report was commissioned by agreement of the Anglican Archbishops and Presiding Bishops in October 2003 as a response to the actions of the 2003 General Convention in agreeing to consecrate the Rev. V. Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire and in passing a resolution interpreted by some dioceses as authorizing local services of same sex blessing. Those actions greatly agitated a number of other branches of the Anglican Communion.

Wednesday night's hearing was before nearly 1700 people (including overflow out the door). More than seventy people testified on three resolutions, including the Archbishop of York. To my knowledge, testimony by an Archbishop from another branch of the communion is extraordinary and perhaps unprecedented. It underlines the importance to the rest of the Communion of what we are doing here in Columbus.

The texts of these resolutions are those proposed in April by the Special Commission on the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. That Commission had been appointed by the Presiding Bishop and the President of the House of Deputies last fall. These resolutions dealt with a call from the Windsor Report for an expression of regret, for a moratorium on the consecration of any more non-celibate gay or lesbian bishops, and for a moratorium on same-sex blessings by the church. These are three primary issues on which the WR seeks action from General Convention. The wording of these resolutions is unavoidably controversial.

With respect to all the Special Commission resolutions before General Convention, the Special Legislative Committee is working through these in exacting detail with meticulous care for the language we are using in our efforts to address our strained relations with the rest of the Anglican Communion in a respectful and appropriate way. The discussion before this Committee and by its members reflects much of the best the church is about -- passionate commitment intelligently and respectfully expressed.

I hope these observations are helpful as you hear about our work in the press.

Please keep praying for our work, our bishops, our deputies, alternates and volunteers, and for all those doing the work of convention. We are plunging into some of the most difficult aspects in the next few days. We are grateful for your support.

Faithfully,

Russell V. Randle

Chair, Virginia Deputation to General Convention