Greetings; I am honored to be on the ballot to serve as one of our General Convention delegates! General Convention is a powerful gathering of the faithful- it creates/directs vision for the whole Church and determines how that vision is funded. Thus, whom we send to Convention is important, as they represent the hopes, dreams, and vision of our Diocese to the wider Church.
If elected to serve, I commit to advocating for and supporting the following at Convention: sharing our Christian faith through evangelism and church/ministry planting initiatives, investment in areas of justice (Race and Reconciliation, LGBTQ+, Gender/Sex, Environment, Economic inequality), Church efforts to support and engage the youngest generations, raising up strong lay and ordained leadership, and innovation in ministry (dreaming of new/different ways to be Church in the 21st century).
My past and present experience speaks to how I engage this challenging and important work. Since joining the Diocese in 2020, I engaged the formation of disciples through leading workshops through Church Leadership University- one on discernment and one on Episcopal Evangelism. At St. George’s, I prioritized formation of current/future lay and ordained leadership in the Church; we currently have three members in the discernment process and each discernment group has diverse representation including culture/race, sexuality, religion, and members of multiple generations (including Generation Z). With lay leadership, we are developing a Strategic Vision for our next 3-5 years of ministry, which prioritizes Justice, Community, and Formation focus. I am a current member of Diocesan Council, elected in 2021; in this capacity, I collaborate with other Council members as we reimagine the role Council holds in our Diocese, particularly our fiduciary responsibilities: how we budget, how we manage checks and balances, and how we create new revenue streams to fund future ministry priorities.
Previously, I served in the Diocese of Virginia. There, I facilitated conversations with our Bishop about the experiences and needs of the LGBTQ community. From that conversation, I gathered a team and developed a Diocesan-wide LGBTQ retreat. I collaborated on the Church-wide level with a group of lay and clergy leaders to create the Embracing Evangelism resource. This is a free program offered by the Episcopal Church that helps people reclaim the spiritual practice of evangelism and sharing the Good News of Jesus in a loving, joy-filled way.
Racial justice is permanent in my ministry. I participated in the Episcopal Young Adult Pilgrimage to Ferguson, MO in 2015, which transformed my understanding of race in the United States. Since then, I actively engage uprooting the systems of race in our Church—through preaching and invited guest preachers, creating and leading Lenten book studies, engaging the Sacred Ground series at St. George’s with Christ Church, Budd Lake, etc.
We are called to form strong disciples who are unafraid of evangelism. We are called to discern what the Holy Spirit is up to and engage our communities in mutual partnerships for God’s purposes. We are called to embody God’s justice for all and engage the hard work of healing and restoration. We must embody this intentionally - in our budgets, in our programming, and in our planning. I would be honored to serve as one of our General Convention delegates, as an advocate for these values and future direction of our Church.