The 81st General Convention: A Brief Summary

Beth will be hosting a special General Convention Adult Forum at 9:30am Sunday, July 21 to share experiences, discuss how the business of the church is transacted and offer a summary of resolutions passed she considers especially significant. Having attended five General Conventions, she’ll reflect on how the tenor of the House of Deputies and it’s debate has changed over the past 20 years. 

The 81st General Convention (GC) of the Episcopal Church is in the books. It was an exhilarating, thoughtful and thought provoking seven days and it is challenging to come up with a few points to mention here to give a sense of the family-reunion-meets-the-direction-of-the-church-through-prayer attitude and work of GC. But I’ll try. 

First, for those who want to skip this article and go to all the official information about GC, here’s a link: The 81st General Convention - The Episcopal Church and those who want to see all the resolutions considered and their outcomes, here’s that link: https://www.vbinder.net/resolutions?house=HD&lang=en

We prayed. A lot. At the Holy Eucharist and Morning Prayer. At the request of individual deputies when resolutions were up for vote. At the request of the President of the House of Deputies, Julia Ayala Harris. We prayed through singing, applause and laughter. We even danced a time or two. 

We heard testimony and received a prayer to remember and commemorate indigenous children who were removed from their families and taken to boarding and residential schools. 

Five dioceses became two: the Dioceses of Eastern Michigan and Western Michigan became the Diocese of the Great Lakes and the Dioceses of Eau Claire, Fond du Lac, and Milwaukee became  the Diocese of Wisconsin.

Presiding Bishop Elect Rowe

The House of Bishops elected the next Presiding Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Sean Rowe. Bishop Rowe takes office November 1 and will be installed in a ceremony at 815 2nd Ave. in New York, the headquarters of the Episcopal Church. He preached at the Holy Eucharist following his election, you can find it here:  https://www.episcopalchurch.org/publicaffairs/81st-general-convention-of-the-episcopal-churchclosing-eucharist-sermon-by-presiding-bishop-elect-sean-rowe/ 

And so much more. 

And last, but not least, our diocese was well-represented by our deputation (pictured below) and Bishop Cowden. The program for the Bishop’s spouses, which ran parallel to the House of Bishops schedule, was brought together and co-hosted by Melissa Cowden. Several people from our diocese joined the ranks of volunteers doing everything from checking credentials to leading children’s programming, placing meal orders for delivery and – one evening – schlepping through a torrential downpour to bring dinner to us when we had a very short meal break between legislative sessions (thanks Colleen and David!). 

And, to quote The Rev. Canon Jordan Trumble in her summary of General Convention found in the July 3 edition of Diocesan News & Notices: “To paraphrase the Gospel of John, there are also many other things that General Convention did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the emails that would be written.”