Saturday, July 7, 2012

Live From Indianapolis III


It was a jam-packed day to be exceeded only by tomorrow.

There were long legislative sessions in the House of Bishops in which we dealt with the necessary business of the church plus a lot of issues where we were just voicing our moral sentiments.

But the more interesting things happened in the Structure Committee and at the Asian lunch. Last night there seemed to have been a shift in the sentiments of the Committee. Afterward a subcommittee met late into the night to work on a resolution to substitute for the 40 or 50 or so resolutions all calling for major structural reform. When they came back this morning, they had settled in on an independent task force to create a restructuring proposal. Between meetings today, that group worked tirelessly on a draft resolution creating the task force. They presented their product tonight. It is already a thing of beauty, but we worked it over in the Committee, having a very positive reaction but also offering a number of creative suggestions. The drafting committee is at it again even now and will be working on it tomorrow. We will resume over the noon hour to and spend a couple of hours perfecting the most important resolution for the overall mission of the church in quite some time. The spirit of the committee has shifted from basic anxiety to basic excitement – with some anxiety still fluttering around. That is good. No anxiety would mean no real danger of change.

The most pleasant part of today was having lunch with Episcopal Asian Ministries – a huge gathering at P. F. Chang’s. I sat next to Bp. David Lai of Taiwan. We used to share a table in the House of Bishops. I saw Bishop Malecdon, Primate of the Philippines, and his Secretary General and Chancellor, Floyd – both of whom I knew from my visit to Manila. I saw Mimi Wu and Fred Vergara of EAM, and our own Filipino & Pacific Islander Missioner, Fr. Arsolin Almondiel, was there to introduce me to Bishop Maximo, Primate of the P.I.C, our communion partner (as in we are in full communion) in the Philippines. I met a priest named Irene from Guam, Peter Ng, and many Asians involved in ministry here.

When the Episcopal Church comes to Indiana, you notice we are here! We look like the world. We look like the family of God. 

2 comments:

Matthew said...

What of the move to sell off 815? NYC is admittedly very expensive but I never got any sense what would replace it? What is the alternative on the table?

I must be very out of touch because honestly when I heard the idea I thought no way is that ever going to pass HoD. And it did. Or maybe I don't know enough about the alternatives. BTW, how did our NV delegation vote on that issue? Matthew wright

Bishop Dan said...

I don't know how the Nevadans voted. There has been a huge push to sell 815 for a long, long time. They almost did the deal to move the Church Center to Chelsea Square to live with General Seminary during the Griswold years, but the Church backed out at the last minute. Proposals usually have to do with moving to a more central, less expensive location. The problem of course is that this is a lousy time to sell real estate. Part of the building is empty which would drive down the price further. The original proposal was a complicated process with lots of wiggle room. The Structure Committee amended to force a sale within 3 years. That was amended on the floor to mandate selling sometime before Jesus comes. It may or may not happen. "No man knoweth the day or the hour."