Five dioceses, a New York City parish, and Virginia Theological Seminary are among 91 organizations to receive $1.25 million each through the Lilly Endowment’s Nurturing Children Through Worship and Prayer Initiative. Grant recipients included the Episcopal dioceses of Indianapolis, Los Angeles, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia; the Parish of Calvary-St. George’s in New York City; and VTS.

The Lilly grants are intended to foster the spiritual growth of children by helping Christian congregations “more fully and intentionally engage children in intergenerational corporate worship and prayer practices.”

For the Episcopal Church, which has the highest average member age among religious traditions in the United States and largely struggles to retain the children of its members after they leave home, the stakes are high.

“I believe there’s a future for our church,” said Bishop Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows of Indianapolis. “And if we are not framing all that we do with that in mind by trying to cultivate the spiritual lives of our youngest members, and to continue to draw on the wisdom of our elders, then we’re not doing, I think, what God would call us to do.”

The Rt. Rev. Jennifer Brooke-Davidson, Assistant Bishop of North Carolina and supervisor of the diocese’s grant implementation, said this work gets to the core of the church’s mission.

“During the last few meetings of the House of Bishops, it’s really emerged that the bishops as a whole feel like many of the struggles that we have today can really only be ameliorated by deeper formation at all levels,” said Brooke-Davidson. “Everything ultimately comes back to that. And finding a way to do that in small churches and rural churches and churches that can’t support age-graded Sunday school is key to our mission of bringing the good news of Christ to the world, now and in the future.”

The reality for many churches is there are fewer and fewer children in the pews. A mere 14 percent of Episcopalians reported to be the parents or guardians of children younger than 18, according to the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. That presents a challenge when offering meaningful formation opportunities, Brooke-Davidson said.

“The majority of Episcopal congregations desperately want to do more with kids, but you can’t have an age-graded Sunday school when you have six kids,” she said.

Still, there are opportunities for parishes to “work with what they have” by more intentionally bringing children into the worship service, she said. For some, that could mean inviting children to be acolytes. For others, it could mean equipping parents and other adults in the congregation to have conversations with children about what’s happening in the liturgy and the fundamentals of the faith.

“A lot of studies have shown that this is one of the key pieces of faith formation and retention for young people,” Brooke-Davidson said. “Churches are concerned because they’re not always retaining young people once they’ve left home or even when they’re teenagers, … but [studies show] that when children have relationships with other adults in the congregation, that include conversations about faith, their engagement in the later years of their lives goes way, way up.”

With the grant funding, the Diocese of North Carolina will hire a missioner for children’s and family ministry, offer mini-grants to support innovative ideas among parishes, deploy coaches to assess how children are involved in worship, and host learning opportunities for congregational leaders related to intergenerational worship and formation. The goal is to support congregational initiatives rather than diocesan-wide programming, Brooke-Davidson said.

The Diocese of Indianapolis will establish a new program, “Centering All Children In Worship,” to help youth engage in a diversity of music expressions, including Anglican choral, African-American spiritual, and Latin American traditions. Baskerville-Burrows envisions the diocese offering workshops with area music instructors to teach children “how to sing other forms of music effectively, without the sense of appropriation.”

“This is something I’m hoping to grow a bit, no matter what size our congregations are and how many children they might have, to learn the fuller, broader expression of our current Anglican traditions, which are really broad in this global church of ours,” Baskerville-Burrows said.

The diocese also plans to help congregations cater to different learning styles and abilities by offering individual educational plans — accommodations typically offered in public schools for students who receive special education services — to help neurodiverse children engage in worship and create calming spaces within their churches.

“Like many other dioceses, I’m sure have noticed, in our congregations there is a broader sort of neurodiversity than was diagnosed in the past,” Baskerville-Burrows said. “So, there are different needs, and we want to pay attention to those.”

The Diocese of Virginia will establish a training laboratory that will invite experimentation among dozens of participating congregations and ultimately produce a guidebook for other congregations.

“For far too long, the church has underinvested in building disciples of Jesus Christ, deeming the nursery and age-segregated Sunday School as sufficient formation for our children, resulting in multiple generations [and a declining number] of parishioners loosely practicing the faith,” Bishop E. Mark Stevenson said.

“The Diocese of Virginia is serious about faith formation, and I wholeheartedly believe this work must begin with children and their families. Just as Jesus Christ incarnate did many radical things, even turned the world upside down when he came to save the world, we too need to think creatively, collaboratively, and downright radically about how our diocese is equipping and training our 173 congregations to raise disciples. This grant is an incredible opportunity to help us do this work.”

Virginia Theological Seminary will use its $1.25 million grant for a research project that will draw on Anglican theological anthropology, liturgical theology, science, and the arts to enhance the experience of worship and prayer for children, according to the seminary. The five-year project, called “Roots & Wings — Intergenerational Formative Collaborative,” will “challenge the status quo” of adult-centric worship practices and explore how to make worship and prayer more inclusive of children, including those with disabilities.

VTS said it was approached by small congregations and diocesan leaders to do this work.

“The project is designed to transform the culture of worship and faith formation in Episcopal congregations by recognizing the inherent worth and giftedness of all children,” said Sarah Allred, project director of Roots & Wings, in a press release. “Roots & Wings will call our denomination to account for the gap between what we claim to believe about children and how we too often live as church.”

The Episcopal entities were among 91 organizations to receive grants through the Lilly Endowment funding round, which totaled $104 million. Recipients represent a broad spectrum of Christian traditions, including Catholic, mainline and evangelical Protestant, Orthodox, Anabaptist, and Pentecostal organizations.

The Lilly Endowment is based in Indianapolis and was founded by the Lilly family in 1937 with gifts of stock from Eli Lilly and Company. It had $62.2 billion in assets at the end of 2023. The foundation supports initiatives related to religion, community development, and education.

Last year, the endowment made grants to 33 organizations in an invitational round of the Nurturing Children initiative.

The Rt. Rev. Matthew Gunter was installed as bishop on October 5 during the inaugural convention of the new Diocese of Wisconsin, now a single entity comprising the former dioceses of Milwaukee, Fond du Lac, and Eau Claire. The merger of those three dioceses was approved by the 81st General Convention in June, after three years of discussion and deliberation among clergy and laypersons.

Presiding Bishop-elect Sean Rowe taught and preached at Wisconsin’s convention, held October 4-5 at the Holiday Inn Hotel & Convention Center in Stevens Point, a small city in the state’s central region.

In his homily during the investiture, Rowe reflected on John 15 (“I am the vine, you are the branches”) and the imperative of Christians to abide in the vine, bear fruit, and embrace pruning.

“About the time I think that I’ve come into spiritual maturity, and I think I can abide in the vine … that I can abide in Jesus, I decide I want to graduate from being just a branch to being a ‘vine adviser,’” Rowe said. “This is when you advise the vine grower, who may not really understand exactly what’s happening. It never works out well.”

He said the dioceses’ reunion is an example of yielding to God’s pruning.

“Allowing the Father, … who is the vine grower, to do the pruning in an expert way, to allow ourselves to be pruned, is the work of the spiritual life,” Rowe said. “It’s what you’ve done here as three dioceses (coming) together. It’s what you’re doing today as we recognize this new reunion … of an old diocese, as we recognize Bishop Matt.”

Rowe commended Gunter, saying he is “looked to in our House of Bishops as one who abides, as one of deep spiritual wisdom.”

“I’m thrilled that he is leading your people here today,” Rowe said.

Gunter had served as bishop of the former Diocese of Fond du Lac since 2014, and in recent years was Bishop Provisional of Eau Claire and Assisting Bishop in the Diocese of Milwaukee.

The Diocese of Wisconsin was originally formed in 1847. In 1875, the Diocese of Fond du Lac was created to serve the northeastern portion of the state, and the Diocese of Wisconsin was renamed the Diocese of Milwaukee in 1886. In 1928, the Diocese of Eau Claire was formed from parts of the Diocese of Fond du Lac and parts of the Diocese of Milwaukee. Gunter is recognized as the 12th bishop of Wisconsin, taking his place in the succession of bishops in the diocese’s former iteration.

The new Diocese of Wisconsin, which today includes over 100 congregations and more than 11,500 baptized members, is bolstered by a recent infusion of funding. In the spring, shortly before the three dioceses voted to reunite, the Diocese of Fond du Lac announced it had received a $7.9 million donation from the Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity, an Anglican religious order established in Fond du Lac during Bishop Charles Chapman Grafton’s episcopacy in the late 1800s.

Gunter has said the lion’s share of the funding, $6.9 million, will be dedicated to congregational development. So far, $500,000 has been dispersed to 34 congregations as rebated assessments. The remaining $1 million was earmarked by the order for theological education.

Wisconsin is one of two recent mergers among Episcopal dioceses. Also at this year’s General Convention, the Diocese of Eastern Michigan and Diocese of Western Michigan received approval for their juncture into the newly named Diocese of the Great Lakes. The inaugural convention of the newly joined diocese will meet on October 18-19 in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan.

The Cathedral of All Souls in Asheville, North Carolina, reported devastating flooding. Video footage posted September 29 by the cathedral showed flood water engulfing the church’s outdoor sign, and photos taken after the water had receded showed a visible watermark several feet high on All Souls’ chapel building.

North Carolina’s Buncombe County, of which Asheville is the county seat, was among the hardest-hit communities, accounting for at least 40 deaths, as of September 30.

“This is the worst flooding that we have seen and it’s the worst flooding that this structure will have seen,” the Very Rev. Sarah Hurlbert, dean of the cathedral, told local media.

The historic church was consecrated in 1896, and its pulpit, lectern, high altar, cathedra, pews, and kneeling cushions are all original.

“We will rebuild and our faith is shown now in loving our neighbors,” the cathedral said on its Facebook page.

A GoFundMe campaign organized by All Souls to help the cathedral community and its neighbors had raised $15,791 of its $50,000 goal as of the morning of October 3.

Thirty miles south of the cathedral, Helene wreaked havoc on Kanuga, an Episcopal conference, retreat, and camp center that hosts more than 35,000 guests annually.

“This tropical storm has been the most devastating weather event to impact Kanuga since the great flood of 1916,” said president and CEO Michael Sullivan in an update to supporters Monday evening. “Power is out and roads in and out of Kanuga are closed. Kanuga Lake Road is unstable. Kanuga sustained substantial damage from high winds, flooding, and downed trees.”

Two of the camp’s 39 cottages and its lakefront pavilion sustained significant damage. Trees fell on several other buildings, and the wind caused damage to some roofs. Kanuga occupies 1,400 acres of the Blue Ridge Mountains near Hendersonville, with a 30-acre lake at its center. The center will remain closed for at least two weeks as leaders assess the damage and plan to make repairs, Sullivan said.

“While the damage is great, it is not catastrophic. We will recover,” Sullivan added.

The office of the Episcopal Diocese of Western North Carolina, meanwhile, remains without power after the storm, according to its Facebook page.

The Diocese of Georgia also described damage across the diocese during the weekend, including many downed trees at its retreat center, Honey Creek, and tree damage at St. Andrew’s in Douglas.

“It’s been a rough few days,” Honey Creek said in a Facebook post. “Thursday night was scary, Friday was disorienting with hot daytime temps and no power or phone service, and Saturday has worn folks down.”

St. Bartholomew’s in Savannah, a historically significant African American church with roots dating back to the 1830s, sustained damage when a pecan tree hit a power pole and crushed into the sanctuary roof. A parochial mission of St. Paul the Apostle in Savannah, the church holds services two Sundays a month with a handful of active members.

“Hurricane Helene impacted every corner of the Diocese of Georgia and we have a lot of clean up ahead of us in many areas,” the diocese said.

Helene, which made landfall in Florida on September 26 and swept across the southeast region, left many parishioners unable to worship in their buildings Sunday morning. Bishop Frank Logue of Georgia and his wife, Victoria, hosted online Morning Prayer from the Episcopal Center in Savannah for those who couldn’t meet safely in person. The service featured songs created for worship during the COVID pandemic.

Meanwhile, Camp Mikell, the Diocese of Atlanta’s 460-acre camp and conference center located in far northeast Georgia, offers refuge for those affected by the storm. On September 30, the camp offered its facilities to anyone looking for a place to stay while waiting for utilities to be restored.

“We have power, hot water, and our stores and gas stations are stocked,” the camp said on its Facebook page.

In Florida, Church of the Redeemer, Sarasota, reported during the weekend that the parish’s exterior was inaccessible, under four feet of water. The inside, however, was “miraculously dry.”

“Please pray for waters to recede and comfort for all in harm’s way,” Redeemer’s rector, the Rev. Charleston Wilson, said. “It is in the trying times that we often become aware of God’s presence and protection. No matter the size of the storm, his eternal promises are infinitely bigger. And rest assured, as soon as this weather passes, this parish community will be hard at work helping to soothe the suffering!”

The Episcopal Relief & Development has a Hurricane Relief Fund to provide critical supplies, such as food and water, pastoral care, and other urgent needs, and to support long-term efforts needed to rebuild in the wake of Helene.

The lease agreement includes the entirety of “the Close,” a moniker General uses for its historic five-acre campus, where the school has been based since its founding in 1817. Spanning nearly a full city block in Manhattan’s Chelsea district, the school’s 13 buildings total approximately 150,000 square feet.

General declined to disclose the terms of the lease agreement, though the property is reportedly valued at more than $100 million. Under the agreement, the seminary will continue to occupy portions of campus year-round, including some administrative offices and faculty apartments.

The seminary said the arrangement will “secure GTS’ presence on the Close for decades to come” while also allowing for building improvements. Seminary leaders have repeatedly said they do not intend to sell the campus.

It will also allow General to accommodate more students visiting campus for their intensive weeks, held three times annually, as part of the school’s hybrid M.Div. program, along with commencement and matriculation.

Since shifting from a traditional three-year, residential program to the hybrid model, the seminary has accommodated students in one, 16-room residential building, which limited the program capacity, said Nicky Burridge, the seminary’s vice president for communications. Now, the seminary will use additional buildings to accommodate up to 45 students, she said.

This fall, General saw its largest new class of M.Div. students since 2010, with 18 matriculating. Now three years into offering the hybrid program exclusively, the seminary has a total 42 enrolled students. Students have the option to complete the M.Div. in three or four years.

“Following the introduction of our hybrid M.Div., which combines online learning with in-person intensives, we found a mission-compatible tenant, which guarantees we continue to operate out of our historic home. GTS is now set to serve the Church for another century in New York,” the Very Rev. Ian S. Markham, president of The General Theological Seminary, said in a news release.

Earlier, General pursued a long-term lease with a nonprofit choral music school, which elicited pushback from the bishops of the Dioceses of New York and Long Island over the organization’s assumed stance on LGBTQ issues.

“The seminary received offers to lease the Close from a number of entities, including, as previously reported, the School of Sacred Music (SSM). After reviewing these offers, the GTS Board voted unanimously to accept the offer from Vanderbilt. It wishes the SSM the very best with its future endeavors,” the seminary said in its announcement Thursday.

For its part, Vanderbilt offered few details about its plans, which are pending approval from various regulatory bodies, though the deal builds on the university’s existing presence in the city. Last year, Vanderbilt established a regional administrative hub in New York City to house alumni relations, career advancement and enrollment affairs functions. Home to more than 7,800 alumni, New York City has the largest Vanderbilt community outside of Nashville, the university said.

The lease is expected to begin in early 2025, once approvals are secured.

In its announcement, General stressed that the lease agreement is not a merger, and the seminary will continue to “operate as a separate entity with its own distinct identity and programming.”

In 2022, GTS entered an affiliation agreement with Virginia Theological Seminary, through which the two seminaries operate as separate entities, retaining their own accreditations, endowments and boards, but sharing an overlapping governance structure and executive leadership team.

Delegates considered the resolution at the diocese’s September 20-21 convention, more than a year after a majority of the church’s bishops and standing committees withheld their consent to the election of the Rev. Charlie Holt as Florida’s next bishop, and more than two years since Holt’s first disputed election.

The resolution called on the Standing Committee “to act with haste to begin the process of creating a search process” for electing the next bishop. The diocese has been without a bishop ordinary since the retirement of longtime Bishop Samuel Johnson Howard in late 2023.

The resolution’s authors, the Rev. Dr. Jon Davis of St. Mark’s Church in Palatka and the Rev. Matt Marino of Trinity Parish in St. Augustine, cited the need for a bishop to build a diocesan culture, recruit “A-list clergy,” raise up ordinands, increase the sustainability of the diocese’s struggling summer camp, and cast a “unifying vision” for the diocese.

Marino said the resolution wasn’t binding, acknowledging that “no one can tie the Standing Committee’s hands.”

An earlier version of the resolution, which was submitted through the diocesan call for resolutions, specified that steps should be taken toward beginning a search process in the first quarter of 2025. But at the convention, Davis proposed an amendment removing that timeframe from the resolution.

“This is a purely aspirational resolution,” Marino said. “It has no teeth. The only people who can call for the election of a bishop are the Standing Committee. It’s aspirationally saying, ‘You guys are doing an awesome job at this, and our name is the “church with bishops,” so we ought to have one of those. So, when you’re ready, we would love for that to happen, aspirationally.’”

The Rev. Lisa Meirow of St. Andrew’s in Jacksonville deemed the resolution unnecessary.

“I have complete faith that our Standing Committee is privy to information that the rest of us are not privy to, and that when the Holy Spirit moves their heart to tell them it is time for an election, that our diocese is to the point where we can have a solid election, when we can elect a bishop that won’t just have a mess dropped into his or her lap, I trust the Standing Committees to make that call,” Meirow said.

The Very Rev. Kate Moorehead Carroll, dean of St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral, moved to postpone the resolution “in the spirit of unity.”

“It’s a great resolution; it may not be quite the right time to vote on it,” she said.

Delegates ultimately cast a 131-56 vote to postpone the resolution indefinitely.

The timing for electing a new bishop remains unchanged, the Rev. Sarah Minton, president of the Standing Committee, said via email after the convention.

“Our Standing Committee is continuing to lead a very productive process of healing and strengthening of our diocesan body. As already established, the continued success of this process will reveal the best election timing to the Standing Committee. Until then, we are blessed by the remarkable efforts of our laity, clergy and the staff of the Diocese that are moving our ministry forward with a sense of renewal, optimism and unity,” Minton said.

The decision to postpone the resolution “reaffirmed that our process has been well received, wide reaching, and effective,” she added.

While delivering a report to the convention, the Rev. Teresa Seagle, completing her term as Standing Committee president, said several areas are being addressed to set the stage for a new bishop election, including “the ordination process, finances, website and communication, caring for souls, human resources and the canons and constitution.” Each of those areas played some role in the two failed bishop elections, she said.

The Standing Committee has served as the ecclesiastical authority of the diocese since Howard’s retirement in late 2023. The Rt. Rev. Scott Benhase, former Bishop of Georgia, began serving in January as a part-time assisting bishop in the Diocese of Florida.

The diocese held two separate elections in 2022 to name Howard’s successor, with the Rev. Charlie Holt being twice declared the winner. Those elections were challenged on procedural grounds by those opposed to Holt’s traditional theology on marriage.

Concerns also emerged over Holt’s past comments that were considered offensive to Black people and LGBTQ people. The failed elections revealed fault lines in the diocese related to the issue of same-sex relationships.

After the contested elections, the Standing Committee hired Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves to help mediate conflict within the diocese.

Gray-Reeves published a report, based on several listening sessions, in December 2023 that described a diocesan climate of “deep mistrust, fear, hurt, isolation, and lowered functioning, productivity and innovation.” Last year’s diocesan convention shone a light on existing tensions, with delegates only passing two of six resolutions on the agenda.

In an opening address at the convention, Gray-Reeves recounted the steps taken to promote healing and reconciliation over the past year, including the convening of three convocations with the goal of creating a “psychologically safe space” to build trust and have facilitated conversation across the diocese’s dividing theological lines.

Gray-Reeves commended the diocese on those efforts.

“It may not seem like much, but you have made great strides in these past months as a diocese,” she said. “More than that, you are a powerful witness in the world where people give up on each other all the time. Thank you for not giving up on each other.”

In her report to convention, Seagle said the diocese is in a “different place than it was one year ago,” though work remains to repair relationships.

“Not all in our diocese … are experiencing the big tent,” Seagle said. “We have people who were not welcome in our diocese and, though the door is now open, the trauma of the past needs healing. We have people whose theological beliefs are now among the minority in the Episcopal Church. While they want to reside under the big tent, they feel they have been pushed out of the tent.”

Meanwhile, on the matter of moving toward a new bishop election, Gray-Reeves said the feedback from small-group discussions at the convocations indicate there is disagreement about whether the diocese is ready.

“Responses to questions about underlying issues in the diocese concluded recommended actions such as ‘call an election for another bishop,’ ‘don’t call an election for another bishop,’ ‘stop talking about this or that,’ or ‘please pay attention to this issue or that issue,’” she said.

Minton said in her statement by email that the Standing Committee was “heartened by the confidence in its process that [the failed resolution] expressed,” but that delegates see the “opportunity for further healing and strengthening.”

Some feel more urgency. Speaking in support of the resolution, a delegate from St. Paul’s Church, Federal Point, urged the convention to proceed with the search process, saying the diocese’s lack of a bishop has caused challenges in her parish’s finding applicants for an open priest position.

“We need to move forward,” the delegate said. “We need to have a vision.”

Gray-Reeves encouraged the diocese to keep working toward reconciliation.

“Keep perspective of where you have been and where you are going. It is easy to forget that conflict has stages and generations,” she said. “Where you are now is not where you will be in a year.”

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