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Triennial Meeting to be Held in Louisville

Diocesan Press Service. July 5, 1973 [73160]

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- "What kind of meetings do we want and need in the future?" This question is the major one to be answered by the Episcopal Church's 34th Triennial Meeting of the women of the Church in Louisville Sept. 29 - Oct. 4. And the answer is no mere matter of style. It will include the content, the fabric, the length, the where and the when. It may even develop into a pattern for other Church structures still reluctant to confront this question head on.

The Triennial will also allocate this year's United Thank Offering of some million dollars. Delegates will make recommendations to the UTO Committee and the Executive Council's Program Group on Lay Ministries for 1973-76.

They will discuss and decide what, if any, positions they will take on current issues, and may send resolutions to General Convention expressing the mind of Triennial on such issues. For while the Triennial Meeting has no canonical status and cannot make decisions binding on the whole Church, it does have authority over its own areas of concern.

Following up the express wish of the previous Triennial Meeting, in Houston in 1970, the format for this meeting establishes a closer relationship with General Convention. The schedule might be described as a wrap-around, with Triennial fully participating in all non-legislative Convention sessions. These -- presentations, hearings, work groups, open committee meetings of the House of Bishops and/or the House of Deputies -- are time-slotted into evenings and early mornings. Then, after daily General Worship Services, business sessions begin in the two Houses and the Triennial Meeting.

For Louisville, a concerted effort is under way to put worship in a central place in Convention life and recognize that it is not peripheral. The Triennial Meeting places it both front and center. Their opening session (10 a. m., Sept. 30) includes as part of the Eucharist, a "Multi-Media Sermon" which begins to develop the main meeting topic Freedom. So that others may see it -- and delegates see it again if they wish -- this multi-media presentation will be shown several more times. The closing service of the Triennial (4 p.m., Oct. 4) will be a Prayer Book service of the Holy Communion, and a Thanksgiving for the ministry of John Hines at which the Presiding Bishop will be the celebrant.

Three further segments of the schedule deal with the Freedom theme: Dr. Clem Welsh, of the College of Preachers, addresses the Triennial Sunday afternoon on " Technology and Freedom"; the Rev. Dr. Letty Russell, United Presbyterian minister and Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College, Bronx, N.Y., speaks Monday morning on "Women and Freedom"; the Rt. Rev. Bennett Sims, Bishop of Atlanta, concludes this type of formal input with "The Church and Freedom." Each address will be followed by delegate discussions and questions.

Then comes the hard part -- translating the listening into the freedom, and the responsibility, of decision-making. (If it's any comfort, this is also the task of this whole General Convention!) To ensure maximum representation in this process, each diocese is sending up to six delegates to this Triennial, and no alternates, thus allowing each of the 500-plus delegates full voting privileges.

Presiding Officer is Mrs. Glenn (Peggy) Gilbert of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

One of the Planning Committee summarizes the true goal: "When Bishop Hines is celebrating, at the Closing Eucharist, I hope each Triennial delegate looks around the room at all the others with a feeling of warmth and oneness, and an underlying sense of urgency to get back home and offer a little leaven to the loaf. "

[thumbnail: Mrs. Glenn Gilbert, Presi...]