Resolves of the Executive Council

Resolved, That the Executive Council, meeting in Linthicum Heights, Maryland from June 10-13, 2019, approves and authorizes the following, as recommended by the Roanridge Trust Grant Review Committee and reviewed and recommended by the Joint Standing Committee on Mission Within The Episcopal Church. Payment comes from available Roanridge Trust grant funds.

1. Embracing Abundance: Cultivating Vocational Resources in Community, Diocese of California: $20,000

This grant requests focuses on the needs of Reyna Ortega, our young adult Farm Manager who has been exploring her own sense of vocation and call for the last few years, particularly when it comes to preaching, leading worship and facilitating Bible study. Recently, she has felt a stronger calling to reach more deeply into her own monolingual immigrant farmworker community here in Ventura County, CA, to help facilitate community-building and healing, particularly among women. We have convened a discernment committee to support her in this, as well as in her ongoing call to preaching God's word and sharing God's love. Our desire is to devote time and energy this year weaving together the ever-expanding tools and resources The Abundant Table employs to support young adults in their vocational discernment and leadership development, focusing specifically on supporting our young adult farm manager, and also developing a broader community-supported and culturally-specific contextual discernment process along the way. This project will directly serve The Abundant Table farm manager and her family as well as the women in the local Spanish speaking immigrant farmworker community, most of whom are undocumented.

2. Wild Church: Training for Church Outside the Walls in Upper Peninsula, Diocese of Northern Michigan: $20,000

Our new ministry initiative, "Wild Church" will train leaders for creating and fostering opportunities for church outside the walls of a church building. We will specifically develop ecumenical partnerships, work with existing community organizations, and focus on Care for Creation, a shared interest and passion of many who live in the Upper Peninsula. ...The Wild Church Network is a collection of faith communities reconnecting with God in the wilderness. We have begun communication with that network and they are glad to welcome us and work with us as we develop this ministry and empower leaders to plant and nourish these communities in the Upper Peninsula, as there are currently no other communities in the U.P. that we are aware of who belong to this network.

3. Saint Marks Garden of Hope Caring and Sharing Training Program, Diocese of Georgia: $9,770

The Garden of Hope has become a place for children to learn about the wonders of God's creation, a sanctuary for birds and butterflies, an organic vegetable and flower garden, a venue for prayer and meditation where at-risk teens come to volunteer and learn new skills, and a place which provides nutritional food to the homeless, the lonely and the elderly in and around the small town of Brunswick. With the "Caring and Sharing" Training Program we are proposing, small town and rural church leaders and lay persons will be able to begin their Gardens of Hope at the beginning. This training will offer an opportunity for rural church leaders and lay persons to gain a community footprint and promote an effective and sustainable outreach to address the needs of the disadvantaged with a hands-on approach.

4. Grace Leadership Project, Diocese of New York: $20,000

We will offer: A year-long Praxis Position through our existing fellowship program, Grace Year (graceyear.org). Grace Year is a residential, experiential learning, service-based fellowship program at Grace Episcopal Church in Millbrook, New York. We ask recent college graduates ages 21-28, "Who could you become with the gift of a year?" Fellows spend a year discerning that question by living in intentional community in our vicarage, serving in local Praxis Positions at non-profits and faith communities, and studying spirituality, leadership, and justice. … The Grace Leadership Project (GLP) will accomplish Goal #1 by also empowering and equipping a young adult leader to co-create a rural church ministry (Grace Week) in the capacity of being a Grace Year Fellow serving in a Praxis Position.

6. Harbor Roots Farm: Chaplains on the Harbor, Diocese of Olympia: $20,000

Harbor Roots is a faith-based supportive employment project that creates living-wage jobs -- specifically for rural millennials with criminal records, who are in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, and have a history of homelessness. We are located in rural Grays Harbor County, which has the highest opioid overdose death rate in the state of Washington and the highest rate of methamphetamine consumption in the nation. The desired outcome of Harbor Roots Farm's training program is to equip and raise up millennial leaders who have personally experienced poverty and incarceration, and are concretely as well as spiritually leading this region toward a new vision of God's healing, God's justice, and God's abundance.

7. SSFM Collaborative Entrepreneurial Mission Center, Diocese of Central Pennsylvania: $15,000

The Stevenson School for Ministry will develop a Collaborative Mission Center with the ELCA, Lower Susquehanna Synod, who just completed a 3 year renewal process with 40 of its 200 congregations. The CMC is being designed to provide training and resources for both face-to-face and on line leadership development and resourcing. The CMC is being designed to strengthen lay leadership and clergy leadership by providing content, tools, and models and spiritual practices to support congregations both in need of transformation and adaptive change to strengthen and equip leadership to implement a greater impact in their geographic communities.

8. CPE for Lay Pastoral Caregivers, Diocese of Los Angeles: $10,000

In the eastern region of the Los Angeles Diocese, there is a collection of small parishes that serve the rural communities in the deserts that ring the L.A. basin. These rural communities stand in stark contrast to the urban center of Los Angeles off to the west. They are in geographically remote, sparsely populated towns, which thrive in the austere beauty of the Mojave Desert. These rural communities are host to several Episcopal parishes that struggle to function liturgically without the support of full-time clergy. … These parishes have complex pastoral needs and group dynamics, both of which are difficult to address given the irregular presence of ordained leadership. We propose to empower the lay leadership with skill building training focused explicitly on pastoral care needs. Moreover, that training has the ability to empower and equip lay leadership to support the common life of these faith communities and help to focus their energies in the vitality unique to each parish context.

9. Leadership Bootcamp, Diocese of Missouri: $15,000

Clergy and laity are being called into mutual leadership roles in their congregations. Part-time clergy are becoming the norm for our rural communities. Both clergy and laity need to be trained, mentored, and aided to become leaders of the Church. Rural church leaders especially need ready access to high-quality training opportunities not otherwise available to them given their distance from higher-educational centers. … Leadership Boot Camp provides models that bridge best practice and knowledge of corporate business leaders to that of the insights of the major leaders of the Bible. The program provides a common vocabulary, instills knowledge of theories and best practices, and provides the analytical tools that leaders need to assess and prosper.

10. Forming Leaders in Largely Rural and Culturally Diverse Dioceses, Diocese of Olympia (for Dioceses of Olympia and Rio Grande): $10,098

Our thirteen years of combined experience in two different dioceses have highlighted the need for preparatory courses for many students prior to entering local formation for ordination. Many rural dioceses (including Rio Grande and Olympia) use the Seminary of the Southwest's Iona Collaborative Course Materials, but we have found that many of our students enter unprepared to engage in the course materials at the level intended. … We would like to offer basic training in the Bible, Episcopal Ethos, and Study Skills, particularly for individuals who are considering ordination. By providing this training, we will be building leaders across these dioceses who will be better able to minister within their cultures and contexts, and who will be able to creatively minister to their rural communities, bringing hope and healing to support the vitality of the congregations.

11. Rural & Migrant Ministry, Rural University of the People, Diocese of Rochester: $20,000

Rural & Migrant Ministry (RMM), founded in 1981, was created by the Diocese of New York in covenant with four other Protestant denominations, and has stood alongside rural workers (especially farmworkers) and their families as they have sought to improve living and working conditions. In 2000 the Diocese of Rochester became a covenanting partner with RMM. We have addressed systemic issues of injustice through an array of programs and actions that have helped disenfranchised people create their own organizations and ministries. ... Now we have reached the point where we desire to become more intentional and cohesive in the educational program we offer. We are initiating a university of the rural people.

12. Church Lands, Diocese of Western Michigan: $18,975

Plainsong Farm & Ministry, in the Diocese of Western Michigan, proposes the ChurchLands program. This program addresses a nationwide need of rural church leaders to learn about and take action on opportunities for evangelism, racial reconciliation, and creation care through intentional land stewardship, with a pilot project carried out in our province.

13. Waycross Camp and Conference Center, Diocese of Indianapolis: $15,000

Our world is polarized. Waycross hopes to raise awareness about systemic racism and white privilege; fear of "the other"; and conflict transformation techniques, both in our Church and in the local community. We plan to do this with new program initiatives and retreat offerings, open to diocesan, provincial, and national Church groups. Using a rhetorical education model, we hope to train a young-adult cohort of diverse college graduates, who are in a time of discernment, who can then help facilitate programs and engage with the local rural and town communities.

14. Co-creating Beloved Community, Diocese of Southern Ohio: $15,000

The Diocese of Southern Ohio is deeply engaged in the work of Becoming Beloved Community. We are learning that there are varied responses to this vision based on socio-cultural context. Our rural congregations are predominantly white, many located in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The opinion is often expressed that "if we don't have minorities worshipping with us or living in our communities, why do we need to be talking about race and ethnicity?" In other words, many living in rural, white communities do not understand the relevance of Becoming Beloved Communities to their lives, congregations or communities. We see an opportunity to explore the roots of injustice as it is experienced and perpetrated by these communities so that we might truly live into our baptismal calls to "seek and serve Christ in all persons" and "respect the dignity of every human being." Therefore, we will partner with key rural communities to develop a culturally specific set of community engagement strategies that will be more effective in inviting people into this work.