The Rt. Rev. Edwin M. Leidel, Jr., Bishop of Eastern Michigan, advised convention deputies and guests that the fifth annual convention of the Diocese of Eastern Michigan might be a good time to begin a review of its experiment with decentralization.

"I personally believe that our convocation structure is a noble experiment," he said during his address. "There is something very powerful in the notion of empowering local convocational representatives with the money and responsibility to develop local visions that result in local formation and mission. This arrangement has felt pregnant with possibility. And yet, I need to say, indeed I have heard most of you say, that there are some pieces missing in this courageous and holy experiment."

Meeting at St. John's Church in Saginaw Oct. 22-23, Bishop Leidel cited the absence of a forum to do diocesan-wide visioning and strategizing as one of the more significant missing pieces.

"We have no canonically defined entity that can work with your bishop to assist in the visioning and oversight of the diocese," he said. "Perhaps in our initial formation we overdid our structuring for local empowerment out of a fear of becoming overly hierarchical or overly centralized. Somehow we are missing an appropriate tension between what is local and what is global."

The vision of a new, more localized and inclusive way of fulfilling baptismal vows has driven Eastern Michigan's diocesan leadership since even before it was spun off from the Diocese of Michigan in 1994. Keynote speaker, the Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston, dean of Episcopal Divinity School, paid homage to that resolve when he likened Eastern Michigan's pilgrimage to that of a Native American Vision Quest.

Christians have been on vision quests ever since Christ went off by himself into the wilderness, Bishop Charleston said. He urged listeners to keep the vision clear, live the vision through both the triumphs and disappointments and, most importantly, share the vision.

In other news, deputies endorsed a $968,297 budget for 2000, and committed the diocese to applying at least 1 percent of its annual budget to aid an Anglican diocese located in a heavily indebted Third World nation.