Old Broad ... Young Priests
I flat wore myself out last weekend. We had our diocesan convention in St. Louis, 2+ hours away from my home. I'm not a delegate this year, but I do love a good Episcopalian get-together, so I volunteered to be a helper and general flunky at convention. I had a marvelous time there, and there were several things I wanted to blog.
But it was a pretty exhausting weekend, including making that long round-trip drive twice—on Friday (which was a work holiday for me) then again Saturday. Then, of course, a busy day with church activities Sunday. I had intended to do a lot of blogging, but basically I just dragged myself through this week. Today I've been a complete vegetable, and am just now finding my energy coming back.
So I'll start with this one.
A standard part of diocesan convention is when the bishop introduces all the new clergy who have come to the diocese during the past year. As he announced each name, they came to the front and stood in front of the dais. I was struck by the fact that so many of them (surely almost half) are new, young priests. What a hopeful sight for our church!
One of the young priests, new to the diocese this fall, is assigned to the Episcopal Campus Ministry in Columbia. I just discovered he has begun video-blogging. You can find his YouTube page here, with links to all his clips so far. Believe it or not, he even posted a high-energy videoblog about Diocesan Convention! Who would've thought?
Quite a while back, I heard Michael+ Kinman urging Episcopal parishes to establish a presence on YouTube. I think I'm beginning to see what he has in mind. Go to YouTube, and enter Episcopal as the search term. You will find some delightful, energetic videos there from other young clergy. Jesus went where the people were. Without doubt, YouTube is where many of our young people are; shouldn't we be there too?
It is delightful to see these signs of hope and energy in our beloved church.
But it was a pretty exhausting weekend, including making that long round-trip drive twice—on Friday (which was a work holiday for me) then again Saturday. Then, of course, a busy day with church activities Sunday. I had intended to do a lot of blogging, but basically I just dragged myself through this week. Today I've been a complete vegetable, and am just now finding my energy coming back.
So I'll start with this one.
A standard part of diocesan convention is when the bishop introduces all the new clergy who have come to the diocese during the past year. As he announced each name, they came to the front and stood in front of the dais. I was struck by the fact that so many of them (surely almost half) are new, young priests. What a hopeful sight for our church!
One of the young priests, new to the diocese this fall, is assigned to the Episcopal Campus Ministry in Columbia. I just discovered he has begun video-blogging. You can find his YouTube page here, with links to all his clips so far. Believe it or not, he even posted a high-energy videoblog about Diocesan Convention! Who would've thought?
Quite a while back, I heard Michael+ Kinman urging Episcopal parishes to establish a presence on YouTube. I think I'm beginning to see what he has in mind. Go to YouTube, and enter Episcopal as the search term. You will find some delightful, energetic videos there from other young clergy. Jesus went where the people were. Without doubt, YouTube is where many of our young people are; shouldn't we be there too?
It is delightful to see these signs of hope and energy in our beloved church.
posted by Lisa Fox at 11/18/2006 07:02:00 PM
3 Comments:
So Father Matthew's from your neck of the woods, eh? That explains so much.
I fear you flagged the wrong "young priest," MP. I saw Father Matthew's videos on YouTube too, and I flat loved them. But, no. He's in the northeastern U.S. Our RevJoe is in the Midwest. I bet it doesn't make much difference to you, over there on the other side of the pond, but here the regional differences are fairly significant.
Terrific, Lisa. Our diocesan convention isn't until January. I remember last year, when the new clergy were introduced: all old, white, ultracon men, who had mostly retired to Central Florida from other conservative dioceses, except for one young ultra-ultra con.
Ah, well, the seeds of change are in the air. May some of the settle to earth here.
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