The above photo was found online: Where True Love is; #Say it Colorfully
David Paulsen of ENS wrote this article.
[Episcopal News Service] Every morning of the six-day 82nd General Convention in July 2027 will be set aside for worship, Bible studies, and small-group discussions with bishops and deputies at the same tables.
The legislative agenda will encourage deeper discernment on key issues, including through a new structure with distinct committees focused on artificial intelligence, racial justice, and the Holy Land.
And the Virtual Binder is gone. Instead, bishops and deputies can research and follow legislation by using General Convention’s newly designed software, dubbed the Governance and Legislative System, or GLS. “Its design makes resolutions easier to find and follow, clarifies the status of legislation and amendments and helps participants understand the business before them,” The Episcopal Church’s presiding officers said Oct. 28 in a letter outlining those and other expectations for next year’s churchwide gathering in Phoenix, Arizona.
Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe and House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris, in their joint letter to the church, unveiled their vision for the 82nd General Convention with the theme of “Rising in Hope.”
“As your presiding officers for General Convention, we are united in a vision for this work as a community of discernment,” Rowe and Ayala Harris said. “We want to create the conditions for the church to gather, pray, listen, build relationships and effectively carry out the responsibilities entrusted to us. We want you to arrive prepared to contribute and return home with a sense of purpose, connection, and hope for the work ahead.”
General Convention is the church’s bicameral governing body, which divides its authority between the House of Bishops and House of Deputies. Every three years, hundreds of bishops and deputies gather in a different host city for a week of fellowship, formation, networking, socializing and the church’s core legislative work, including passage of the churchwide triennial budget plan.
“We are so excited to welcome The Episcopal Church to the vibrant culture and life of Arizona,” Arizona Bishop Jennifer Reddall said in a written statement to Episcopal News Service as her diocese prepares to host the July 3-8 gathering. It will convene at the Phoenix Convention Center.
The way the church gathers as General Convention has evolved substantially in recent years, particularly since the pandemic-delayed 80th General Convention held in 2022 in Baltimore, Maryland. It was shortened to four days while implementing a range of health precautions. The 81st General Convention in 2024 marked a return to a more traditional gathering in Louisville, Kentucky, though business was conducted over six days, still shorter than the convention’s historical length of eight days or more.
The gathering next year in Phoenix will again be six days. Committees are now forming for online meetings that have become the norm in advance of the in-person meeting. Detailed plans are still taking shape after church leaders spent the past two years receiving feedback from General Convention attendees and considering ways of further reimagining the church’s governing structures and the gathering’s function.
“How we gather, how we care for one another and how we make decisions all express what we believe about the church,” Rowe and Ayala Harris said. “In a culture that often rewards division and treats disagreements as contests to be won, we have an opportunity to practice something different. Our deliberations can make room for conviction, curiosity and the possibility that listening to one another will deepen our understanding.”
In 2024, General Convention passed a resolution calling on the church to assess recent changes to the legislative process, the technology that supports legislative deliberations and the convention’s length, and then propose amendments to the bishops’ and deputies’ Rules of Order that would improve the convention’s work.
Rowe and Ayala Harris appointed a committee to carry out those assessments, known as the General Convention Reinvention Steering Committee. It was chaired by Minnesota Bishop Craig Loya and the Rev. Scott Gunn, executive director of Forward Movement. One of the committee’s central recommendations was to find ways to foster deeper discernment at General Convention on a smaller number of key issues, Loya told ENS in an interview this month, and to “ground ourselves in Jesus and in the power of the Holy Spirit.”
That grounding will happen in the mornings in Phoenix, Loya said. “We’re imagining that every morning of this coming General Convention will be spent in prayer and Bible studies with bishop and deputies.”
The Reinvention Steering Committee presented its recommendations to the Joint Standing Committee on Planning and Arrangements, which is now leading churchwide preparations for the 82nd General Convention in collaboration with the presiding officers.
As legislative process evolves, budget gets an overhaul
Ayala Harris told ENS that the new vision for General Convention is also based on a fall 2024 survey of past attendees. Respondents said they enjoyed the sense of community, inclusive worship services and the democratic process by which the church made some historic decisions in Louisville. On the other hand, they cited challenges navigating the convention’s technology while struggling with time management in the face of what they said was an inefficient legislative process.
Some procedural changes were adopted by House of Deputies through its Rules of Order in 2024. Before convening, deputies had spent several months reviewing and debating a series of proposed rules changes, and some of the more controversial proposals were rejected in Louisville. This year, the House of Deputies is not considering a comparable set of potential rules changes for the upcoming convention.
With the current rules in place helping to streamline the process, “it really is just relying on legislative committee leadership and the culture of the house to be able to keep itself focused,” Ayala Harris said.
At the same time, the Joint Budget Committee this year has been developing a draft churchwide 2028-30 budget plan aligned with the strategic vision outlined by Rowe last week in a presentation to Executive Council, which is the church’s governing body between meetings of General Convention. The council voted in favor of Rowe’s strategic vision at that meeting, and council members will get a first look at the draft triennial budget plan in a Nov. 4 online meeting that will be held in closed session.
Bishop Diane Jardine Bruce, a member of Executive Council from the Diocese of Los Angeles who chairs the Joint Budget Committee, noted in an interview with ENS that the format of the budget has been overhauled since Chief Financial Officer Christopher Lacovara was hired in March 2025.
“Because this whole budget is so new and the Executive Council has not seen it before, we wanted to have a very frank conversation with them,” Bruce said in explaining the reason for the closed session. After that meeting, a detailed budget handbook will be released to the wider church, which will have opportunities to comment during online hearings scheduled from 2-4 p.m. Eastern on Nov. 18 and Dec. 9.
“Consistency, clarity and transparency — those are the three things we tried to accomplish with this redone budget,” Bruce said. Executive Council is expected to vote in February 2027 to recommend a final budget draft, which will be presented for adoption by bishops and deputies in Phoenix.
Committees forming, to begin work in early 2027
Details about the 82nd General Convention’s daily worship services are still being developed, Ayala Harris told ENS. She and Rowe are also in the process of forming the legislative committees that will receive submitted resolutions and consider amending and recommending them for votes by the full General Convention.
Those committee meetings likely will begin online in late January or February. To populate the House of Deputies’ committees, Ayala Harris is asking members to complete a survey indicating their preferred assignments.
Every three years, bishops and deputies form more than a dozen parallel committees within each house that take up resolutions in a range of categories. The corresponding bishops’ and deputies’ committees, though separate, typically meet together online to conduct their deliberations.
Resolutions related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict often dominate discussions on international issues, so for the 82nd General Convention, the two houses will form committees for the first time focused solely on Holy Land and Middle East Engagement. Resolutions on other international issues will be assigned to the Social & Environmental Justice and International Policy committees.
Another new committee category is Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property, to focus on a topic of growing concern to the church and the wider society. And while bishops and deputies will continue to serve on committees devoted to Social & Environmental Justice and U.S. Policy, the houses are forming separate committees to deliberate on issues categorized under Racial Justice and Migration.
“We ask every deputy and bishop to prayerfully join us as we embark on the work entrusted to us at General Convention. Your experience, curiosity, and wisdom are essential,” Rowe and Ayala Harris said in their letter to the church. “Together, we can discern a clear, faithful, strategic direction that strengthens the ministries of our congregations and communities.”
– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.