Apr 30, 2024 | #Stories
Story and photo by Cn. Debbie Low-Skinner
Canon Debbie had a delightful time preaching and presiding at the 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. Holy Eucharists at St. Stephen’s in Belvedere (my being there allowed the Rector, the Rev. Kyle Dice Seage, to attend the farewell celebrations that weekend for her husband, the Rt. Rev. Brian Seage, who is retiring as the Tenth Diocesan Bishop of Mississippi).
My homily explored what love—and ultimately the love of God—can cause us to do. I included lines from the song from “A Chorus Line”: where we “can’t forget, won’t regret, what (we) did for love.” Also, how (as in Freddy Mercury’s song “A Crazy Little Thing Called Love”) we can do crazy little things and big things that push us out of our comfort zones to accomplish some pretty amazing feats.
I gave as an example the life of an Anglican priest, the Rev. John Wesley, who had been depressed for some time by his failures in ministry. I described the pivotal moment in his life when he had an evangelical conversion experience during a Moravian prayer meeting on 24 May 1738. It was then, for the first time in his life, he fully felt the overwhelming love and salvation of Jesus Christ.
Thereafter, he went far and wide preaching the Good News inside and outside of church to people in public squares, the countryside, at their workplaces. In his zeal, he founded the Methodist movement within the Church of England. We see today, 200 years later, the lasting effects of what Wesley did for love of God. According to 2022 statistics, there are 5.4 million Methodists of various types in 30,000 churches, constituting 4% of the US population. (Compare this to 1.7 million Episcopalians constituting 1.2% of the US population.) Globally, there are 75 million Methodists in 130 countries (per Wikipedia).
So how can we do our crazy little bit to be the branches of love extending from the vine (i.e., the source of divine love) in Jesus Christ? I suggest we lovingly do for others as John Wesley exhorted:
“Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can.”
Apr 30, 2024
St. Mark’s Community, Faith, and Racial Justice Speaker Series: “Confronting Christian Nationalism: Why People are Drawn In and How to Talk Across the Divide”
The Reverend Dr. Pamela Cooper-White is an Episcopal priest and clinical psychologist and retired Christine Brooks Johnson Professor of Psychology and Religion at Union Theological Seminary. A prolific author, Dr. Cooper-White will speak on the topic of her recent book, The Psychology of White Christian Nationalism: Why People are Drawn In and How to Talk Across the Divide. Dr. Cooper-White’s book will be available for purchase and signing following the event.
Please register
No charge for admission – donations appreciated.
Apr 26, 2024 | #DidYouKnow, #FunFacts
A minimum of three bishops are required to ordain and consecrate a new bishop, according to The Episcopal Church’s Constitution and Canons (Article 2, Section 2). Bishop-elect Austin Keith Rios is expecting to have seven consecrators at his May 4 ordination and consecration service (more than double the required minimum!).
The chief consecrating bishop will be the Rt. Rev. Diane M. Jardine Bruce (The Episcopal Diocese of Western Missouri). There are also five Episcopal co-consecrating bishops: The Rt. Rev Mark D.W. Edington (the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe), the Rt. Rev. Thomas J. Brown (Maine), the Rt. Rev. Dr. Marc Handley Andrus (California), the Rt. Rev. Rafael Morales Maldonado (Puerto Rico and Cuba), and the Rt. Rev. Phoebe Roaf (Tenessee).
The other co-consecrator is the Rev. Jeff R. Johnson, Bishop of the Sierra Pacific Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ECLA). The ECLA is in full communion with The Episcopal Church. This means ECLA bishops can serve in Episcopal ordinations and consecrations (and vice versa).
Apr 26, 2024
You are warmly invited to the installation of Dr. Stephen Fowl as president and dean of Church Divinity School of the Pacific. Join us to celebrate Dean Fowl and the next chapter for CDSP. A reception will follow the ceremony, which will be held in St. Margaret’s Courtyard on the CDSP campus and streamed at cdsp.edu/livestream.
Congratulations to the CDSP Class of 2024!
Apr 26, 2024
You are warmly invited to the 129th Commencement Exercises of Church Divinity School of the Pacific. Don’t miss the chance to say congrats and godspeed to the class of 2024. A reception will follow the ceremony, which will be held in St. Margaret’s Courtyard on the CDSP campus and streamed at cdsp.edu/livestream
Apr 26, 2024
Join us for Choral Evensong on Thursday, May 2, at 5:30 p.m. as we gather in Vigil for the Ordination of our Bishop-elect, and center ourselves on the one who is the foundation, pioneer and perfecter of our faith, Jesus Christ. This service of Choral Evensong includes hymns and an anthem chosen by Bishop-elect Rios and sung by the Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys. With the Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean, officiating, and the Rev. Canon Anna E. Rossi preaching.
More information available on the Grace Cathedral website.
Apr 23, 2024 | #News&Events
The Rt. Rev. Brian Lee Cole, Bishop of Eastern Tennessee, will be preaching the sermon at the ordination and consecration of Bishop-elect Austin Keith Rios. The Rev. Rios will become our Bishop Coadjutor on May 4 at Grace Cathedral. In this photo he is looking in his computer for the sermon he gave at the ordination of Austin Jeith Rios to the Sacred Order of Priests. The service was July 16, 2005, at Grace Church, Asheville, North Carolina.
Photo by Georgiana Vines
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Apr 23, 2024 | #BishopStatements, #Press&BishopStatements
Today we mourn the passing of one of the Bay Area’s brightest lights, the Rev. Cecil Williams. As the co-founder and longtime pastor of Glide Memorial Church, San Francisco, Williams fervently embraced Christ’s call to feed, clothe, and shelter his neighbors in need. From the pulpit and on the streets of San Francisco, he used his powerful voice to demand justice and dignity for people facing homelessness, poverty, abuse, and discrimination.
Although we have lost a great leader, Rev. Williams’s legacy lives on in so many ways, including in films, books, documentaries, and, most importantly, in the lives of the countless souls he helped and healed. May his Spirit-inspired work continue to bless all of us for years to come.
O God, whose mercies cannot be numbered: Accept our prayers on behalf of your servant Cecil, and grant him an entrance into the land of light and joy, in the fellowship of your saints; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
Apr 23, 2024
The Church of the Resurrection and the Diocese of California have sponsored a series of discussions on race relations building upon the Episcopal Church’s program Sacred Ground which is part of Becoming Beloved Community. There will be a discussion on AAPI relations led by three experienced speakers: Rev. Greg Kimura, former Vice-Dean of Grace Cathedral and current Rector of St. James Pasadena, Rev. Merry Ong, Rector at Our Savior Church in Oakland, and Shannon Eng, Youth Minister at Church of the Resurrection in Pleasant Hill. Each have unique experiences in the AAPI community and will participate in a panel discussion focusing on AAPI relations with a focus on California. We welcome you to register and join this worthy event.
Register now!
Apr 23, 2024 | #Stories
Story and photos by Georgiana Vines
The Rt. Rev. Brian Lee Cole of the Diocese of East Tennessee, who will preach the sermon at the consecration of the Rev. Austin Keith Rios as bishop coadjutor of the Diocese of California, is a person who reads richly and often speaks as a poet.
Those who attend the service at 11 a.m. May 4 at Grace Cathedral can expect Cole to make references to John’s Gospel where Jesus asks Peter if he loves him to feed His sheep.
And he also will have something to say about grace – since Cole preached the sermon when Rios was ordained a priest at Grace Church in Asheville, North Carolina, and now is preaching where Rios is being ordained a bishop at Grace Cathedral.
“A consecration sermon involves the person being consecrated but ultimately is for the people of the Diocese,” Cole said.
The two men have known each other from attending St. James Episcopal Church in Black Mountain, N.C., some 20 years ago. Cole said that sometime in 2000-01, Rios wanted to meet with him as part of his discernment in becoming a priest. They went to a coffee shop.
“At that point, neither of us were ordained as priests,” Cole said.
Cole, who is a native of southeast Missouri, is a 1989 graduate of Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky, with a B.S. degree in business administration. In 1992, he earned a Master of Divinity degree at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and had additional studies in Anglican Church History at the University of the South School of Theology, in Sewanee, Tennessee, in 2001.
Then in 2002, he was ordained and served as vicar at the Church of the Advocate, a worshiping community of the Diocese of Western North Carolina for the homeless in downtown Asheville, N.C. From 2002-2005, he studied liturgics in Asheville, and became sub-dean at The Cathedral of All Souls in Asheville in 2005, staying until 2012. He also pursued studies in art and prayer at General Theological Seminary in New York City in 2006.
In 2012, Cole became rector at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Lexington, Kentucky, where he served until being elected bishop of the East Tennessee Diocese in June 2017. His ordination and consecration as bishop was on Dec. 2, 2017. He has served on the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church and the Executive Committee of the Executive Council.
Besides his duties of overseeing 49 parishes and worshiping communities in East Tennessee and Northern Georgia and ordaining priests and deacons, Cole reads voraciously, particularly on the Appalachians as a region and culture, but certainly not exclusively. With his wife, Susan Weatherford, he leads a monthly book study at St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral in Knoxville and even gave a blessing at the annual Rose Glen Literary Festival in Sevierville, Tennessee, in February – his first at a literary festival, he said at the time.
Cole, 56, is very connected to Appalachia, a region of the country that some who don’t live there only see through negative stereotypes.
Before becoming a priest, he served for seven years on the staff of the Appalachian Ministries Education Resource Center in Berea, Kentucky. He has said much of the work there involved teaching seminarians; listening to Appalachian leaders, both in and out of the Church, and learning how to read and appreciate the culture of the region.
?He also has been an instructor in Appalachian Religion, Faith and Practices, and Appalachian Religion and Culture, at Warren Wilson College, Swannanoa, North Carolina; Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota.
“For me, when a person encounters Appalachia, they end up seeing what they are looking for. If you want to find a people deeply connected to nature, with an agrarian spirit, you find it. If you want to find a people with fierce independence and self-reliance, you find it. If you want to find deep rural poverty and alienation, you find it. In many ways, Appalachia is a microcosm of the U.S.,” Cole said.
ishop Brian is interviewed April 11 in his office at the Diocesan House of the Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee in Knoxville.
Cole and Rios have remained in touch as friends through their own moves and career advances. Cole indicated he wasn’t surprised that Rios was selected as the Diocese of California’s next bishop to succeed Bishop Marc Handley Andrus.?
“There is a joy to him that is palpable,” Cole said, referencing Rios’ work with refugees in Rome through an outreach center of St. Paul’s Within the Walls Episcopal Church, and other “hands on” experiences.
“He keeps an easy, joyful and somber curiosity about people. He’s good to listen and worry about other folks,” he said. “They (the Diocese) had very good choices (in the three candidates for a new bishop). It did not surprise me that there were good choices.”
Georgiana Vines is a retired Knoxville Tennessee News Sentinel associate editor. She is a member of St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral in Knoxville and a frequent congregant at St. Columba’s Episcopal Church in Inverness, Calif.
