St Andrew's Day

Still in Salt Lake City for the meeting of the "bishops of small dioceses" group. (The Presiding Bishop was also with us last night and this morning.) We discussed a wide range of issues, some planned and some spontaneous, all broadly concerned with what might be labeled "missionary strategy," with particular attention to our rapidly-changing societal environment. This included looking at a couple of General Convention resolutions from 2015, one of which encourages dioceses to consider merging and consolidating (not a popular concept in any given diocese) and the other creating a task force to examine the means by which bishops are chosen. In the afternoon, we heard from a representative of the Church Pension Group about the rollout of some major changes (all positive, IMO) in the pension plan for clergy. In the midst of all this, I managed to squeeze in two quite substantive phone conversations about emerging pastoral matters. We celebrated the Eucharist at 5:00 and then walked to a nearby restaurant for a lovely dinner.

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