From: JIM KELSEY
Subject: SCMD
Date: 11 Jan 2004 15:44:38 -0500
To: AAAA_UP_CHAT.topic@ecunet.org


To: UPCHAT
From: Jim Kelsey

I'm in the airport in San Antonio, about to fly home to Marquette. It'll be good to get home, and to hang around for the next period of time.

The past couple of days, I have been here with the Standing Commission on Ministry Development (I am now half way through my six year term). This is the group which developed the extensive revisions to the canons of the national church which deal with Ministry (ordained and unordained alike). As you may remember, this received a lot of attention at the General Convention last summer (not as much as the consent process for the election of Gene Robinson, but still, it was a major action by Convention and is apt to have implications for the Church for many years).

This was the first meeting of the Standing Commission since General Convention. About half of the appointed members are new (each with a six year term) so it was good to get to know this very talented and diverse group of church leaders from throughout the country. I have been asked to chair the sub-committee which oversees the development of theological education, and I arranged for Donn Morgan, the Dean of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific (CDSP) in Berkeley, California, to co-chair the committee with me. The idea is that we might bring together the work of the seminaries with that of diocesan formation processes (such as our LifeCycles and Mutual Ministry Covenant Group Process). Instead of having two separate tracks, we hope to forge a more significant partnership, so the best of what each of us has to offer might complement one another, and to re-focus all of theological education on the ministry of all the baptized, in the midst of daily life. Over the coming weeks, we'll be applying for funding from the national church to bring together a major Strategic Task Force which will spend the next six years developing an analysis, a vision, and a strategic plan for the future of theological education in the Church.

The Standing Commission will be continuing with the Title III (Ministry Canons) revision process, looking this time especially at the canons dealing with bishops, plus a few other miscellaneous pieces which couldn't be picked up this time around. Other sub-committees are looking at Leadership Development and at Ministry in Daily Life, including the whole area of discernment.

The next meeting of the Standing Commission in October. We'll meet twice per year between now and the next General Convention (which will happen in June of 2006 in Columbus, Ohio).

Jim