Expanding the Apostolic Imagination is not a theme, it is a calling, per Simon Bautista, our preacher this morning, and one of the chaplains to the House of Bishops. It is a call to go back to the Gospel, to live into God's word in a radical way with a prophetic attitude, in the light of the teaching of Jesus. It is a call to balance a body that is very unbalanced. It is questioning the excessive comfort in which many of us live in. It is asking ourselves, where is our prophetic voice -- what have we done with it? It is going back to the source of our spirituality, claiming the gospel of Jesus Christ as our source of power and praise.
Our host Bishop, David Lai, celebrated the Eucharist. He chanted many parts of the Eucharistic Prayer in Mandarin -- which was wonderful to hear!
We then moved into a town hall meeting, where Bishops shared various items happening either in their dioceses are around the Communion. Everything from the consecration of the new Bishop in the Diocese of El Salvador in January, to the Bishops against gun violence, to the current situation in Haiti, to the upcoming (next year this time) Project Resource Conference and, from the Bishop of Missouri -- Ferguson.
Stacy Sauls provided an overview of what DFMS is doing at the local level to engage mission and ministry. In the last triennium (2010 to 2012) -- DFMS participated in starting 3 new congregations at no cost. In the current triennium DFMS has partnered with dioceses to form 36 new congregations at the cost of 1.8 million (part of the Mission Development/Enterprise that was voted on at the last General Convention) and with the partnering with dioceses so that the monies were matched. He gave an overview of many of these congregations. He is certain that not everything will be successful, but what will happen is that the church will learn from what has worked and what has not worked.
In terms of communications, Sermons that Work on the website receive 4,600 views each week! Facebook last week had 53,000 like posts. 3,300 comments and 13,000 posts were shared. 85,000 have like our Facebook page. ENS has 47,000 visitors a month and 11,000 daily subscribers. As part of the social media campaign -- they have created 5 blog spots.
Stacy also reported that in Province IX DFMS is working to strengthen work throughout the Province. There are plans for self-sustainability in Province IX by 2030. The same kind of work is happening in Navajoland.
An interim business meeting was then held.
Later in the afternoon we heard from Peter Ng and Chuck Robertson regarding the add-on trips to either Japan, the Philippines, Korea or Hong Kong (where we are heading tomorrow).
I'm heading down to the closing dinner in a few minutes.
What an amazing trip this has been!
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