Episcopal News Service February 28, 2007
Presiding Bishop's webcast gets reviews from participants, viewers
By Mary Frances Schjonberg
[ENS] People around the world, as well as the 25 in the webcast studio facilities of New York's Trinity Church, Wall Street, listened on February 28 as Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori discussed the recent Primates' Meeting and answered listeners' questions.
One of the members of the invited audience for the webcast was Maori Anglican theologian Dr. Jenny Plane Te Paa, the "ahorangi" or dean of Te Rau Kahikatea (College of St. John the Evangelist) in Auckland, New Zealand. Te Paa said afterward that she was impressed with the "grace and dignity and clarity" she thought Jefferts Schori showed during the webcast.
She said she was glad that the Presiding Bishop had also brought those qualities to the Primates' Meeting. Speaking as a member of another province of the Anglican Communion, Te Paa said Jefferts Schori "is a gift to us all," in part because of her urgency in calling Episcopalians and all Anglicans to God's mission.
Te Paa, who is in New York attending the annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW) as part of the Anglican delegation, said she appreciates the urgency of that call because there is a "groundswell" of feeling around the Communion that is "recognizing how far we have gone away from God's mission."
Anglican women, she reported, are saying that Anglicans can only be distracted from God's mission "if we allow it to happen," she said.
Three seminarians from the General Theological Seminary (GTS) in New York were part of the studio audience. Meagan Sanders from the Diocese of Minnesota said that she came into the webcast "exhausted and I leave hopeful."
"The energy that [the Presiding Bishop] exudes makes me feel privileged to serve the God I've always felt called to serve," said Sanders, who will graduate from GTS later this year.
"Ultimatums bother me," she said, "but [the Presiding Bishop] communicated clearly that she doesn't see this as an ultimatum. And her understanding and her role in the listening process is a gift ... and I feel like we can trust her."
Full story and photo: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_82922_ENG_HTM.htm
-- The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is national correspondent for the Episcopal News Service.
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