wfn.org | Episcopalians: Briefing officers chosen for media covering General Convention

[dmack@episcopalchurch.org]

July 18, 2003

2003-162

Episcopalians: Briefing officers chosen for media covering 
General Convention

Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold and Dean George Werner, 
president of the House of Deputies, have chosen the following 
briefing officers who will assist media covering the General 
Convention in Minneapolis.

House of Deputies

The Rev. Sandye Wilson will be able to walk to work. She is 
rector of the historic Episcopal Church of Gethsemane near the 
Convention Center in downtown Minneapolis. It will be the sixth 
time she has served as a deputy or alternate to convention, 
going back to 1985. She has also served three times on the 
church's Executive Council, the governing body between 
conventions and she currently serves on the Council of Advice to 
the president of the House of Deputies. Wilson has also served 
parishes in the Dioceses of Connecticut, New Jersey and 
Colorado.

Among her other church activities, she is national president of 
the Union of Black Episcopalians and president of Province VI, 
comprised of eight states in the upper Midwest and plains 
states, as well as the steering committee for 20/20, the 
movement to increase church participation and membership. Wilson 
is on the board of trustees for Seabury-Western Theological 
Seminary and was a consultant to Archbishop of Canterbury Robert 
Runcie on Racism and the Church. She has taught classes at Yale 
Divinity School, Iliff School of Theology and the University of 
Minnesota.

Trained as an economist, she worked for Chase Manhattan Bank and 
TWA Airlines before attending seminary. She was a 
reporter/researcher at Time Magazine and has been a guest on the 
McNeill-Lehrer Newshour, commenting on the work of the 103rd and 
104th Congress and on the President's State of the Union 
Address.

The Rev. Ian T. Douglas is professor of Mission and World 
Christianity and director of Anglican, Global and Ecumenical 
Studies at the Episcopal Divinity School (EDS) in Cambridge, 
Massachusetts. He also serves as consultant to Presiding Bishop 
Frank T. Griswold and the House of Bishops of the Episcopal 
Church, with special attention to global reconciliation efforts. 
He is priest associate at St. James's Church in Cambridge.

Past chair of the Standing Commission on World Mission for the 
General Convention, Douglas is a member of the Theology 
Committee of the House of Bishops, a member of the 
Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Mission and Evangelism, 
and convener of the Episcopal Seminary Consultation on Mission, 
as well as founding organizer of the Anglican Contextual 
Theologians Network and the Global Anglicanism Project.

Douglas has served as a Volunteer for Mission in the Episcopal 
Church of Haiti and associate for Overseas Leadership 
Development at the Episcopal Church Center in New York.

A graduate of Middlebury College, the Harvard Graduate School of 
Education and Harvard Divinity School, he completed his PhD in 
Religious and Theological Studies with a focus on missiology at 
the Boston University Graduate School in 1993. He has published 
widely in his field, including Fling Out the Banner: The 
National Church Ideal and the Foreign Mission of the Episcopal 
Church, as well as co-editing a book on the Anglican Communion 
in the 21st century and editing Waging Reconciliation: God's 
Mission in a Time of Globalization and Crisis.

Therese G. Yeiser is the youngest member of the briefing team. 
She graduated from the University of Kentucky in 2000 with an 
honors degree in communications--and received an award from 
Omicron Delta Kappa as the outstanding graduating senior in the 
College of Communications and Information Studies. She is 
currently studying for a master's degree in public health from 
the university.

A life-long member of Emmanuel Church in Winchester, she has 
been a member of the leadership team for the parish's capital 
campaign, as well as a lay reader, chalice bearer and acolyte. 
In the Diocese of Lexington she has served as a young adult 
advisor for the diocesan youth commission, a camp counselor, a 
staff member for various youth events, and was elected to the 
camps and conferences board. She also represented the diocese at 
the Episcopal Youth Event in 1996 and she participated in a 
three-week study tour, "Spirit, Soil and Voice," to South Africa 
in 2000.

Yeiser has been special project coordinator for a rehabilitation 
hospital in Lexington, a publicity assistant for Health 
Education through Extension Leadership, and is a member of the 
American Public Health Association, the Kentucky Public Health 
Association, and the Kentucky Student Public Health Association.

Attending her first General Convention as a lay deputy, Yeiser 
is a member of the Communications Committee.

The Rev. Kendall Harmon of South Carolina is attending his third 
General Convention as a deputy. In previous conventions he 
served as a member of the Committee on Education and following 
the Denver Convention in 2000 he was appointed to the working 
group on science, technology and faith. He will serve on the 
Committee on Liturgy at this convention.

Harmon has served at Church of the Holy Comforter in Sumter, 
South Carolina, and as senior associate rector and theologian in 
residence at St. Paul's in Summerville. In the diocese, he has 
served on the Standing Committee and as a member of Examining 
Chaplains. In January 2002, he began a new ministry as canon 
theologian and communications coordinator for the Diocese of 
South Carolina and editor of Anglican Digest, a publication with 
the largest circulation in the Anglican Communion. He also edits 
Jubilate Deo, the diocesan newspaper, and is priest associate at 
Christ and St. Paul's, Yonge's Island.

Harmon holds degrees from Bowdoin College in Maine, Regent 
College in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Trinity Episcopal 
School for Ministry in Pennsylvania. He received his doctorate 
from Oxford University in 1993.

House of Bishops

The Rt. Rev. Geralyn Wolf was consecrated the 12th bishop of 
Rhode Island February 17, 1996. Prior to her election she was 
dean of Christ Church Cathedral in Louisville, Kentucky--the 
first woman elected to that position in the Episcopal Church. 

After graduating from West Chester University in Pennsylvania 
and Trenton State College in New Jersey, Wolf taught at a 
Friends boarding school in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, before 
attending Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 
After graduation and ordination she served parishes in the 
Philadelphia area, including St. Mary's, an African-American 
mission in an inner-city neighborhood where she helped the 
congregation develop a soup kitchen, thrift shop, food 
cooperative, and a reading program.

Wolf has demonstrated an interest and involvement with religious 
communities. She is an associate of the Society of St. Margaret, 
a companion of the Oratory of the Good Shepherd, an ecumenical 
oblate of Mount Saviour Monastery in Elmira, New York, and has 
visited and worked with the Taize Community in France. Liturgy 
and worship have been high on her list of interests. She is also 
a strong advocate of Christian education, and the search for 
creative ways to teach the faith.

The Rt. Rev. Wendell N. Gibbs Jr. became the 10th bishop of the 
Diocese of Michigan on November 4, 2000. A graduate of St. 
Mary's University and Seminary in Baltimore, and Seabury-Western 
Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, he served parishes in Ohio, New 
York and Illinois.

While serving in the Diocese of Southern Ohio he was on the 
Diocesan Council, the Board of Examining Chaplains, the 
Commission on Congregational Life, the Liturgy and Music 
Commission, and the Human Sexuality Task Force. He was a deputy 
at the 1997 General Convention and a member of the Standing 
Commission for Liturgy and Music. He was president of the South 
Ohio Chapter of the Union of Black Episcopalians, a member of 
Black Leaders and Diocesan Executives, a mentor for the 
Organization of Black Episcopal Seminarians, a member of the 
Board of Trustees at Seabury-Western and president of the 
alumni/ae association. He is also a member of the Committee on 
Racism for the House of Bishops.

In the community, Gibbs has been active as a board member of 
Positive Beginnings Teen Services, Justice Watch, the YMCA, and 
People Working Cooperatively, Mariners' Inn in Detroit and the 
Michigan Region of the National Conference for Community and 
Justice. He currently serves as president of the boards for 
Episcopal Community Services in Detroit and Canterbury House at 
the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

The Rt. Rev. Mark S. Sisk was installed as the 15th bishop of 
New York on September 29, 2001, at the Cathedral of St. John the 
Divine, after serving several years as bishop coadjutor and 
regional bishop for the mid-Hudson area of the diocese. Before 
his election he was president and dean of Seabury-Western 
Seminary in Evanston, Illinois. Under his leadership, the school 
established new models of theological education and continuing 
education for clergy--including the Episcopal Church's first 
Doctor of Ministry program in congregational development.

After serving in Bronxville, New York, and New Brunswick, New 
Jersey, Sisk was rector of St. John's in Kingston, New York, and 
from 1977 to 1984, Sisk was archdeacon of Westchester, Putnam 
and Rockland counties in the Diocese of New York, establishing a 
Metropolitan Japanese Ministry and the first Latino congregation 
in Yonkers.

As bishop of New York, Sisk serves on many boards around the 
diocese, including the cathedral, Episcopal Social Services, St. 
Luke's Hospital, Seaman's Church Institute, Diocesan Investment 
Fund, the Standing Committee and Diocesan Council, as well as 
various religious orders and communities. On the national level, 
he is a member of the Society of St. Francis, the Society of 
Biblical Literature, the Council for the Development of 
Ministry, the Presiding Bishop's Committee of Bishops and Deans, 
the Leadership Academy for New Directions, the Anglican 
Theological Review, and several academic associations.

An economics graduate of the University of Maryland, Sisk also 
graduated from the General Theological Seminary in 1967 and has 
honorary doctorates from General and Seabury-Western.

The Rt. Rev. Edward Stuart Little II was elected seventh bishop 
of Northern Indiana November 5, 1999, and consecrated March 18, 
2000 in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on the campus of Notre 
Dame University.

Born in New York City in 1947, he attended schools in Manhattan 
and Norwalk, Connecticut, receiving his bachelor's degree from 
the University of Southern California and his Master of Divinity 
from Seabury-Western in 1971. He was ordained deacon and priest 
that same year in the Diocese of Chicago.

Little served two parishes as an assistant--St. Matthew's in 
Evanston, Illinois, and St. Michael's in Anaheim, California, 
moving to St. Joseph's in Buena Park, California,

as vicar and later its first rector. In 1986 he was called to 
All Saints in Bakersfield, California, where he served as rector 
until his election to the episcopate.

During his time in the Diocese of Los Angeles, Little served as 
secretary of the Diocesan Council, chair of the Clergy 
Conference Committee, and member of the Cursillo secretariat. In 
the Diocese of San Joaquin he served on the Standing Committee, 
chaired the Vision and Structure Committee, and represented the 
diocese three times as deputy at General Convention.

On the national level, he served on the Standing Commission, the 
board of Sharing of Ministries Abroad (SOMA), and the Living 
Church Foundation. He has a special interest in world mission 
and has participated in three short-term mission trips to Uganda 
under SOMA sponsorship.  He is author of Ears to Hear, 
Recognizing and Responding to God's Call.

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