[Episcopal News Service] For more than 50 years, St. Stephen’s & The Vine Episcopal Church in Ferguson, Missouri, has operated a food pantry to help feed its community. As living expenses and the city’s poverty rate increase, more people in north St. Louis County are turning to the ministry, which runs Tuesday and Saturday mornings, for food assistance. Like many other Episcopal-run food pantries nationwide, St. Stephen’s & the Vine’s food pantry began serving more low-income people than usual last year after the federal government made cuts to its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The cuts impacted millions of people. The church was already struggling to keep up with the food pantry’s growing demand when this summer it suffered a “financial crisis” after both of its HVAC systems simultaneously broke down and needed to be replaced. In response, St. Stephen’s & the Vine’s part-time transitional priest, the Rev. Teresa Danieley, set up a GoFundMe page in late July to keep its shelves stocked with fresh and nonperishable food and personal care items. “Before the SNAP cuts, we were probably serving around 50 people on a Tuesday morning and more people on a Saturday morning. Now we’re serving at least 75 people each day we’re open,” Danieley told Episcopal News Service. “People can’t make ends meet because they don’t have adequate wages; they don’t have adequate housing; they don’t have adequate health care. Our food pantry is their stopgap.” Danieley noted that the food pantry is the church’s most expensive outreach ministry to operate. St. Stephen’s & the Vine has raised $20,300 through GoFundMe as of Sept. 18. Based on current food costs and not counting additional emergencies, the money raised so far can at best keep the food pantry open for 40 weeks, or about nine months, according to the ministry’s operational expense average of $500 weekly.  As of 2024, 24.2% of Ferguson residents live below the federal poverty level, higher than the national rate of 10.2%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. For decades, the city has faced deep-seated housing instability driven by historic racial segregation and discriminatory public policies. “I’ve been in and out of jobs, and it is minimum wage, so even though you get a paycheck, it’s still usually not enough once you pay rent,” Renne Leon, a Ferguson resident who visits St. Stephen’s & the Vine’s food pantry, told KMOV, St. Louis’ CBS affiliate news station, in an August interview. Missouri’s 2026 minimum wage is $15 per hour, which is more than double the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. More people have also been relying on St. Stephen’s & the Vine’s Clay Café for free community meals twice a month. The volunteer-run community meal ministry is open on the third Tuesday morning of the month for brunch and on the third Sunday of the month for dinner. On average, about 40 people are served brunch and 75 people are served dinner monthly. Like the food pantry, the Clay Café runs on donations, costing an average of $250 monthly for brunch and $400 monthly for dinner. The church has ongoing partnerships with nearby churches and organizations, including Episcopal Church of All Saints and Ascension in Northwoods, which operates its own food pantry. And parishioners from St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Florissant have donated fresh vegetables harvested from the church’s Good News Giving Garden. “It’s mostly seasonal, of course, but we try to offer fresh produce whenever we can to help supplement people’s meals,” Danieley said. Danieley and church staff have been working to build additional partnerships in and out of Ferguson, including a newly formed food pantry coalition in St. Louis. The church also has been communicating with local Eagle Scout troops to potentially work together to build bigger storage space for shelf-stable food. “We’re thinking about the long-term sustainability of the food pantry,” Danieley said. Sustaining the food pantry and Clay Café is personal for Danieley, who has a professional background in worker justice advocacy. Before she began serving St. Stephen’s & the Vine, Danieley spent eight years working for the nonprofit Missouri Jobs with Justice.  “We have to make this work,” she said. “We need to keep our doors open for the wider community. Otherwise, what’s the point of having a building sit here all week, only to be used for a few hours on Sunday?” –Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.

[Episcopal News Service] East Tennessee Bishop Brian Cole and eight other Episcopal clergy in the Knoxville-based diocese signed a letter along with more than 100 interfaith leaders representing Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities in Knox County calling on officials to discontinue the county’s detention agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as ICE, and to deny further expansion of ICE operations in the region. “We write together because our traditions, however distinct in practice and belief, rest on a shared moral foundation that to love God and to love our neighbor are not two commandments but one, and that a community which neglects the second has not, in truth, kept the first,” the letter says. About 30 of the letter’s signers gathered for a press conference on Sept. 16 in front of Roger D. Wilson Detention Facility in Knoxville to share personal testimonies about the impact the aggressive tactics used by local and federal enforcement agencies have had on immigrants in the community and their families. As mentioned in the letter, the clergy called for an end to immigrant deportations, especially of those who are legally in the United States. The Rev. RJ Powell, priest-in-charge at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Maryville, prioritizes advocating for immigrants’ rights and volunteered to write the letter on the interfaith leaders’ behalf. “From a theological perspective … this is a part of the fabric of who we are as Episcopalians,” Powell told Episcopal News Service after the press conference. “Looking at our baptismal vows, if we’re to ‘respect the dignity of every human being and seek justice and peace,’ there’s no exception to who is included in ‘every human being.’ It includes all people.” View this post on Instagram Knox County’s Sheriff’s Office began questioning inmates about immigration status in 2017.  A detention bed contract with ICE has been in effect since 2018. Since 2025, more than 5,000 people have been detained there on immigration matters, according to data compiled by Meghan Conley, a sociologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Knox County Sheriff Brent Gibson, who was sworn into office on Sept. 1, campaigned on working more closely with ICE. On Sept. 15, his office signed an agreement to expand its involvement with federal immigration enforcement under a task force model that would deputize police officers to question and arrest people on suspected immigration violations. At the state level, the Tennessee General Assembly this year passed several immigration laws “even though immigration law is strictly federal jurisdiction.” The interfaith letter says the laws “answer no genuine crisis of public safety,” but instead “deliberately construct a climate of fear whose logic is not the protection of this community but the racial targeting of a particular population of people within it, discrimination now given the force of law.” “The harm does not fall only on those without documentation. It falls on U.S. citizen children in mixed-status families, on patients who will now avoid seeking medical care, on victims of crime who will not call for help, on families who go without food because they are too afraid to go grocery shopping, all because institutions our own taxes pay for have been turned into instruments of federal surveillance,” the letter says. “When fear becomes the organizing principle of public life, every last one of us bears its cost.” Another concern that clergy have, according to Powell, is that they’ve “repeatedly” been denied access to make pastoral visits to people detained by ICE, though they’re able to visit inmates who are incarcerated for non-immigration-related reasons. “It’s happened to all of us – Episcopal, Catholic, Baptist, everyone,” Powell said. “This is why we need to be partners together to advocate for our immigrants and keep engaging in multifaith and ecumenical work on this issue.” The letter also calls on lawmakers to urge state officials to stop spreading “malicious falsehoods” about immigrants and for landlords, developers, business owners and institutions to refuse to house ICE offices and facilities. As an appeal to local law enforcement, the letter asks officers to “exercise every discretion the law still leaves you” and not arrest law-abiding immigrants. “Where the choice remains yours, choose mercy.” Nationwide, some 65,765 migrants and asylum-seekers are in ICE custody, according to the latest ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse Reports, an independent data-gathering and analysis center founded at Syracuse University in New York. The Episcopal Church offers several resources for Episcopalians engaged in immigration advocacy work, including its Protesting Faithfully toolkit. The resource offers “spiritual grounding and practical resources for faithful presence at protests and public demonstrations.” The church’s Immigration Action Toolkit shares resources from organizations that address migrants’ legal rights. –Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.

[Episcopal News Service] Episcopal City Mission, a Boston nonprofit affiliated with the Diocese of Massachusetts, distributed $2.75 million in reparations to 25 Massachusetts-based organizations that are dedicated to promoting racial and economic justice and equity, truth-telling, reconciliation and strengthening communities. The announcement was made Sept. 15 at a press conference at St. Cyprian’s, a historically Black Episcopal church in Roxbury. Reparations are “part of our commitment to following Jesus,” Arrington Chambliss, Episcopal City Mission’s executive director, said in a Sept. 15 press release. “There is no reconciliation without repair given the history that necessitates this work. This moment is not an ending but an important step in a much longer journey toward truth, accountability, and repair,” Chambliss said. “We hope these payments will serve not only as a tangible commitment to repairing historic harms but also as an invitation for other similar Christian and faith-rooted institutions to engage in courageous acts of justice.” Since its founding in 1844, Episcopal City Mission has committed to combating poverty and systemic injustices at their root causes. Its reparations initiative stems from years of historical research, community engagement and reflection. The organization formed a committee called Reparations Advisors and Stewards to guide the decision-making process on recipients. Cynthia Perry, a professor at Boston College’s Woods College of Advancing Studies, helped facilitate the initiative as lead project consultant. The recipient organizations, which are all led by Black, Indigenous and other people of color, address different areas of social justice, such as the Massachusetts Bail Fund for keeping low-income individuals from pre-trial incarceration, the Chappaquiddick Tribe of the Wampanoag Indian Nation to support the original Indigenous people of Chappaquiddick Island and Martha’s Vineyard, and Resilient Roses Respite Corp. for youth and young adult programming and mentoring.  Reparations in the United States date as far back as the 17th century, when Quakers propounded that formerly enslaved people were entitled to compensation from their enslavers. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which included a formal apology for the U.S. government unjustly incarcerating Japanese Americans during World War II and $20,000 payments to concentration camp survivors. Discussions of reparations for Black Americans made a widespread modern resurgence in 2014 after Ta-Nehisi Coates’ essay “The Case for Reparations” was published in The Atlantic. In 2019, Evanston, Illinois, an affluent suburb of Chicago, passed the first reparations law in U.S. history to compensate Black people for slavery and discrimination. The city has given $25,000 grants for down payments or home repairs to more than 300 recipients since approving the payments in 2021. The concept has also spread to supporting redress for Native Americans, including land restitution and compensation, institutional accountability and monetary compensation. Many Episcopal organizations, churches and dioceses are in varying stages of considering, developing and implementing financial initiatives devoted to reparations, often acknowledging that much of the church’s financial foundation and physical structures were built on enslaved labor and other forms of racial exploitation. Reparations programs are underway in several institutions, including the Diocese of Ohio, the Diocese of Texas, the Diocese of Washington, Virginia Theological Seminary, the Diocese of Massachusetts, the Diocese of Western Massachusetts, the Diocese of Michigan, the Diocese of Chicago, and the Diocese of Long Island. Since 1994, seven resolutions at General Convention have supported reparations for various historic injustices, such as The Episcopal Church’s role in supporting the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Indigenous boarding schools, including C011, “Support Legislation for Reparations for Slavery,” in 2006, and A015, “Create a Task Force on Reparations,” in 2024. –Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.

[Anglican Communion News Service] The Most Rev. Renta Nishihara was installed as the 21st primate of the Nippon Sei Ko Kai (Anglican Church in Japan) on Sept. 2, succeeding the Most. Rev. David Eisho Uehara. Nishihara was elected on the first ballot and installed during the province’s 71st general synod Aug. 31 – Sept. 2 at the Cathedral Church of St. Andrew in Tokyo. “I am committed to continuing to carry out my duties from the dimensions of personal, collegial and communal engagement,” Nishihara told Anglican Communion News Service. “Together with the laity and clergy of the NSKK, the College of Bishops and the NSKK and all the bishops of the worldwide Anglican Communion, I hope to devote my utmost efforts to advancing God’s mission as a primate of the NSKK.” Read the full article here.

[Episcopal News Service] All Saints Church Pasadena in California publicly confronted a painful chapter in its history Sept. 14, with the unveiling of a permanent plaque acknowledging and lamenting the parish’s participation in racial segregation during the Jim Crow era. The ceremony, attended by members of the community and civic leaders, included a prayer and blessing by Los Angeles Bishop Antonio José Gallardo Lucena, remarks by Pasadena Mayor Victor M. Gordo and a communal reading of the plaque inscription led by the Rev. Mark Chase, All Saints’ associate pastor and its director for justice advocacy and organizing. The plaque honors “the African Americans and people of color who were turned away from All Saints Church by its white parishioners during the Jim Crow era in Pasadena.” It also tells the story of eight African-American women who, after being excluded, began gathering in their homes to worship and eventually founded what became St. Barnabas, about a mile away in northwest Pasadena. “We acknowledge and repent of these racist actions, and we ask forgiveness from the descendants of those excluded,” the plaque reads. “Today, as we commit to living out our mission that all are welcome, we recognize our past history so that such racist actions may never be repeated.” The plaque was permanently placed above the cornerstone of the 1923 church building, and the date references the first plaque-unveiling ceremony, which took place a day earlier during the congregation’s liturgical homecoming observance. During the half-hour Monday midday ceremony, Chase, convener of the All Saints committee whose work led to the plaque’s placement, likened the effort to a farmer clearing his field. “Imagine a farmer going out to till the soil, and the soil has rocks and stones and glass and all sorts of things that aren’t conducive to growth within the soil,” he said. “Well, the farmer would be mistaken if they planted anything in soil like that. They would have to remove the stones and remove the rocks and remove the objects and anything within the soil that is not conducive to growth.” “Now,” he told the assembled crowd of approximately 30 people, “With this truth now being told, we have leveled and are continuing to level and clear the soil. So now that this truth has been told, it creates more space for a new truth to unfold.” In an interview in advance of the event, Chase told Episcopal News Service that the work leading up to the plaque has been underway for more than two years as part of the congregation’s Telling the Whole Story project, an effort begun in 2023 to examine aspects of the prominent Pasadena parish’s past that had not been fully acknowledged. The racial-history effort is the third committee to emerge from the broader project. Previous work examined the Indigenous history of the land on which All Saints sits (the land of the Tongva people), and a third committee has been studying the whiteness of the church’s iconography. St. Barnabas parishioner Marco White, who was among the attendees at the plaque unveiling, shared his thoughts with the ENS as the ceremony got under way. “I think it is symbolically important,” White said. “Obviously, it’s taken over a hundred years to get to this point. On the one hand, thank God we are at this point; on the other hand, it’s a plaque, and the most meaningful thing that I am hoping will develop from this is a meaningful relationship with St. Barnabas.” Chase emphasized that the plaque is not the project’s endpoint, noting that the project takes its name from the words of Indianapolis Bishop Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows: “‘You have to tell the whole story, so you can write a new story.’” The plaque and ceremony, he said, are “a step along that journey.” That sentiment was echoed by the Rev. Tim Rich, All Saints’ priest-in-charge:  “I want to say this with humility to make sure that we are right-sized in terms of our sense of importance,” he told the ENS right before the ceremony. “But part of why we did a church service on Sunday and now a more communal service on Monday is to inspire other communities and congregations to do this reflection and to think about what their history says about their identity.” For those congregations interested in doing similar work, Chase has some recommendations on where to start. “It is a national church call for us to wrestle with this and repair the racial history of our parishes,” he said. “But first, learn the racial history of your city, learn the racial history of your state, and then you will begin to see more clearly where your particular parish fits within that racial history. “Another piece of tangible advice that I would say is just get a small group of people together, and then follow the energy, the research and the commitment of that small group, and then it will grow from that small contingent. Also, I would highly recommend a seminal text that was a guiding force for us: “Black and Episcopalian: The Struggle for Inclusion,” by the Rev. Gayle Fisher-Stewart. In his remarks during the ceremony, John Williams, executive director of the Center for Restorative Justice, explained the ramifications of the plaque unveiling to the greater Pasadena community. “Reconciliation without memory is not reconciliation,” he said, “it’s amnesia. And that is why I believe this plaque matters. A plaque cannot repair the past; it cannot restore opportunities that were denied or relationships that were broken. But a plaque can interrupt the forgetting. Today we aren’t simply unveiling a plaque; we’re deciding what kind of city we will remember ourselves to be.” — Adam Tschorn is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and member of All Saints Beverly Hills.

[Anglican Communion News Service] The Rt. Rev. Manasseh Gahima was elected primate of the Anglican Church of Rwanda and bishop of the Diocese of Gasabo on Sept. 11. Gahima, whose installation is scheduled for Oct. 25, will succeed the Most Rev. Laurent Mbanda, who has led the Anglican Church of Rwanda since 2018. Gahima has served as the second bishop of the Diocese of Gahini since 2019. Read the full article here.

[Anglican Communion News Service] Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally presented her first Lambeth Awards on Sept. 11 at Lambeth Palace Chapel to 27 people for their contributions to the Anglican Communion, the Church of England or wider society. The Lambeth Awards span five categories: the Cross of St. Augustine for Services to the Anglican Communion, the Canterbury Cross for Services to the Church of England, the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation, the Langton Award for Community Service and the Lanfranc Award for Education and Scholarship. Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook, historiographer of The Episcopal Church, received the Lanfranc Award for contributions to theological education and church history. Read the full article here.

[Church of England] An increasing number of Church of England parishes, some of them in the most rural areas of the country, are moving away from oil and gas and improving their energy efficiency as they brace for rising energy bills this winter. A match funding pilot scheme from the Church of England’s Net Zero Carbon Program, called Give to Go Green, helps churches pay for work such as under-pew heating, LED lighting, insulation, electrical upgrades and small solar panel and battery storage schemes. It will be expanded to all 42 Church of England dioceses. Read the full article here.

[Episcopal News Service] Every weekday at 8 a.m., over a hundred Episcopalians in the Diocese of New York log on to Zoom for Morning Prayer. From those on bus commutes to those sitting in living rooms, Bishop Matthew Heyd said, this daily service has brought the diocese together. “It’s a wonderful collection of the diversity of the diocese every day,” Heyd told Episcopal News Service. The Diocese of New York covers 10 counties, including three New York City boroughs – Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island – and the city’s suburbs and upstate cities and towns. Within its 190 worshipping communities, there exists a variety of liturgical styles and languages spoken. Morning Prayer is a chance to uplift each corner of the diocese and make connections where they might otherwise be unlikely, Heyd said. “I’ve met people,” the Rev. Cindy McCloskey, a deacon on Staten Island, told ENS. “Sometimes it’s just through that box,” she said. “We’ve never met formally, but sometimes I get a chat box, words from someone, and I’ll go someplace and they’ll say, ‘I know you from Morning Prayer!’ and it opens up conversations. Oh, my goodness, it’s amazing.” McCloskey was a postulant for the diaconate in 2023 when Morning Prayer began, and Heyd invited postulants for ordination to officiate. During the week of her ordination, she credited the daily services with preparing her spiritually, especially the Gospel readings and reflections on “new wineskins.” Three years later, McCloskey now helps run the slides and invites participants to read. In addition to the officiant, multiple people read per day, and over 100 people have preached from all over the diocese and The Episcopal Church. For the particularly isolated parts of the diocese, like the churches on Staten Island or rural areas, McCloskey said this is a way to feel integrated with other Episcopalians. Ashley Shepherd has attended nearly every day since it began – even from vacation. A parishioner at the Church of the Epiphany on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Shepherd said this Morning Prayer differs from other daily office services because of the regular sermons and the sheer number of prayer requests. “I write my prayer really quickly, and I read the others, and I pray with them,” Shepherd said. “Sometimes the support that we get from [each other] can carry us.” When the call goes silent for intercessory prayer, the chat box floods with long lists of names, places and concerns. Heyd said Morning Prayer has been a place to process current events as they unfold, and there are frequent prayers about ICE activity in New York City and for peace in Gaza. “We’re living in a tough time,” Shepherd said. As an activist, she told ENS, she has witnessed frustration and despair at community gatherings like anti-ICE rallies. “Maybe I would not be as engaged [in Morning Prayer] if times were not this horrible. I don’t know.” Morning Prayer also has been a source of grounding and routine for Judy Douglas, director of programs for Episcopal Charities and a postulant for the diaconate. She officiates once a month and attends multiple times a week, usually with her camera off as she gets ready for the workday. In addition to making new connections online, Douglas described one morning in particular when she invited a friend at just the right time. “I had been walking in Rye with a dear friend who had recently lost her husband,” Douglas said. “The time was coming for morning prayer, we were still walking, and I thought to myself, ‘oh, my gosh, should I just invite her to come to Morning Prayer?’” Douglas said she hesitated because her friend was Jewish, but they logged on together. Archdeacon Denise LaVetty began her reflection that day with a Yiddish term that Douglas said she didn’t know but moved her friend to tears. “Not only did it mean a lot to me to invite her in even though she was Jewish, that particular one she signed into was what she needed to hear at that time,” she said. Heyd wrote in a newsletter to the diocese that Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, the original author of the Book of Common Prayer, would not have predicted that Anglicans would pray the daily office online, in multiple places at once. But in other ways, Heyd said, virtual Morning Prayer that celebrates the different charisms across the diocese follows in the Anglican tradition. “The diversity in the expression of the Gospel; actually in that way, Cranmer would have anticipated,” Heyd said. “The Gospel in our own language was a wonderful part of the English Reformation, and that reformation continues.” Praying individually is something Douglas enjoys, but she said the community that has been built from gathering day in and day out is “unbelievable.” “Where two or more are gathered, God is in the midst,” Douglas said. “When we see each other out and about, we recognize the person that we see on Zoom. And it brings us even closer together.” -Logan Crews is a freelance journalist and hospital chaplain resident in the Diocese of Missouri.

[Episcopal News Service] The Diocese of Florida on Sept. 11 elected the Rev. J. Randolph Alexander Jr. as its next bishop, marking a potential turning point in the diocese’s prolonged and tension-filled leadership transition after nearly 20 years under its previous bishop, Samuel “John” Howard. Clergy and lay leaders in the Jacksonville-based diocese elected Alexander on the third ballot at their diocesan convention, taking place Sept. 11-12 at the Camp Weed & Cerveny Conference Center in Live Oak. Alexander, rector of Immanuel Church-on-the-Hill in Alexandria, Virginia, was one of three candidates on the ballot, all of them from outside the diocese. “I am humbled, beyond words, by this decision from the people of God in the Diocese of Florida,” Alexander said in a statement released by the diocese after his election. “The harvest field is ripe unto the harvest, the potential is immense, and God’s love for us is beyond our limited imagination.” Alexander was elected with 86 out of 129 votes in the clergy order and 78 out of 142 votes in the lay order, with 65 and 72 votes needed in the respective orders. The other candidates were the Rev. Dorian Del Priore, rector of Holy Cross Church in Simpsonville, South Carolina; and the Very Rev. Thomas Clayton Purdy, rector of Christ Church in St. Simons Island, Georgia. “It’s a blessing to see our diocese come together to select Fr. Alexander as our future leader,” the Rev. Justin Yawn, outgoing standing committee president, and the Rev. Bob Goolsby, incoming standing committee president, said in a joint statement. “We give thanks to God for carrying us to this day and all who led and assisted this process.” Alexander’s election still will need to receive majority consent from the bishops and standing committees of The Episcopal Church’s more than 100 dioceses. That step typically is a formality on the path to a bishop’s consecration, but Florida’s last bishop election, in November 2022, failed to earn the required churchwide consents over concerns raised about the process and allegations of anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination under Howard. Because of those obstacles, the diocese has been without a diocesan bishop since Howard’s retirement in October 2023. The standing committee, after taking over as the diocese’s ecclesiastical authority, presided over a multiyear healing process that sought to mend relations between Howard’s supporters and those critical of the way he led the diocese for nearly two decades. Some of those critics filed complaints against Howard that became the basis of disciplinary cases under the church’s Title IV canons, alleging discrimination and financial impropriety. In September 2025, Howard reached an accord with Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe to resolve those cases without disciplinary action while also asking to be released from ordained ministry, meaning Howard is no longer a bishop in The Episcopal Church. In the interim, the diocese has been assisted by Central Florida Bishop Justin Holcomb, and Southwest Florida Bishop Douglas Scharf, as well as retired New Jersey Bishop Chip Stokes and retired Georgia Bishop Scott Benhase. During the diocesan healing process, members were also guided by the Rt. Rev. Mary Gray-Reeves, the former Diocese of El Camino Real bishop who is trained in conflict mediation. Gray-Reeves helped facilitate a series of conversations across differences that diocesan leaders said were necessary before they could launch a new bishop search. In the past several years since Howard’s exit, the atmosphere in the diocese has greatly improved, Yawn, the outgoing standing committee president, told Episcopal News Service in an interview before the election. “There’s actually joy in the room when we get together now,” he said. Pending the necessary churchwide consents, Alexander will be consecrated as Florida’s ninth bishop on Feb. 6, 2027. Yawn, rector of St. Francis in-the-Field Episcopal Church on Ponte Vedra Beach, said he and other members of the diocese are excited now about starting a new chapter, with more clearly defined roles for both the bishop and clergy and lay leadership. “This diocese knows that it is not fair to the new bishop, nor is it fair to any bishop, that we expect them to do everything,” Yawn said. “We have our roles and functions. … I’m very excited about how far we’ve come on that.” The process this year of nominating and meeting the three candidates and now voting for Florida’s next bishop has been particularly invigorating for the laity, Yawn added. “They see their vote as a mark of what God’s already doing here.” – David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.