Bishops and such...

Greetings my friends,

There is much going on...here are some highlights:

-The Lambeth Conference of the Episcopal Church has just kicked off. This is a once a decade meeting of all the bishops of the Anglican Communion. Ya see, there are several churches (Episcopal Church, Church of England, United Church of Canada, etc.) that all operate independently but are part of this larger organization – the Anglican Communion. Once every ten years, all the bishops in the larger organization get together, smile a lot, pray, and debate the issues of the day. Some suggestions and decisions come out of it, but ultimately the individual churches are still more or less free to do what they want...it's almost like the UN I guess, but with funny hats and robes.

-Speaking of Bishops, the Northeastern Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church just elected a new Bishop. It was Rev. Peggy Johnson from the Baltimore-Washington Conference. Our own Rev. Vicki was once of the candidates in the running! The Jurisdiction's loss is our gain, and Rev. Vicki will continue to be our pastor here in Bridgewater for a time longer (hurray!).

-Since we're on the topic of bishops...here's some fast facts. During medieval times, the Church found the use of the bishop as a chess piece to be blasphemous. So for a time the piece was changed to be a court jester. The current bishop of the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference of the UMC (that's this conference!) is Bishop Sudarshana Devadhar (see pic). The denominations that have bishops are: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, United Methodist, Lutheran, Assyrian Church of the East, Christian Methodist Episcopal Church (and perhaps others...there are LOTS of denominations out there). Joey Bishop was an entertainer who was part of the “Rat Pack” with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Peter Lawford (see pic).

Oh, and I do have one non-Bishop piece of news...I've gotten engaged! My fiancee, Jill, is a seminarian at Princeton, and we're both happy and excited about entering this new stage of our relationship (see pic). We haven't set a date yet, but we are looking at the summer of 2010.

That's all for now my friends. Be well.

Peace,

Kevin