Special Diocesan Convention in October

Dear Clergy and Lay Delegates,

The COVID-19 pandemic has required all of us to change how we live, worship, and conduct business. One of the items we must now deal with is how we conduct business as a diocese and specifically whether we must be physically present to conduct that business. For us, that is our Diocesan Convention. With an abundance of caution, and following the lead of most of our surrounding dioceses, we are most likely going to have an entirely virtual or a partially virtual Diocesan Convention this year. (Partially virtual may mean people gather in socially-distanced small groups at a parish location. More details on that later.)  

The Constitution and Canons Committee have carefully reviewed Indiana state laws, our Diocesan Canons, and The Episcopal Church canons applying to virtual meetings. They suggested a three step process: 

  • First, they recommended to Diocesan Council, which acts as the interim legislative body between conventions, a Resolution (Attachment A) providing just the bare minimum change required for Convention to meet virtually (a one-time change to the Rules of Order). Council adopted this resolution at its June 13th meeting. The Committee also made a recommendation to the Bishop about the form of worship to be used for a virtual Convention, and he has indicated that he will plan accordingly.

  • Second, the Committee recommended that a Special Convention be called to consider three resolutions (Attachment B) more thoroughly amending all of the Canons that bear on virtual meetings. Those three resolutions will be the subject of the October 3 convention.

  • And third, the Committee recommended that our next non-virtual meeting of Convention, whenever that turns out to be, ratify the amendments made by the Special Convention, just to be sure that no-one can later claim that they are invalid. 

In order to simplify the process, and to both fine tune and shorten our November convention, we will have a short Special Convention on Saturday October 3rd beginning at 10am EDT/9am CDT. The only item of business will be the ratification of these resolutions (although the meeting itself requires items like establishing a quorum, approving minutes from the last convention, etc.). Please reserve 2 hours for this meeting. If there is little/no discussion, we hope to complete the meeting within 30 minutes. 

Please mark your calendar for our Special Diocesan Convention on Saturday October 3, 2020 beginning at 10am EDT/9am CDT for TWO hours. More details will be provided in the coming weeks.

Our November 7, 2020 regular Diocesan Convention will occur as planned, in some sort of virtual format. 

This is new to all of us!  If you have questions, concerns, or suggestions please don't hesitate to reach out to Missioner Michelle Walker.  Thank you!