January 6, 2009
By Pat McCaughan

When an anticipated 9,000 to 10,000 deputies and alternate deputies, bishops, Episcopal Church Women, exhibitors, staff, volunteers and visitors converge in Anaheim, California, next July for the Episcopal Church's 76th General Convention and ECW Triennial Meeting, they can expect sun, fun, rich diversity, green space, fresh worship, the launch of a mission conversation and a glimpse of the future's "nochurch" churches.

From July 8-17, the glasswalled Anaheim Convention Center one block from Disneyland will be transformed into meeting, worship, child-care and other spaces and host at least 120 exhibitors, an educational discovery center and a diocesan hospitality venue featuring banners proclaiming "Faith and Our Future" and emergent worship, said Bishop Jon Bruno of the Diocese of Los Angeles.

"I was there the last time convention was in Anaheim, when Edmond Browning was elected the presiding bishop," said Bruno, a veteran conventioneer. "I've gone from volunteer to host of convention, and we're excited beyond belief and preparing for our thousands of visitors."

The 1.6-million-square-foot convention center has undergone a makeover and the city has grown since that 1985 convention, said Lori Ionnitiu, General Convention manager.

"Anaheim also was her first convention, and the city "is much different now," she said. Anaheim touts itself as a campus environment, which is conducive for our convention.

"The convention center is right there; two major hotels are right there. People won't have to walk far to get there. We'll be in our own little world," said Ionnitiu, who manages the convention site.

From farms to entertainment Anaheim, named in 1857 by its German founders, means "home by the Santa Ana River." What began as an agrarian community with grapes, nuts and citrus crops has emerged as a major entertainment destination. Its largest private employer, at 20,000 workers, is the Disneyland resort complex.

It is located in Orange County, which borrows a little Hollywood star quality, from Santa Ana's John Wayne Airport and Anaheim's Gene Autry Way to a "Walk of Stars" venue whose first inductee was Walt Disney in 2006. Current nominees are golfer Tiger Woods, singer Gwen Stefani and Josh Schwartz, producer of the TV series The O.C. The Walt Disney Company launched the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, now the Anaheim Ducks, after the movie The Mighty Ducks in 1993.

Besides Orange County, the Diocese of Los Angeles encompasses Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and portions of Riverside counties. The 85,000-member diocese includes 146 congregations worshiping in Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tagalog and English within a five-county geographic area.

Navigating tough times All things considered – California has the nation's third-highest unemployment rate, at 8.2 percent, a $16 billion-and-counting budget deficit and unprecedented housing foreclosures – the L.A. diocese is doing "magnificently well," said Bruno.

"We've cut back, but we haven't discontinued" anything, Bruno said. Delegates attending the December 5-6 diocesan convention overwhelming approved a $6.87 million budget, up from about $6.5 million the previous year.

Bruno is no stranger to transition or challenge. On December 5, he celebrated the retirement of Bishop Assistant Robert Anderson and tearfully issued a call for two bishops' elections when announcing the June 2010 retirements of Bishop Suffragan Chester Talton and Bishop Assistant Sergio Carranza.

Bruno has offered to assist the Order of the Holy Cross in rebuilding the internationally known Mount Calvary Retreat House, destroyed in recent Santa Barbara County wildfires. And the diocese will engage "mission and realization of the Millennium Development Goals [MDGs]," regardless of the outcome of an expected January 2009 state Supreme Court decision to resolve property disputes with four breakaway congregations.

"I've got to tell you, it's time to stop fighting and move forward in reconciliation," Bruno said. "It's not about sex. It's about the ministry of Jesus Christ. We're attempting to renew God's creation through serving the community, the diocese and the national church with generosity and to build new and more abundant community than we've ever had before."

For example, he said, "we are opening, right now, even in these hard economic times, Mama's, a training center in Pasadena to retool people who need to learn new skills. It will teach them to operate cateringkitchens. It's being done through our economic development corporation to help create abundance for everyone."

Embracing ubuntu The Rev. Gregory Straub, executive officer and secretary to General Convention, said he hoped the spirit of ubuntu, "I in you and you in me," will permeate convention meetings, conversation and worship.

By stressing the convention theme of ubuntu's "interconnectedness of one person to a community ... we hope to launch conversations in each diocese, leading to mission focuses" via public narrative, a tool to build bridges through personal story, he said.

Public narrative training will be introduced at provincial synod gatherings and the July 7 deputies' orientation session, he said.

"Faith and our Future" will be another recurrent convention theme, notably at the Los Angeles hospitality center and L.A. night, as well as in Christian formation offerings, said Susan Bek, who is coordinating the convention children's program.

Camp counselors, clergy, Christian educators, storytellers, liturgical dancers, actors, artists and the Los Angeles diocese's cultural diversity center, the Kaleidoscope Institute, are teaming up to offer a high-tech version of "where in the world is the Episcopal Church (TEC) and what in the world are they doing" for children, Bek said. "We want them to be able to go home and tell everyone what is happening in TEC right now ... and how we're preparing for their future in TEC," added Bek, director of youth and children's ministries and school chaplain at St. Stephen's, Santa Clarita.

Through the collaborative efforts of Episcopal Church Center staff, the Province VIII Western Episcopal Educators and a diocesan team, the children of deputies, bishops, staff, volunteers, Triennial Meeting delegates and visitors attending convention will create their own worship, interview conventioneers and create videos and upload them onto You Tube.

They'll engage multiculturalism; the MDGs and mission; the intersection of faith and culture, technology and media; ecology; and God's economy or stewardship during activities, said Trudy Ardizzone, a member of the Western Episcopal Educators of Province VIII, who are creating Studio 8, an educational discovery center.

Studio 8 "will be a very dynamic place, where people can work on the videos they create, but also an oasis, a quiet place to pray or rock a baby or find out information from our resources," said Ardizzone, missioner for Christian formation at St. Mary's Church in Lompoc.

Web and print resources will be available for all ages. Also on hand will be storytellers such as the Rev. Canon Malcolm Boyd, who will read from his book Are You Running With Me, Jesus? As for a crossover experience at nearby Disneyland, conventioneers are on their own, said Straub. No official activities are planned at the resort.

Committee and worship changes New deputies won't receive legislative committee assignments but instead will visit with seasoned conventioneers in the hopes of enriching their convention experience. "We've discovered that deputies sometimes go to convention and choose not to run again" because such legislative committee assignments prevent them from fully participating, Straub said. "We are hoping that by giving new deputies a richer experience, we will cut down on the loss of continuing deputies."

In another scheduled change, daily worship times will begin later, at about 11:30 a.m., to enable committee members to participate, Straub said. "We want everyone to have the opportunity to experience and explore Los Angeles' rich diversity, in both the daily Eucharist and other worship including during Los Angeles Night … to come away with a flavor of what it's like to live in the Diocese of Los Angeles."

Creative worship services still are being shaped and may include African and Korean drums, Chinese dragons and Native-American liturgical dancers. Emergent liturgy or worship will receive special emphasis, said Bruno, who recently created a diocesan Center for Creative Worship.

Specially featured will be Thads, a 2-year-old congregation that is among a handful of "no-church churches" that have sprung up in the Los Angeles diocese. Initially planted by the Rev. Jimmy Bartz, a former associate rector of All Saints, Beverly Hills, it draws about 150 participants weekly, about half of whom have "little or no experience of church – a demographic growing at a much faster rate than those with opposite experiences," Bartz said.

Its simple worship – no candles, a stage setup, a nonlectionary-based "retranslated Liturgy of the Word" and a rock-‘n'-roll "bluesy" band in an atypical setting seems to invite intimacy and freshness and "those who wouldn't otherwise darken the door of a church," he said.

Dina Ferguson, coordinator for the local planning team, said she hoped Los Angeles would inspire healing and reconciliation. "Where better … to acknowledge our differences while embracing the big tent of our Anglican heritage?" She and Volunteer Coordinator Lynn Headley are appealing for volunteers to show up, don "California gold" aprons and join an "amazing network that supports, enriches and enables our fullness of life."

They need about 1,500 volunteers, Headley said. "We have 250 volunteers signed up so far. We want people to come, but we want to make sure they have an opportunity to serve and a good experience."

Episcopal News Service
The Rev. Pat McCaughan is Episcopal Life Media correspondent for Province VIII and the House of Bishops.