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Diocese of
Fort Worth
Reorganizes:
Gulick Elected Unanimously
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By Pat McCaughan
Episcopal Life Online
About 400 delegates and overflow visitors who filled the 116-year-old Trinity Church and its parish hall on Fort Worth's south side for a February 7 special organizing convention celebrated being "called to life" anew and getting back to the business of being the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth.
About 19 clergy and 62 lay delegates representing 31 congregations unanimously elected the Rt. Rev. Edwin "Ted" Gulick, bishop of Kentucky, as provisional bishop by a voice vote in clergy and lay orders. Gulick, who will serve as provisional bishop until at least mid-year while continuing to serve the Diocese of Kentucky, received a standing ovation and sustained applause.
"I cannot tell you how moved I am by your trust and how awed I am by this responsibility," Gulick told the gathering. He offered thanks to Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, as well as to the people of the Diocese of Kentucky. More 
Note: Representing the Provincial Council of Province VII at the event were President Max Patterson, along with Bishop Larry Benfield and Vycke McEwen, Council members.
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General Convention Deputy Orientation Scheduled
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General Convention Deputy Orientation will be held May 1-2, 2009 at St. Michael’s and All Angels Episcopal Church in Dallas. The National Church Center staff has asked to have 4 hours on the first day and 4 hours on the second day for the material they want presented. Registration will begin at 1 p.m. on Friday with the session running from 2 until 6 and a reception from 6 until 7, followed by dinner on your own. Saturday’s session will run from 8 until 12.
A block of rooms for lodging, at $119/night, has been made at The Hilton Dallas Park Cities Hotel, 5954 Luther Lane. Delegates may call for reservations (214-368-0400) until the block is released on April 9. Download registration information here. |
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"Time for Healing"
Delegation from Diocese of Fort Worth makes connections |
| (from left) Max Patterson visiting with the Rev. Courtland Moore, Lynne Minor, Ann Coleman, and Laura Adcock, all from the Diocese of Fort Worth. |
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“We’ve been working really hard to make this happen,” Lynne Minor, a member of All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Fort Worth says of efforts to maintain an Episcopal presence in her diocese. “We are ready to jump into full participation in the Episcopal Church.”
Minor was one of four representatives from the Diocese of Fort Worth attending the recent Provincial Synod in Oklahoma City. She was joined by Laura Adcock, also from All Saints’; Ann Coleman, from Church of the Good Shepherd, Wichita Falls; and the Rev. Courtland Moore, formerly of All Saints’ but currently serving as interim in a parish in Dallas.
Moore also functions as vice president of the Steering Committee North Texas Episcopalians, an organization formed in response to Bishop Jack Iker’s attempt to lead the Diocese of Fort Worth out of the Episcopal Church and into alignment with the Province of the Southern Cone.
The diocese’s second and final vote on secession will take place at the Diocesan Convention Nov. 14-15. “We’re very much assured that the vote will succeed,” says Minor.
Noting that his diocese faces “a momentous |
decision,” Iker argues in a letter written in September and posted online that “[t]he Episcopal Church many of us were born into or became members of many years ago no longer exists! It has been replaced by a liberal, revisionist sect that does not deserve our allegiance or support any longer.”
Specifically, Iker points to “the ordination of a homosexual bishop living in a sexual relationship with another man and the blessings of same-sex unions in many places throughout this church” as the major reasons for the split. He further claims that “[t]he heresies and heterodoxy once proclaimed by just a few renegade bishops – like James Pike and John Spong – are now echoed by the Presiding Bishop.” This lack of “orthodoxy,” he says, has made reconciliation impossible.
Claiming that the Episcopal Church “is coming after us,” Iker states that he looks forward to the passage of the resolution to secede. “What a joy and relief it will be,” he says, “to be part of
(Continued)
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By Carol E. Barnwell
“I’m as giddy as I can be,” said Maggie Vaughn, a member of Trinity, Houston, at the recent ordination of Andy Doyle as bishop coadjutor. Her excitement and joy at the event was echoed over and over by representatives of the 154 congregations in the Diocese of Texas who were among the 1700 plus participants at the ordination at St. Martin’s, Houston, on November 22.
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