This past week the 48th Midwest Diocesan Assembly was held October 5-7 in Overland Park, Kansas, hosted by the Holy Trinity Church there. Reports of the Assembly will eventually appear on the Diocese of the Midwest Homepage. Metropolitan Jonah addressed the assembly in its opening session and also gave the sermon at the Divine Liturgy on Wednesday morning. I am assuming that Archbishop Job’s address will eventually be posted on the Diocese Homepage, perhaps the Metropolitan’s comments as well. The Assembly was not marked by any raucously controversial issues as has been the case in the past few years when the Assembly’s attention was placed on the scandalous events that were occurring in the national church’s central administration. The Assembly did some basic work on the diocesan strategic plan, adopted a very conservative budget (no increase in the assessment) considering the economic condition of many of the states and parishes within the Diocese, decided to continue funding the office of the Parish Health Facilitator, got the Diocesan Council to agree to study conciliar processes by which other OCA dioceses have chosen their new bishops recently, listened to reports about the work of the Metropolitan Council and the ongoing legal and investigative issues still in process in the Church, and elected Diocesan Council members as well as other offices as required by the Diocesan By-laws. The Assembly was told by Metropolitan Jonah to consider the tithing method of funding the Diocese – the Diocese of the South adopted this years ago and now though numerically considerably smaller than the Diocese of the Midwest, they do have a larger budget. As already stated, hopefully all the reports will soon appear on the Diocesan Homepage.
Fraternized 