The 2025 Convention for the diocese of Northern California took place November 7-8 in at the Redding Convention Center. All clergy of the diocese are expected to participate and each parish in the diocese can send a certain number of delegates based on the size of the congregation. Guido and Sharon were St. Clement’s delegates this year.
Click here for the full convention website.
Speakers at the convention included our own Bp. Megan, the Rt. Rev. Phyllis A. Spiegel, Bishop of Utah, and the Rt. Rev. Lloyd Allen, Bishop of Honduras.
We elected our sixteen person delegation (four clergy and four lay plus alternates) to the 2027 General Convention.
We considered three resolutions which can be found here. Resolutions 1 and 3 passed without much comment or discussion.
Resolution 2 ended up being the main point of contention for the entire convention. Each episcopal diocese has an apportionment structure wherein parishes financially support the bishop’s office and work. The current apportionment structure is unwieldy, confusing, opaque, and in need of reworking. It also amounts to many parishes paying 15% of their operating budget to the diocese. Resolution 2 sought to cap apportionment at 10% of a parish’s budget. This would be in line with the biblical notion of a tithe and would reflect new Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe’s priority of cutting costs in church governance and passing those savings back to parishes.
After the resolution was made there was opportunity for delegates to speak for and against it with many doing so. Ultimately a motion was made to have the executive committee of the diocese take on the calls to make apportionment costs more affordable and transparent and that was passed by a large majority.
Along with the three resolutions that were discussed and voted on was a petition to formally close St. John’s church in Marysville. Despite having a long history dating back to 1854, St. John’s was no longer self-sufficient and had not been for quite some time. The parish had its last service earlier this year and the petition to formally close the church passed with memories of it being shared.