[Magdalen] Diocese of Virginia - regions & changes

[Lynn Ronkainen]

Quite the undertaking Cady! Thank you for your willingness to serve and bring your own experiences  and skills to the tasks at hand. May this be holy work. 
Lynn

On Feb 28, 2018, at 7:52 AM, cady soukup <cadyasoukup at gmail.com> wrote:

For the past 2 years, I've been the president of Region 13 of the
Diocese of Virginia (similar to convocations or other regional
groups).

Thumbnail history: The diocese formed regions in the early 1970's by
deciding that each region should have roughly 5,000 communicants, and
assigning churches into regions until that limit was reached. This
meant that urban regions had fewer churches, and were closer together;
rural regions had up to 22 churches and were further apart. Regions
are to provide communication with the diocese (the Executive Committee
is formed of individuals appointed by each region), geographical
communication between churches to share ideas, support, resources and
missions, and collegiality amongst the clergy (the region Dean
schedules clericus meetings) and the lay members.Region 13 has
initiated many ministries throughout the decades, from substantively
supporting returning missionaries during their transition to
congregational ministry in the US, planting a LatinX congregation, St.
Gabriel's Church in Loudoun County, to an ongoing ministry in the
rural mountains of Haiti.

In 2017, the diocese updated the regions, moving from the original 15
regions to a new set of 16 regions (map at
http://www.thediocese.net/who-we-are/regional-structures/). Our rural
church (Mike Mahoney and I attend Trinity Episcopal Church in
Washington, VA; we sometimes see Grace Cangialosi there as a supply
minister) moved from Region 13 (parts of Culpeper, Loudoun, Fauquier,
Prince William and all of Rappahannock county) to the Culpeper Region.
We have moved from a region where the largest church had >800 ASA and
the smallest had 34 ASA (for a rough total of 4500 members) to a
region where the largest church has about 220 ASA, the second has
about 140 ASA, Trinity has about 80 ASA, and the others are smaller.
Some are much smaller. My estimate of the total Culpeper Region
communicants is under 1000.

The 10 churches are historic, rural, small churches. Some are a few
miles from others. One has no email or web presence (other than the
default diocese web site). Most face immediate challenges related to
low member numbers, aging buildings and mandatory maintenance (a tower
nearly fell down).

The diocese contacted me to ask if I would serve as the lay President
of the new Culpeper Region. Newly-appointed Region Dean (St. Stephen's
Church, Culpeper - Benson Shelton), newly-appointed Executive Council
member (St. James' Church, Warrenton - Ben Maas) and I met and
scheduled the first Culpeper Region meeting on April 10th. I am
sending out email to most of the churches and mailing letters to all
the churches. We walk in hope that this new region will work.

May g-d find us where we are,

hugs anyway - Cady