Episcopal Press and News
Affirmed By Convention, Jubilee Moves Ahead
Episcopal News Service. October 10, 1985 [85202]
NEW YORK (DPS, Oct. 10) -- With strong support -- and some firm, numerical goals -- from the General Convention, the Church's Jubilee Ministry is moving quickly to implement programs and policies for the coming triennium.
In a recent conversation, Canon Peter Golden, staff officer for Jubilee Ministries at the Episcopal Church Center, ran down the list of Convention actions pertaining to Jubilee and outlined some steps that have already been taken. Much of the work shaping the program for 1986-88 will be hammered out at a meeting of the Jubilee Ministries advisory committee in New York Nov. 18-20, just before the start of the first post-Convention meeting of the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church.
Among the most important actions ordered by Convention were two that are designed to get ministers -- lay and ordained -- into the wide range of ministries with the poor and oppressed. On the recommendation of the Metropolitan Areas Standing Commission, the Executive Council is directed to create a Jubilee Volunteers in Mission Program with a goal of 100 volunteers in place by 1988. The Office is also to implement two-year Jubilee residency programs and develop a diocesan network of staff officers.
The intern/residency program will place seminary graduates and others in Jubilee and other poverty programs at parish and diocesan levels. The interns will be chosen after careful screening, and their work and the programs will be measured against firm criteria designed to extract the greatest learning for the Church. Golden pointed out that five interns, called Jubilee Associates, were already in place and working and said that he expected that their experiences would weigh heavily on the shape of the expanded programs. This will be among the decisions that the committee will confront next month.
Golden said he will be meeting with the Church Center Volunteers for Mission officers to discuss implementing that aspect of Convention's mandate. The Volunteer program now works most often with overseas placement and with placement of overseas volunteers in the United States, although it has done some domestic placement. The emphasis will be on recruitment from among people within Jubilee Centers and recruitment will be especially aggressive among ethnic minorities.
Convention authorized some additional Jubilee funding for these two programs. Volunteers are usually expected -- if the overseas pattern is followed -- to raise most of their own support costs. The Commission suggested that 50 percent of an internship will be borne locally.
Much of the thrust of Convention action was to get the Jubilee concept "up to speed" now that the basic support systems -- staff officer, quarterly journal, public policy network, and numerous Jubilee Centers - are in place and working. Golden said that there are now 49 Centers and 20 more are likely to be affirmed by the Council next month. Jubilee Ministry has a circulation of 12,000, and thousands of Episcopalians can be mobilized to lobby state, regional and federal governments for various advocacy causes.
Advocacy, however, remains one of the weaker points of the Ministry in the eyes of many. Commission chair and former Council member Marge Christie of Newark said before Convention that few Centers then in existence had effective advocacy programs working at anything like the intensity of their service programs. With this in mind, Convention was firm in urging full integration of advocacy programs into Jubilee Ministry and called for the development of advocacy models and training.
Just how these demands are met will begin to be worked out at the advisory committee meeting next month.
That panel will also - if not next month, soon - have to address Convention mandates to involve Jubilee and a number of other Church Center entities under the leadership of the Women in Mission and Ministries office in efforts to develop greater federal economic assistance to women and children.
In one other current development, Golden said he would be meeting later this month with West Virginia diocesan officials about a Charleston pilot program. Working with him will be Church Center evangelism officer, the Rev. A. Wayne Schwab, and Dr. David Crean, the hunger ministries staff officer and the three are hopeful that Charleston Episcopalians can develop a program involving evangelism into the Jubilee mix of service and advocacy.