News & Messages

Diocesan and Parish Leaders Gather to Learn about Systemic Racism

Last Saturday about 55 parish lay leaders and clergy gathered at Zion, Oconomowoc for our spring Leadership Day. We participated in an Introduction to Systemic Racism training put on by Crossroads Anti-Racism Organizing and Training, an organization based in Illinois.

The purpose of this training was to provide an introductory process to deepen our understanding of institutional/systemic racism and to begin to find ways to more effectively dismantle and eliminate racism within our institutions. It was an important and heavy topic, to be sure, but we all were able to have some good discussions about racism. One participant noted, “This was daunting, in a good way.”

Thank you to Zion for providing the room for us. Thanks also to Dawn Anderson for making sure we had plenty of coffee, lunch, and treats. We’re also grateful for the leadership from the Commission on Mission and Development for arranging this training. And, lastly, thank you to our trainers for the day, Kelly and Noah, who were excellent facilitators.

Sara Bitner
Communications Officer

Checklists for Vestries

Checklists from the Commission on Mission and Development
The Commission on Mission and Development has developed some tools for you to use together with your vestries that we're excited to share with you. They are all available on our website. 

Here are all the checklists and tools as pdfs for you to view. All the files are available as Word docs on our website so you can fill them out and adapt them to your settings.

1. Checklist for Congregations
2. Calendar of Worship and Events
3. Review of Goals
4. Review of Ministries
 
We encourage you to start using these tools with your vestries. If you have questions or need help in any of the above areas, please contact Canon Peggy Bean. We have wonderful people resources across the diocese who can help encourage and guide you.