Harvest August 2023

Across the diocese, many of us have been reading a book by Alan J. Roxburgh that solidly rests on the Gospel accounts (particularly Luke 10) of Jesus sending “the seventy others” to engage the people and places of their neighborhoods. Recently, I have been helped by seeing my “neighborhood” – which can feel a little vague – in terms of what social scientists are calling Third Places and Third Spaces.

News and notes from the congregations of the diocese.

For years, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Torbeck, Haiti, dreamed of having a hurricane-resistant, covered pavilion on the grounds of their parish school. They wanted a place where students can eat lunch outside their classrooms, where pre-K through high school classes have additional learning space, where the local community can gather for celebrations and meetings, and where parishioners can gather for weekly worship (their previous church was destroyed in 2016). Now, with the help of St. Michael and All Angels in Mission, that dream has come true!

Updates on diocesan clergy since the last issue of The Harvest.

The Rev. Kelly Demo of St. Thomas, Overland Park has coauthored a book titled Grace in the Rearview Mirror: Four Women Priests on Brokenness, Belonging, and the Beauty of God. The press release for the book explains how “four women priests have found God in the most unexpected places: in a dive bar, at the drugstore, and even at the grave.

A tribute to the life of the Rev. Walter “Terry” Miescher: October 8, 1945 – July13, 2023

The diocese gathered at Grace Cathedral on Saturday, June 24, 2023 to participate in the ordination of three deacons. Lory Mills of St. Andrew’s, Derby, was ordained to the vocational diaconate, and two transitional deacons were ordained: Caroline Howard of St. Peter’s, Pittsburg and Martha Lamoy of St. Thomas, Overland Park.

Bishop Bascom is gathering newer clergy on August 19 to launch a new initiative aimed at enhancing the formation of recently ordained clergy. Bishop Alan Scarfe, the resigned ninth bishop of the diocese of Iowa, has been retained by Bishop Bascom to serve as New Clergy Companion Coach. The product of several months of discernment and conversation with her advisors, the New Clergy Companion Coach will spend the next year walking alongside recently ordained clergy supporting their development as ordained leaders of congregations.

On the sloping escarpment of the great Rift Valley, our driver eases his Toyota van up a rutted dirt road, past farm plots with rows of maize then past a long stretch of hedge blanketed by black plastic. We can’t see beyond the barrier, but bougainvillea spills over the top, and where the road ends at a metal gate, there is a thick furl of red and purple blossoms. 

At 7 am, they come out of the cafeteria of the diocesan guest house and climb onto a bus, which winds its way out of the bustling streets of Nakuru—second largest city in Kenya—climbing north from the tan savannah into the green mountains until, an hour-and-a-half later, they reach the town of Mirangine and the lumbering vehicle eases through a gated entrance onto the grounds of a one-story clinic with a dozen treatment rooms.