The Diocese of Southern Ohio gathered for its 151st Diocesan Convention November 14-15, 2025. The Rt. Rev. Kristin Uffelman White offered her second address to the diocese as part of the celebratory Eucharist.
Two weeks ago, after the federal government announced it would not fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the largest hunger relief program in the country, during the longest government shutdown in our history, our office invited people leading food pantries and community meals across the diocese to come together for a call. We hoped to hear from the folks who are feeding people what they saw, where the need is, what we can do – together.
With not much notice, we had 45 people present on that call, representing almost a third of our congregations and other ministries.
We prayed together, and I asked people to introduce themselves with two words that reflect how they were feeling. I heard words I expected, like “disappointed” and “angry” and “horrified.”
And also: “committed,” and “ready,” and even – “hopeful.”
I asked them to share what they wanted the Church to know. A priest talked about the local food sources where pantries get their food for free, or at reduced cost, being depleted of everything except baked goods. An organizer talked about her congregation’s pantry serving 500 people, in 90 minutes. A volunteer shared that at their pantry, the number of people seeking food had doubled…in one week’s time. Another leader told us that her organization had a signup list for Thanksgiving food baskets, with 300 baskets available; she had released the signup sheet the day before our call, and by the time we talked, at 11:30am, that signup sheet was full. And another leader reminded us: a lack of access to food affects all other aspects of life: people have to choose between buying food and paying for a doctor’s visit, or between food and soap, or between food and tires for the car. For our neighbors, our families, and our loved ones, this crisis goes well beyond the plate. It affects the health and wellbeing of each one of us.
I asked them to share with us what resources they need, and what ideas they have for how we can help. They shared the need for funds to buy food for hungry people, of course – and our grant application for emergency relief went live last Friday. Our Episcopal Community Ministries Committee is already at work, considering applications; the first 18 disbursements have been made.
People on the call that day also shared ideas for what they’re doing, and how people can work together. A group of leaders will meet here tomorrow, over lunch, to share ideas about food rescue and organizing to build capacity to feed more people.
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The theme of our convention this year is “Love, divine, all loves excelling,” the first line of that gorgeous hymn we sang just a short time ago. When our team gathered, early in the year, to begin planning for this year’s convention, we talked about the time we’re in: the challenges of political battles and ICE raids and real fear – not just for the future, but in this present moment. We hoped for our time together to offer the chance to lift up practical examples of love made real – the love that God has for us, the divine love that God calls us to share with a world that literally starves, right now.
What I want to tell you, friends, is that I witnessed God’s love in action on that call, ten days ago. Jesus told his disciples to feed people, and this group of faithful Christians – together with many more – you all are doing just that.
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In the spring and summer of 2024, we worked together as a diocese to discern and develop a shared mission: To embody the Gospel of Jesus, and share in God’s transformation of our communities, with the Holy Spirit as our guide. The values we identified in support of that mission are: Integrity, Relationship, and Love.
Love…Divine.
As we have made significant decisions in the time since then, having that mission as a frame has helped shape what we do. I’ve found myself asking questions, like: “How does this point us toward transformation?” and – my favorite way of talking about the value of integrity: “Do the words and the music go together here?”
In December of last year, the elected and appointed members of our three governing bodies – the Standing Committee, the Diocesan Council, and the Trustees – gathered at the Procter Center for our first-ever annual governing bodies retreat. We prayed together, clarified the roles of each of those bodies, spent time in fellowship, and each group developed its own ways of working, based on the diocesan mission and their own canonical roles.
Also in December, and again throughout the year – it was a blessing to ordain new priests and deacons; to confirm and receive and renew the baptismal promises of many, many people – and to get to baptize people, too, as, together, we build up the Body of Christ.
You have welcomed me as your bishop with faithful and creative and generous hospitality – sometimes with chalk-decorated parking spots and purple peanut m&ms, sometimes with a feast of joffa rice and plantains and homemade gluten-free cake. You have shared your stories; sometimes with a hard honesty about the pain you’ve encountered. You’ve given me, and members of our diocesan staff, the chance to listen.
Telling the truth about who we are is one of the four tenets of Becoming Beloved Community, and it is stitched through our shared ministry. We are working together to dismantle racism, in conversations and trainings and book studies and public witness, with the leadership of our Missioner for Beloved Community, Ms. Miriam Willard McKenney. I am deeply grateful, as well, to welcome our long-awaited Missioner for Black Ministries, the Rev. Aaron Rogers, who is inhabiting his new ministry with vibrant faithfulness. Our Reparations Task Force has been at work for six years, now, and is moving forward with a proposal to repair the breach. I’m grateful to the Right Reverend Carrie Schofield-Broadbent, Bishop of Maryland, our keynote speaker and my friend, who is here to share with us about the Diocese of Maryland’s experience in establishing reparations funding. Thank you, Bishop Carrie, for reminding us that we are not alone in this work, for the gift of learning from one another as we seek to embody God’s Good News, to share God’s divine love.
Since even before I became your bishop, I have heard people refer to the Procter Center, our camp and conference and retreat center and working farm near London, Ohio, as “the spiritual center of the diocese.” It’s where our children (and adults!) experience God’s transformation at camp. It’s where clergy renew our ordination vows every Holy Week. It’s where we gather, and learn, and glory in God’s creation. But our relationship to Procter as a diocese, and its capacity and sustainability, has not been defined.
Thanks to our co-executive directors, Ms. Jerusalem Greer and Mr. Nathan Greer, and their team, and our advisory board, we’re working to address that. This year I established the understanding of the Procter Center as a ministry of the Diocese of Southern Ohio. The co-executive directors and board have engaged with a consulting team to align our work together. And Procter’s 2026 budget, I am happy to say, is funded at a sustainable level.
We have more work to do, increasing our capacity to gather there in the ways that we hope to, so stay tuned to learn more about plans for a campaign in the new year that will help us build toward the future. In the meantime, though, what a blessing it is to go to that sacred space, to be well-fed by Ms. Xandra Sharpe and her team, and nurtured in our faith as disciples of Jesus, to develop relationships within and beyond our own congregations.
Some pretty amazing things have taken place at Procter this year. The spring brought our first ever LGBTQ ministries summit – a gathering that Mr. Drew Abbott and the organizing team hoped would draw 30 people, ended up fully subscribed before registration closed. After the closing Eucharist, Canon Julie Murray, our canon for community engagement, stopped me to say, “This is what Beloved Community looks like, Bishop. We need to build more space out here, so that more people can take part.”
In July, we launched the College for Congregational Development – an annual offering that brings together teams of lay and clergy leaders to learn faithful, practical ways of strengthening the churches we love. More than 40 people from across the diocese gathered – yes, at Procter – for six intense days of learning and practice and fellowship and prayer. I’m grateful to the Rev. Canon Meredith Day Hearn, our canon for congregations, for leading this initiative, together with our team of trainers and launch director. People asked good questions, and took risks, and forged new relationships. Recognizing that not everyone could take part in the full training, we held a one-day mini-College just a few weeks ago at St. Margaret’s, Trotwood – with nearly 80 people in attendance. Our team is looking for ways to equip you as leaders to build up the Body of Christ that we are, as church. And registration for next year’s College is open now!
2025 marks our 150th year as a diocese, an occasion we celebrated together on September 27, at our spiritual home – Procter – naming our celebration “This is our Story, This is our Song.”
Canon Katie Forsyth, our canon for communications, led the effort, together with Ms. Jerusalem Greer, with support from Dean Owen Thompson and many others. Procter, and churches from throughout the diocese, shared their stories. Our new liturgy commission, led by the Rev. Jason Prati, created a beautiful festive Eucharist, with drums and organ and brass and choirs. Ms. Miriam McKenney preached a word. Our assisting bishops took part in the celebration, together with Bishop Smith, our recent provisional. And we welcomed our ninth bishop, the Rt. Rev. Thomas Breidenthal, back, for the first time since his resignation and retirement in 2020.
It looked like us. It looked like love. Divine.
And that’s a phenomenon I’ve experienced over this past year, which I want to name and lift up now. When I arrived, I heard often about people’s sense of isolation. There was a spirit of self-protection, and with it the assumption that other people, other churches, got more attention, or more resources, or more recognition, than whoever I happened to be talking to at that moment. I heard it everywhere – from Cincinnati to Columbus to Dayton to Zanesville.
I have seen that posture shift, in these past months. Where there had been an inward focus, I see you turning outward. I see you looking toward your neighbors. I see you receiving me, and members of our diocesan staff, with welcome instead of suspicion. I see you connecting in your communities, recognizing that our churches have something important to offer. And holding with that, the humility that we also have plenty to learn. I see you developing relationships with nearby congregations, sharing ideas and prayer and hope for the future.
So it makes sense that we are moving forward with a regional structure that will allow us to deepen those connections. This last year, we held five regional staff days across the diocese—opportunities to meet with and get to know diocesan staff, a little closer to home. In 2026, we’ll do this again in each of our four newly defined diocesan regions.
Those visits will be a two-day opportunity: Friday, we’ll once again host office hours with diocesan staff, and on Saturday we’ll offer regional formation gatherings for all to come learn tools for congregational development and components of church leadership, all while getting to know people from other churches in your area. In the fall, we will have regional pre-convention meetings again online as we did this year. I’m grateful to the Rev. Vicki Zust for your leadership of the group that helped us clarify this plan to connect by region, which began with a series of conversations at last year’s convention.
God’s divine love sustains us this year, in the midst of difficulty and pain, as well.
A week ago, with the unanimous concurrence of the Standing Committee, I communicated my difficult decision to temporarily suspend the operations of Grace Church, College Hill, until we can clarify leadership and ensure safe operations for ministry. In October, we celebrated the closing Eucharist at Iglesia Episcopal de Espíritu Santo, Forest Park, which had existed for several years as a ministry of the diocese. Tomorrow, this convention will determine the resolution put forth with the decision by the people of Holy Trinity Church, Kenwood, to conclude their ministry. Each of those actions included heartbreak. And each of them was held with care, with particular effort by our missioner for stewardship, the Rev. Derrick Fetz.
In fact none of this holy and sometimes challenging work would be possible without the diocesan staff that comprise our team. Many of them have already been named, and they also include: The Rev. Canon Jodi Baron, our canon to the ordinary, who serves as chief of staff and head of the ministries team, ensuring the care and good stewardship of our staff, as well as of me as your bishop. The Rev. Gerardo Romo Garcia, our missioner for Latino ministries, is working to strengthen continuing ministries with people who speak Spanish, and to develop capacity for new ones, and to coalesce diocesan support for immigrants.
Ms. Liz Brauza-Hughes, our data and information manager, is working to connect our data and so that we might be better connected with one another. The Rev. Olivia Hamilton, our missioner for lifelong formation, is working to ensure that people across the diocese, from the smallest to the tallest, have opportunities to be formed more and more in the image and likeness of Christ. The Rev. Melanie Slane, our transition minister, shepherds congregations and clergy toward the calls that will nurture faithful vitality. Ms. Susan Byrnside ensures accurate financial accounts, and as we move forward she’s being promoted to the role of controller. Ms. Kelly Whitaker also moves to a new role as accounting specialist. Mr. Erick Williams continues to graciously welcome people to our offices as receptionist. Dr. Sarah Simko ably supports Canon Baron, as well as the liturgy commission. And Ms. Sarah Beegle does a hero’s work of making sense of my calendar, ensuring I go home at a reasonable time at the end of the day, and the general care and tending of your bishop. Finally, we are grateful to welcome Canon Mark Priest, our new canon for finance and operations, who joins us in person here as he transitions from his current role to officially join us full-time on December 1. Canon Priest, we’ve been waiting for you. We are so very grateful to have you join this team.
When I began serving as your bishop, I shared my understanding of my role, and subsequently our diocesan staff and our leadership and structures, needing to support you in the local congregations, in your ministries. I believe that the local church is the reliable place of God’s transformation. I believe that the church, as the risen Body of Christ, is the hope of the world. And in the work that we have done, the shift in posture and orientation and growth, I believe that we are ready to move forward in a new way. With love. Divine.
Which is good, friends, because this world needs us.
I wrote my address on Saturday, after waking up to learn the news that the Supreme Court blocked a lower court’s order for the government to fully fund its largest anti-hunger program. The world has, and will continue to shift, and as it does, we know for sure that hungry people will need to be fed: body, mind, and spirit. We will need to hold fast to those words I heard on our call on Wednesday, November 5: “determined,” and “clear,” and “hopeful.”
We will need, beloved of God, to believe the words we pray. We will need to follow Jesus.
And to that end, as we turn our gaze outward and live into our call to embody the Gospel, to share in God’s transformation, to trust that the Holy Spirit guides our steps, I commit us to a year that equips us as disciples of Jesus.
We will do what we are called to do – not by getting busier, ever adding more to our to-do list, but with a particular clarity that we are followers of the risen Christ. That wherever two or three of us gather in his name, he’s right here, as he promises. We will give up that attribution to St. Francis (please, God!) of proclaiming Jesus with words, if necessary, because I’m here to tell you that as Episcopalians Our Words Are Necessary. People need to know that we are believers in Christ – crucified, resurrected, and ascended – and that we welcome them to a kind of Christianity they might not be aware exists, because we as a church haven’t known how to talk about it. We will commit to a year of tethering our hearts to the living God and learning how to practice evangelism – yes, I will say the word – in a way that has integrity with who we are, that grounds itself in relationship, that shows love, divine love, for our neighbor.
We are the Church, beloved. We are called to be Love, Divine.
And I’m telling you, as I look out and see you…what we need is here.
