Message from High Plains Regional Missioner, the Rev. Brian Winter

As part of the executive committee, we have nine lay and clergy members who work with me as well as our executive assistant, Kimberly Hubs. And as we gather, our focus is to gather, is to collaborate with other congregations and other leaders within the region, but also to develop that leadership, both lay and ordained, throughout our region. We meet about seven times a year. Two of those times are to hear grant requests from outreach ministries, from congregations doing new ministry and looking for a little support for that, but also helping at Cathedral Ridge, helping our leaders be able to take some respite time, but also to help our youth go on to mission trips. They just got back in June from a mission trip to Kansas City, and many of them just returned from Maryland with the Episcopal Youth Event. So the High Plains region and other regions have worked together to help fund, to help make sure that those ministries happen.

As we look at those ministries, we are blessed to have the donations, have the gifts from each of our congregation. So each year, the High Plains region can give over $100,000 to different ministries through those grant requests. We thank each congregation for their generosity and helping us to do that ministry that is so important.

Within the High Plains region, we have three focus areas. One is congregational vitality and development, working with congregations, both small and large, to help build their ministry, to help find out what’s at the heart of their ministry, to help them see God working in their own congregations and to gather together with other congregations so they can collaborate, so they can do ministry together and see where God, where the Holy Spirit, where she might be calling each and every one of those.

We also look at current leadership development for both lay and clergy, congregational vitality, as I mentioned, and also social justice issues. So those are the three key focus areas. Last year, we have included Small Church Vitality Day where we gathered five smaller congregations within the Denver area and looked at ministry and how they can work together and how they are called. We have had wardens dinners where we’ve gathered wardens and other leaders to gather together to have dinner together, to get to know each other and to share what they are doing and to learn that they’re not alone in this ministry, that we are all walking together in great ways.

We’ve also had speakers such as Mary Foster Palmer with Invite, Welcome, Connect come and share. We’ve had a great Evangelism Day where we had speakers from around the country, including our own Mike Orr, who has shared ways of getting out, ways of welcoming people in, ways of doing evangelism, doing that work of Christ within our own communities.

It is a privilege and an honor to serve as missioner of the High Plains region. We have convocation coming up. I invite all of our members to come to the convocation. For those in other regions, please attend your convocation again. And then we’ll gather at convention. We’ll gather as that community of the Episcopal Church in Colorado to share ministry, to learn from each other and to be empowered by each other. Again, I thank you for the privilege and the opportunity to serve you, to serve the High Plains region and to serve Bishop Kim and her staff. You have a blessed day and a wonderful, wonderful summer in amazing Colorado.