November 2022
Young Leaders in Ministry

Editor's Letter December 2022

Dear Friends,

In our final issue of the year, we raise up our young leaders. Their collective wisdom and experience teach us incredibly important lessons about our church today and tomorrow. I invite you to listen to their powerful stories and learn from them. They represent the best and most hopeful part of our beloved Church.

In this video, Who We Are and What We Do for Jesus, Sandra Montes engages Sandy Milien and Adia Milien in a vibrant and important conversation around faith, identity and Christianity from the perspective of young women of color in our Church.

As our Church expands to reflect the world we live in, cultivating respectful relationships with people from unfamiliar cultures is a skill we all will benefit from. In Respectful Practices for Approaching Multicultural Resources, Ellis Montes discusses three practices to help initiate the respectful incorporation of materials from unfamiliar cultures into our worship.

How many times has your faith community thought about what it can do to bring and keep young people at church? In Worship as an Invitation to Belong, Dustin Seo describes his journey into the Episcopal Church as an active participant who knows he belongs, the role that music played on that path and how worship is something we all actively create, not something we passively consume.

What challenges does a young leader experience in ministry? In A Young Leader’s Mission, Montserrat Calvo Corella shares her personal story as a young leader in the Costa Rican Episcopal Church, raising important questions about inclusion, diversity and belonging. This article is available in English and Spanish.

Read about ECF’s highlights from the year here, and learn how we adapted programs, piloted emerging ideas and enhanced partnerships to equip, resource and inspire lay and clergy leaders as they transform Episcopal faith communities for the future.

To learn more about ECF and our programs, please visit our website.

The ECF Vital Practices team would like to wish you and your family joy, hope and love this Christmas season.

Faithfully,

Charis Bhagianathan
Editor, ECF Vital Practices

This article is part of the November 2022 Vestry Papers issue on Young Leaders in Ministry