Download The VOICE Digest printable PDF with highlights from this issue.

Bishop Hughes shares initial plans for Diocesan Communion on All Saints' Sunday, November 1, and rescheduled Confirmation services and Diocesan Convention in summer 2021. Read the full post.

Being grounded at home throughout this pandemic period presented St. Elizabeth’s, Ridgewood as a community with an unexpected opportunity to connect with teens and college students in our parish – who might otherwise be too consumed with extracurricular activities, yet who with time on their hands have chosen to step up with courage – and engage in tough conversations about issues of race in America. Read more.

St. John's, Ramsey is making their parish hall available to the local Red Cross for blood drives. The Red Cross is using an online reservation system, and donors wait in their car for their appointment time, keeping people distant from one another. St. John's reports that it's been very successful for the Red Cross with the maximum of 32 donors each time, and the people of St. John's are very happy that their space can be used to aid the community.

Submit items for consideration for the Oct. 21 issue of The VOICE Online by 10 AM Friday, Oct. 16 at dioceseofnewark.org/VOICE-submissions.

The service will be streamed live to St. George's Facebook page, facebook.com/stgeo07040. The bulletin will be posted here as soon as it's available.

Bishop Carlye Hughes is eager to once again spend time in conversation with the members of the diocese, to reflect and consider what we, our churches, and our communities have learned and experienced as we have adjusted to the changes this time has demanded of us.

Scheduled for 90 minutes, this monthly Lay Zoom Conversation with Bishop Hughes is open to all members of the diocese. Find out more.

Anti-Sexism Training, now required to hold any diocesan office, is available virtually! The training will be held on two successive Saturday mornings, October 17 and 24. Attendance at both sessions is required to receive certification. Find out more and register online.

Hosted by the Bishop’s Office on Stewardship, the all-new Plan Ahead Zoom worship with Jim Murphy of the ECF will provide church leaders with a road map for either getting started in planned giving, or re-vitalizing an existing planned giving program.

The registration deadline is Wednesday, October 21. Find out more and register online.

The Diocese of Newark is hosting a Speaker Series on Race co-hosted by Bishop Hughes and the Namaste Anti-Racism Commission. On three consecutive Mondays in November, three leaders from within The Episcopal Church will reflect on the question “How are we talking about race in The Episcopal Church?” Each speaker will provide a unique understanding and an opportunity for reflections on race.

The speakers will be:

Find out more, and please advertise the dates and times within your congregation.

The Namaste Commission Members are piloting an Anti-Racism Dialogue on three consecutive Saturdays in November via Zoom. Attendance at all three sessions is required to receive the certification necessary to hold any diocesan office. Find out more and register online.

The diocesan email listservs, which went down on Sept. 18, are in the process of being replaced with Google groups. The new Google groups will use the exact same addresses as the listservs they are replacing. For example the Newark list, news@dionewark.org, has been replaced with a Google group that also uses the address news@dionewark.org.

The new Google groups are being set up one at a time. You can see the current list of Google groups here. If you have any questions about a listserv that has not yet been replaced, please contact Randy Johnson at rjohnson@dioceseofnewark.org.

We were able to set up Google groups under our own domain name, dionewark.org, by acquiring a free G Suite for Non-Profits account through TechSoup. If you want to learn how to do this for your church, read How to get free G Suite email on your church's domain name. If you have any questions, you can contact Nina Nicholson at nnicholson@dioceseofnewark.org.

The Bishop and her staff only use emails under dioceseofnewark.org for diocesan business. If you receive an email with their name but a different email address, it is a scam. Always check the From email address carefully, not just the From name.

To learn how to identify scam emails, click here.

To learn how to report scam emails, click here.

Note: There's no need to report scam emails to the Bishop's staff. We're getting them too, and unfortunately there's nothing we can do to stop them. Just block the sender, and then pat yourself on the back for outsmarting a scammer.

Please send changes to Nina Nicholson at nnicholson@dioceseofnewark.org.

A holy place in virtual space for mourning and memory.

Prayers can be sent to Canon Wright at awright@dioceseofnewark.org for posting.

There is still space to join the Women's Retreat on Sunday, 10/11 from 10-4 (with breaks) on Zoom. The retreat will be led by Dale Selover and Laurie Matarazzo, focused on "The Way of Love." Learn more about this retreat here.

Join us for Wednesdays Away, a time of spiritual renewal one Wednesday a month. This upcoming year we will continue to gather virtually from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm on Zoom. Explore upcoming themes and register for one or more gatherings on the Cross Roads' website. The next gathering is on Wednesday, November 4, and Ruth Roemer will lead a session titled, “Give Thanks, with a Grateful Heart.”

Thank you to all who participated in the Rally for Cross Roads Virtual Run/Walk last weekend! You can still donate to this fundraiser for the Cross Roads Annual Fund by clicking here.

There are a number of projects around camp that we could use volunteers to help us work on this fall. If you are interested in donating your time and talents, please email our Maintenance Director Joe Marra at Joe@CrossRoadsRetreat.com to talk about potential projects.

The Office of Government Relations has created a comprehensive suite of resources for advocacy, the U.S. Election, and 2020 Census engagement. These resources are designed for use year-round, emphasizing messaging that is non-partisan and informed. Find out more.

Episcopal institutions can now apply for the next round of the Episcopal Evangelism Grants Program, designed to fund local and regional evangelism efforts in the Episcopal Church. The new grant cycle will focus on projects that explore new methods of evangelism during the COVID-19 pandemic. Find out more.