Welcome
Welcome to the Diocese of Western Kansas website. It is our honor to have you visit.
We invite you to look around and search out who we are and what we believe. We live in central and western Kansas and we have been doing Christian ministry here for over 100 years. We are small in number but we have touched this part of God's Kingdom with our faith and our perseverance in celebration and dedication to our Lord's service and His praise.
This website will give you a good overview of what we are all about, will help you find an Episcopal Church where you are or where you are going, and will provide you with numerous ways to get in touch with us, and find out what God is doing in us and through us.
Thank you for visiting and we pray that all your days are filled with God's grace and love.
Welcome to Western Kansas!
Bienvenidos
Bienvenidos a la página de la Diócesis del Oeste de Kansas. Estamos honrados con su visita.
Les invitamos a navegar y descubrir quienes somos y en que creemos. Vivimos en la parte central de Kansas y hemos estado haciendo ministerios Cristianos por más de 100 años. Somos un grupo pequeño en número, pero hemos tocado el Reino de Dios con nuestra fe y nuestra perseverancia de servir a Dios dándole gloria.
Esta pagina le dará un buen resumen sobre lo que somos, ayudara a encontrar una iglesia Episcopal donde pueda asistir y proveerá con distintas maneras de poderse comunicar con nosotros. También podrá ver lo que Dios hace con nosotros y lo que hace atreves de nosotros. Oprima aquí para visitar nuestra página del ministerio Hispano y ver los sermones mas recientes en español. Los sermones en español de meses pasados pueden ser encontrados aquí.
Gracias por su visita y rezamos para que todos sus días sean llenos de la gracia y el amor de Dios
Easter Message from The Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori
Rejoice, rejoice and sing, rejoice and be glad… for earth and heaven are joined and humanity is reconciled to God!
As the Lenten season ends in Easter rejoicing, note what has been wrought in you this year. A remarkable cross-section of America has been practicing Lenten disciplines, even some who are not active Christians. There is a deep hunger in our collective psyche to re-orient our lives toward life and light, healing and peace. We share a holy hunger for clarity about what is good and life-giving, and we yearn to re-focus on what is most central and important in life.
Easter celebrates the victory of light and life over darkness and death. God re-creates and redeems all life from dead, dry, and destroyed bones. We are released from the bonds of self-obsession, addiction, and whatever would steal away the radical freedom of God-with-us. Our lives re-center in what is most holy and creative, the new thing God is continually doing in our midst. Practicing vulnerability toward the need and hunger of others around us, we have cultivated compassionate hearts. We join in baptismal rebirth in the midst of Jesus’ own passing-over.
The wonder of the resurrection is upon us once more. May we embrace God’s ever-new life with every cell of our being, every yearning of our soul, and every muscle of our will. Christ is risen, death is vanquished, humanity is restored to holy and creative relationship with God’s ongoing and eternal liveliness. Praise God who brings light out of darkness, life out of death, and newness out of the stale and moribund. Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church
"A Word to the Church" from the House of Bishops
The House of Bishops, meeting at the Kanuga Camp and Conference Center in Hendersonville, North Carolina, have issued this statement on gun violence.
A Word to the Church: Godly Leadership in the Face of Violence
O God, by the passion of your blessed Son you made an instrument of shameful death the means of life: Grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ, that we may gladly suffer shame and loss for the sake of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen (Collect for Tuesday in Holy Week. Book of Common Prayer (BCP) p. 220)
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ:
Your House of Bishops has gathered in retreat from March 8-12 at Kanuga Conference Center in Hendersonville, NC. The theme for our days together has been “Godly Leadership in the Midst of Loss.” We have heard moving reflections on loss in the wake of: the shootings in Newtown, Hurricane Sandy, the ongoing struggles in Haiti, historical trauma experienced by Native Americans in South Dakota, and physical illness. Being together in conversation, prayer and common worship, we have shared the reality of new life in the resurrected Jesus who has overcome death and redeems our losses.
Our time together has brought us to a new place of recognition with respect to how violence infects, and affects, our lives. We have considered how the reality of violence in our world, our society, our churches, our homes, and ourselves alienate us from God and each other. And we repent that we have too often neglected to challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation. In this Lenten season we pray: “Accept our repentance, Lord, for the wrongs we have done: for our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty.” (From the Litany of Penance for Ash Wednesday, BCP p. 268)
We particularly grieve those killed by senseless gun violence in the many contexts from which we come. We lament and have cried over the widely reported mass shootings in this country, recalling tragedies like Aurora, Oak Creek and Newtown. We are outraged by the too often unseen and unacknowledged daily massacre of our young people in cities such as Chicago, Newark, Baltimore, Port-au-Prince, and Tegucigalpa. This carnage must stop.
As bishops of The Episcopal Church we embody a wide variety of experiences and perspectives with respect to firearms. Many among us are hunters and sport-shooters, former members of the military and law-enforcement officers. We respect and honor that we are not of one mind regarding matters related to gun legislation. Yet we are convinced that there needs to be a new conversation in the United States that challenges gun violence. Because of the wide variety of contexts in which we live and our commitment to reasoned and respectful discourse that holds together significant differences in creative tension, we believe that The Episcopal Church can and must lead in this effort. In fact many in this Church are already doing so, for which we thank God.
At our ordinations as bishops we pledged to “boldly proclaim and interpret the Gospel of Christ, enlightening the minds and stirring up the conscience” of those we are called to serve. (BCP p. 518) We call all Episcopalians to pray and work for the end of gun violence. We commit ourselves to lead a new conversation in our nations as to the appropriate use and legislation of firearms. And we further commit ourselves to specific actions to this end.
Praying and working together we can be instruments of God’s restoring and reconciling love for the whole world. Glory to God whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. (Ephesians 3:20)