The 82nd General Convention is scheduled for July 3-8, 2027, at the Phoenix Convention Center in Arizona. Photo: Phoenix Convention Center
[Episcopal News Service] The Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops and House of Deputies will convene for six business days at the 82nd General Convention in Phoenix, Arizona, according to a church news release announcing that the triennial churchwide gathering has been scheduled for July 3-8, 2027.
The six-day convention will be shorter than the church’s historical norm but longer than the pandemic shortened four-day gathering in 2022, held in Baltimore, Maryland. Last year, when bishops and deputies gathered in Louisville, Kentucky, for the church’s 81st General Convention, it also convened for six business days.
The scheduling decision for the next convention was finalized this week by the Joint Standing Committee on Planning and Arrangements, which had traveled to Phoenix for a site visit. That committee continues to collaborate with a separate General Convention “reinvention” committee “to plan for an innovative convention that will include legislative sessions, time for worship, and collective discernment on key issues facing the church,” the church news release said.
In addition to the six business days, bishops and deputies are expected to arrive in Phoenix two days early for preparatory meetings and in-person committee discussions. The triennial meeting of the National Episcopal Church Women also will coincide with the 82nd General Convention in Phoenix.
For the past two General Conventions, much of the legislative committee work was completed online in advance of the in-person gatherings. No details have yet been announced about how committees will conduct their business for the 82nd General Convention.
The Episcopal Church has long debated the proper length of General Convention, balancing bishops’ and deputies’ availability and the cost of hotel stays with the need to schedule enough days for effective churchwide governance, legislative activity, networking and fellowship. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, triennial meetings of General Convention typically included some 10 legislative days in late June or early July, preceded by additional days for committee work.
The 80th General Convention in 2022 was the first time committees held hearings online, and they completed most of their business before traveling to Baltimore. That experience, and the continued use of Zoom for committee meetings in 2024, helped open The Episcopal Church’s governance to greater churchwide access and participation, supporters of those changes have said.
Episcopalians and other interested parties no longer must travel to the convention’s host city to observe and testify at hearings and meetings, and church officials reported in 2024 that the committees’ spring online sessions had logged 2,500 attendees.
But some deputies have lamented that the changes have been a significant step away from the fuller in-person gatherings that previously were the norm.
In 2024, General Convention passed Resolution D022 to ask church leaders to launch a study and report back to the 82nd General Convention with recommendations on how to convene future meetings.
To fulfill that mandate, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe and House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris appointed an interim body known as the General Convention Reinvention Steering Committee. That is the group now working with the Joint Standing Committee on Planning and Arrangements on plans for the 82nd General Convention, to be held at the Phoenix Convention Center.
– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.