Our goal is to be a community of faith where the ministries of all baptized members are actively discerned, developed, and respected. Our ministries will include both a cross-cultural and inter-generational emphasis reflecting our diversity and will encompass ministries both within and beyond our congregations and the Diocese. We will strive to grow in mission and ministry: deepening our faith through study and the sacraments, sharing our faith in daily living, and reaching out to others in service as we seek to act out the ministry of Jesus Christ both at home and in the world. We will deepen our life together in our congregations and across the Diocese through creatively and responsibly using both traditional and innovative means of communication and community building in order to become more fully what God calls us to be as Christians.

Land Acknowledgment

(as presented by the Provisional Bishop at the 52nd Annual Convention in October 2022)

The traditional tribal homelands for the Dakota, Lakota, Nakota, Turtle Mountain Chippewa, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara people encompass the Episcopal Diocese of North Dakota.

We acknowledge and understand that the land which comprises our diocese was cared for by people Indigenous to this place, who lived here for thousands of years before the arrival of colonizing Europeans. With humility, we express our gratitude to Indigenous peoples for their faithful stewardship of this land, its waters, and creatures, then and now.

We acknowledge the many injustices that are part of the past and present experience of Indigenous people. We acknowledge with humility the historical, intergenerational, and contemporary trauma faced by Indigenous people, including the Church’s complicity with cultural genocide inflicted by Indian boarding schools, where the stated goal was to “kill the Indian, save the man.”

In this reality, we ask Creator to give us courage and humility to listen to the stories of others, so that we might begin to earn trust as we seek to reconcile with Creator and with one another. And we acknowledge the need for a deeper understanding that there can be no healing without confession of sin.