"We walked away and left the properties, assets and a handful of parishioners and with 85 we set out to worship anew. We began a new Anglican Church in Lapeer and we are still working out what to call ourselves. We are holding worship services and new people are coming. All the clergy in the area have been supportive including the Roman Catholics who gave us a place to worship called the Chapel of Convenience which seats 400 people. On Saturday evenings we worship at the St. Louise chapel in Lapeer."

Asked by VirtueOnline who will provide ecclesiastical cover, Fr. Dewey said he was working with Bishop Frank Lyons of Bolivia. "There are five congregations in Ohio and Eastern Michigan who have been disenfranchised by the ECUSA and are aligning with the Bolivian bishop."

Dewey, who spent 15 years as an Episcopal priest, said average Sunday attendance exceeded 100, "and we are growing by leaps and bounds."

"I have not been inhibited or deposed, but I expect to be," he told VirtueOnline. He said two revisionist priests were ministering to a small remnant at Grace Episcopal Church.

"My initial feeling at leaving was one of great sadness and hurt, now it is one of tremendous excitement. We are moving on with the ministry of the church getting ready for the return of Christ. We are not taking Episcopalians and making them Anglicans but taking Anglicans and making them Great Commission workers. We are a Great Commission church."

Dewey said had also begun a new mission church in Lexington, Michigan 20 miles north of Port Huron. "This week we held our first service, 41 people came. These all came out of Trinity Episcopal Church in Lexington. I will provide them with Sunday Mass and any pastoral care they require. It is a tremendous group of laity. They meet at the Lyons Club, they have no name, but over half the congregation left even though they have no priest. I act as their Eucharist minister. It is kingdom building work. There is a tremendous amount of excitement."

Trinity Church in Lexington was the former parish of the Rev. Darrel Pigeon who went on to be the chaplain of an Episcopal School in Ft. Worth, Texas under Anglo-Catholic Bishop Jack Iker. He left and over half the parish left at the same time.

The Rev. Dave Kulchar formerly at Trinity Episcopal Church, Flushing has started three cell groups in Genesee County and hopes to comes under the Anglican Mission in America. Kulchar was inhibited after a sabbatical which he took for the purpose of trying to figure things out. Kulchar left on his own, Leidel then went after him.

The Rev. Gene Geromel at St. Bartholomew's Anglican Church in Swartz Creek, MI. got a letter of inhibition from Leidel before the House of Bishops met in Utah recently, and a month before the primates meet in Ireland. "Leidel wrote to say there was no chance of a non geographical province and therefore it was time for me to make a decision. He then inhibited me for leaving the communion."

"Quincy Bishop Keith Ackerman has been our parish visitor for that last six years. I asked Bishop Leidel to transfer my letters dismissory to a Forward in Faith diocese. He refused to do that. Now he has come up with a recent statement supporting his position."

Fr. Geromel, whose parish has been independent for more than 5 years, and who paid Leidel $264,000 for that right, said he wrote back and refuted some of Leidel's arguments. "I told Leidel previously that I would obey him in all things lawful and then pointed out I could not leave my sheep without a shepherd. He demanded loyalty to me or I would be deposed. I told him I would pledge loyalty to the Holy Scriptures and the catholic faith and not to him, since he voted for V. Gene Robinson's consecration and that he was allowing a homoerotic priest to live in the rectory with his same sex partner."

"We have been an independent parish for five years under Leidel's authority but getting pastoral care from Bishop Ackerman. Two weeks ago he sent out a letter of inhibition and gave me 6 months to change my mind or he would depose me." He can do it, it makes no difference.

St. Bartholomew's Anglican Church is an independent church, he told VirtueOnline. "We negotiated a divorce several years ago. This is nothing but a spiteful act by Leidel. He can depose me but he cannot touch the property because 5 years ago we cut a deal with him and gave the diocese a check. So this inhibition means absolutely nothing. I have been an ECUSA priest for 31 years."

Asked how he viewed what was happening to him, Fr. Geromel said, "I believe that it was a slap in the face of all traditionalist priests that he did this before the HOB had an opportunity to discuss the Windsor Report and before the Primates had an opportunity to meet and discuss the Windsor Report."

"It doesn't matter what the revisionists of the Anglican Communion do, bishops like Leidel are going ahead full speed with the annihilation of traditionalists. They do not want to simply destroy us but to obliterate us. I think of what John le Carre wrote in Smiley's People; they had to obliterate his face for the sake of their own conscience."

"Furthermore I had made an agreement before this that I would not minister to any other Episcopal parish but his actions have now freed me up to do exactly that. I am now free to do minister wherever I am called."

Geromel said he wrote to Leidel in December and told him he had lost all the traditional clergy in this area and that a half to two-thirds of all the parishioners have gone. "Owosso is down to 50 from 200; Christ Church when the Rev. Greg Tourneaux and St. Dunstan's in Davison is down to 30 from well over 100. Trinity in Flushing is a third of what it was when Fr. David Kulchar was there."

In Lansing, former Episcopalians of three dioceses that intersect in that City (Michigan, Western Michigan and Eastern Michigan) have formed a new Anglican church and are being served by former orthodox Episcopal priests.

In Petosky (northern lower Michigan) there is yet another start-up Anglican parish Christ the King Anglican church of Lansing. It too, is being served by a currently inhibited number of Episcopal priests. It was started in January 2005 with about 60 showing up each Sunday at the Mayflower Community Church, 2901 West Mount Hope Ave, in Lansing, Michigan. Services are at 4.30pm. "That church may go to the AMIA," said Geromel.

At St. Dunstan's Episcopal Church, the Rev. Scott Danforth is working on a house church that will bring formerly unchurched people into one of the new Anglican churches in the area. Jim Smith, a writer for the Flint Journal and a life long Episcopal Church is involved in this start-up ministry.

"Being out of the Episcopal Church and this diocese has been a great lift and inspiration and a work of the Holy Spirit," said Fr. Geromel.

Bishop Ed Leidel had set a goal of opening a new parish in each of the convocations every four years. So far he has closed four churches and divorced another - St. Bart's in Swartz Creek.

Another former Episcopal priest Fr. Scott Danforth who renounced his orders and who has been re-ordained in another Christian denomination was a close friend of Bishop Leidel's and has felt the rejection deeply and personally. He was a priest at St. Dunstan's in Davison.

Fr. Greg Tourneaux, another vibrant priest in the diocese also left and is now a rector of a large parish in the Diocese of Springfield.

"Bishop Leidel has consistently said that all is well and peaceful in Eastern Michigan, but the truth is that many of us believe that Bishop Ed Leidel will be the first and last bishop in Eastern Michigan," said Fr. Geromel. "The diocese has no future. Revisionism is a bankrupt understanding of the Christian Faith."

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