This mailing includes the four questions about the Windsor Report that the Primates Standing Committee has circulated to the provinces. The committee has asked that responses be sent to a Response Reception Committee prior to the Primates meeting in February. Accordingly, these questions will be the primary focus of our Salt Lake meeting. Ken Price, Bishop Suffragan of Southern Ohio and Secretary of the House of Bishops, has been asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury to serve on the Response Reception Committee.

Both the Planning Committee and my Council of Advice have indicated that there are a wide variety of expectations as to the meeting's purpose and potential accomplishments. A great deal of careful thought has been given to being responsive to these expectations and to making the best use of our brief time in ways that both attend to what we have been asked to do by the Primates Standing Committee and to our own concerns and questions that emerge from our life as the Episcopal Church. At the conclusion of our meeting we will offer some word to our church and also to the Communion.

Laura Chasin and Robert Stains of Public Conversations will serve as our process consultants. They have been working with the Planning Committee and me to ensure that our time together will be well used and flow freely yet in an ordered fashion that will allow open and frank reflection and conversation. Our schedule is attached. We will be seated in table groups and work in these groups, in expanded groups and in plenary sessions.

I am asking you to come prepared for our meeting by reading the Windsor Report carefully in advance, noting especially what you regard as positive invitations, areas of difficulty or uncertainty, as well as your questions. Please bring your copy of the report with you.

I look forward to seeing you in January, and most importantly those of you are who actively engaged in the exercise of episcopé. It is essential that we all contribute to the ongoing work of living the mystery of communion for the sake of the world.

As we celebrate our Lord's nativity, let us invite the Incarnate Word to dwell in our hearts and minds in order that his deep yearning for the well being of his risen body may be reflected in all that we do and say.

Yours ever in Christ,

Frank T. Griswold
Presiding Bishop and Primate

Questions from the Primates' Standing Committee
(From Anglican Communion News Service Release #3909)

Questions for Consultation with the forty four Churches of the Anglican Communion as formulated by the Primates' Standing Committee 18 October 2004

1. What in the description of the life of the Communion in Sections A & B can you recognise as consistent, or not, with your understanding of the Anglican Communion?

2. In which ways do the proposals in Section C & D flow appropriately from the description of the Communion's life in Sections A & B?

3. What do you think are the ways in which the recommendations and proposals of the Report would impact on the life of the Communion if they were to be implemented?

4. How would you evaluate the arguments for an Anglican Covenant set out in paragraph 119 of the Report? How far do the elements included in the possible draft for such a covenant in Appendix Two of the Report represent an appropriate development of the existing life of the Anglican Communion?

AGENDA FOR HOUSE OF BISHOPS MEETING
January 12-13, Salt Lake City

JANUARY 12
8:00 -8:30 Morning Prayer

8:30 - 8:45 Presiding Bishop:
· process for reception of Windsor Report
· goals for this gathering

8:45 - 9:15 Introductions and reconnections in table groups

9:15 - 10:30 Council of Advice:
· provincial responses to Windsor Report
· Caring for all the churches - Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight

10:45 - 11:30 Plenary presentation by Bishop Dyer and questions for
clarification.

12:00 - 1:00 Lunch at tables: discussion of question 1 from Primates Standing
Committee noting positive invitations, areas of difficulty or uncertainty, and questions.

1:15-2:15 Expanded groups
Reports from each table. Convergences, divergences, questions are noted.

2:30-3:15 Report back in plenary

3:15-4:30 Expanded Groups:
· Groups B, C consider question 3
· Groups E, F consider question 4
· Group G considers question 2

4:30-5:15 Report back in plenary

5:15-5:30 Evening Prayer

5:30-7:00 Supper together

7:00-9:00 Evening plenary discussion of topics that have arisen during the day
JANUARY 13

7:45-8:15 Morning Prayer

8:15-11 Final plenary with consideration of communications to church and to Response Reception group and Presiding Bishop's concluding comments.

11:00-12:00 Eucharist and close