Circle Community

Our new diocese, founded in 2024, is trying a new thing. Instead of bogging down our website with pages nested in pages nested in pages nested in pages that make it hard for our members to find the resource they need and make it overwhelming for newcomers to figure out what we’re all about, we’re developing our own online connecting platform, Great Lakes Episcopal Circle Community.

Already a member of our Circle Community?

Not a Circle Community member yet or curious about what we’re doing over there?

Maybe the answers to these questions will help:

What is Circle?

The Great Lakes Episcopal Circle Community is our online home for connecting with people, parishes, and ministries and accessing resources and support across our large diocese.

Part social network, part online resource library, part online meeting space, our Circle Community allows everyone in our diocese, laity and clergy, young and old alike to be part of building and becoming our new diocese.

Why are we doing something new?

Great question – thanks for asking! We’ve got some challenges in front of us as we’re in this season of becoming. See if any of these resonate with you:

Our new diocese is very large and it seems like it’s hard to get to know people, parishes, and ministries across the span of miles (or, since we’re Michiganders, we measure distance in hours).
Our two legacy dioceses had different practices, rhythms and systems, and it is hard to know where to find resources or support, or even to know what resources and supports still exist and which were lost in the merging of our legacy diocese and what might be new.
The diocesan staff seems like they have a lot on their plates with their regular work and transition work, but I have a really pressing need or a really great idea for a ministry that I want to connect with people about and I’m just not sure how to do that.
Between The Episcopal Church offices and our new diocese, it seems like there are changes to processes and policies all the time, and it’s hard to know where to go to keep up!

These challenges and more point to the need for (1) a place to be able connect with people in our diocese who may share similar roles, interests, challenges and realities as us without having to rely on diocesan staff to facilitate the space, event or introduction to make those connections happen and (2) a place to access official diocesan and wider church resources as well as share resources and tips from parish to parish and person to person. The Great Lakes Episcopal Circle Community is that place!

Our aim is that our Circle Community would be a transformational community for our diocese, for parishes and ministries and for individuals on their spiritual journeys. Here’s our official Transformation Statement to help us stay on track as we build it out:

The Great Lakes Episcopal Circle Community helps all people, parishes and ministries within our diocese to go from

confusion about what resources and support are available,
frustration about their ability to and difficulty with accessing resources and support and
difficulting connecting with (or isolation from) other people, parishes and ministries across our large diocese

easily accessing a robust and growing collection of resources and support for ministry and spiritual growth within the context of community and
being empowered to expand and grow community connections based on each person’s, parish’s and ministry’s unique interests, concerns, calls and charisms
so we can focus on the vibrant, love-centered ministry to which God is calling our diocese, our ministries, our parishes and our lives as we continue to build and become the Epsicpal Diocese of the Great Lakes together.

Oooooh. This is a reallllly good question. I’m so glad you’re getting to the tough questions today! Let’s break it down:

Typical diocesan websites are often hard to navigate and, from a staff perspective, nearly impossible to maintain in a timely manner. We did some research into figuring out why this was the case and what we found is that it comes down to a lack of clarity about the purpose of a diocesan website. Diocesan websites often try to be all things to all people – a deep resource library for all kinds of diocesan “insiders” (clergy, ministry leaders, governing bodies, convention delegates) and an introduction to the diocese (and The Episcopal Church and Anglicanism and diocesan culture and, and, and) for seekers and newcomers. The result is often a jumbled-up, tangled-up mess where everyone has to sift through things they don’t need or want to find the things they do need or want. This also means that the same content also lives in multiple places on the same website to “help” with navigation, which ultimately makes it harder for a staff to catch when something is out of date because just because they fix it in one spot, doesn’t mean it’s fixed everywhere.
Traditional social media. Oof. Certainly there are positive impacts! We can stay connected across distance and easily share our joys, photos and Wordle scores. But, we can all see the negatives, too. Your data and personal information is profited from, often without your knowledge or consent. We know that social media can be a breeding ground for unproductive conflict and malease. Social media timelines and feeds are full of mis- and disinformation. We (the diocesan staff) never want someone to have to be engaged in a social media space to be able to connect meaningfully with diocesan offerings.
If we can move our across-distance connecting and our resource libraries off of a typical website set up and traditional social media, then we are free to have a more narrow focus with our website and our traditional social media presence. In a word: evangelism. We can use these obviously public spaces to tell the good news of Love and invite people into our open community of love. “Evangelizing” can be a scary thing to Episcopalians, but we’re going to give it a go to live in to our unique calling in this time and between these lakes.

Who can be part of Circle?

You! As long as you’re 18+ (Safe Church, Safe Communities matters online, too!) and have an email address, you can join as a full member. Although Circle.so as a platform typically creates pay-to-play communities, our Great Lakes Episcopal Circle Community is and always will be free to all members of our diocese.

What is Circle like?

Circle is an easy-to-navigate network that is composed of Space Groups and Spaces.

Space Groups are just what they sound like – collections of spaces. As we’re getting to know Circle, we’ll focus on two Space Groups for examples: Diocesan Hub and Parish Roles.
You can think of Spaces as interactive pages, each of which focuses on a single topic.

In Diocesan Hub, you’ll find the following Spaces: Announcements, Prayer Wall, Diocesan Calendar, The Feast Online, Communication Request Form, Standing Committee Updates, Diocesan Council Updates, and Bishop Updates. Each of those spaces have different ways to interact. For example, in the Announcements, Diocesan Calendar, The Feast Online, Standing Committee Updates, Diocesan Council Updates and Bishop Updates Spaces, you can see posts created by Circle administrators (diocesan staff members) and comment on them, like them, share them, or bookmark them for yourself. In the Prayer Wall space, you can do all of those things to prayer posts you see there and post your own prayers or prayer requests. Your post can include photos or videos, just like a post on a social media site like Facebook. All of the Spaces in the Diocesan Hub Space Group except for the Prayer Wall Space are public Spaces, viewable by anyone, not just members of our Circle Community. All members of our Circle Community are automatically added to the Diocesan Hub Space Group and all the Spaces therein when they sign up.

In the Parish Roles Space Group, you’ll see a lot of pairs of spaces. For example, one pair is the Vestry Network + the Vestry Resource Library. These are the two primary types of Spaces you’ll interact with: Networks and Resource Libraries. The Networks are private, which means they’ll appear locked to you when you join Circle. Then, if we know you are, for example, a vestry member or if you request to be added to the Vestry Network and we can verify that you are a current vestry member, we’ll add you to that space. We keep Networks private so that members can interact with one another without their interactions being publicly available to the whole world. Resource Libraries, however, are public spaces. Anyone can join those spaces (you won’t’ be automatically added to spaces outside of the Diocesan Hub so that you don’t get flooded with content and information and notifications that you’re not interested in!) if they’re interested in getting updates when new resources are added and these spaces are publicly viewable. We’re not trying to gatekeep good stuff or hide what we’re doing! We’re eager to share anything that can support the ministry of all the baptized!

As our Circle Community grows, we’ll adapt and add new spaces, combine spaces and generally keep the experience up to date with the way people are using it and want to use it as we become the Diocese of the Great Lakes together.

What if I don’t want to join Circle? Will I be left out of the diocese and what we’re doing?

It’s OK if you don’t want to join Circle! We’re absolutely not going to leave anyone in our diocese out or feeling like they don’t belong!

Here’s how you’ll still be plugged in with the diocese, even if you don’t join Circle:

We – the diocese – are still living, breathing humans! We will continue to connect in diocesan events, special services, on-site trainings and retreats. Our canons, other diocesan staff members (and someday our bishop!) will still travel to parishes around the diocese for visits and to offer help and support. Our Convention will still, God willing and the creek don’t rise and the next pandemic doesn’t come, be primarily an on-site event. We don’t just believe in the real presence of Christ, we believe in being really present – physically where we can share the same air – with each other.
We still have this website!
We still will send diocesan emails and The Feast Online.
All of the big stuff that lives in Circle is publicly viewable, so you do not need to register for Circle to be able to access them. This includes: diocesan calendar, announcements, updates from governing bodies and about our bishop process, and any of our resource libraries.

Joining Circle does mean that you’ll get access to our more community-focused spaces including our Prayer Wall, a diocesan-wide prayer space, and any other networks that you’d like to be part of including networks based on your role (clergy, parish admin, Senior Warden, ministry leader, etc.), your circumstances (the lay-led parish network, for instance), or even your interests (like knitting, hiking, gaming and more!).

What if I don’t understand Circle and how it works?

No problem! Everyone starts as a beginner and we’re working to build up resources like how-to guides and videos to help you as a beginner.

Don’t let unfamiliarity with Circle and how it works be a barrier for you! Rachel Ravellette, our Director of Communications and Lead Curator for Circle, is willing to do a one-on-0ne video chat (or, if possible, on-site chat!) with you to introduce you to Circle and help you feel comfortable with being in that space.