We, the Diocese of Virginia, consist of the northern portion of the stateof Virginia, roughly from the James River in Richmond across through Charlottesville and Harrisonburg, and points north. Our Bishop is the Rt. Rev. Peter James Lee and he is assisted by two Bishops, David Jones and Francis Gray.

Being part of a Diocese is central to our understanding of being Episcopal, being a denomination and not just an isolated congregation. At some point every Episcopalian is expected to profess his or her faith in the presence of a Bishop. Bishops become our key point of unity. The Bishops also have oversight over the congregations and clergy. The Bishops are the pastors to the clergy. Hence, much of our energy, and money, as a Diocese goes into having strong Bishops with adequate compensation, clerical support, offices and equipment, etc.

Another main priority is maintaining missions and establishing new congregations. We are one of the few Dioceses in the Episcopal Church that is actually growing in the number of churches and in numbers of people. We do have a number of congregations which are not yet financially self-supporting, several which meet in rented space and do not as yet even have land or buildings, and some older congregations serving small communities where there can only be a church if the rest of us assist. This includes congregations serving Korean, Hispanic, and Vietnamese communities.

The Diocese also serves to enable us to do things together that no individual parish could take on alone. We unite our resources to support a great number of other facilities - schools, retreat and conference centers, prison and college chaplaincies, and the like. Particular priorities in this Diocese include Youth Ministries -- through programs at Shrine Mont as well as campus ministries at school in the Diocese, building new churches to meet the needs of growing populations, maintaining strong Bishops to support the work of the local clergy and congregations, and supporting missions and churches overseas through various companion relationships.

The Diocese of Virginia is divided into fifteen geographical areas called Regions; we are in Region XIV which consists of the Episcopal Churches of the Shenandoah Valley (from Harrisonburg north, south of Harrisonburg begins the Diocese of Southern Virginia). Each Region has a Council which consists of all the clergy plus an elected delegate from each church. The Regions serve to enable us to offer ministries together that we could not do individually and are a key means of communications between neighboring parishes and to and from the Diocese.

Each Church in the Region contributes to the work we do together. Region XIV has three projects we are supporting. Primary is our Regional Companionship with the Diocese of Central Buganda in Uganda. Our various churches in the Region have raised considerable funds (and Grace Church has raised a great deal of this money) for the building of a guest house at Diocesan Headquarters. This will put the Diocese of Central Buganda in a much better position to receive and house visiting missionaries and others who will come to assist them, as well as be of great service in the Diocese as a conference center. This is especially important as there is little or no phone service in the Diocese and very few of the clergy could ever travel to and from the Bishop in a single day. We are also supporting a seminary student in Uganda, who will ultimately be a priest in our companion Diocese. During 1998 Grace Church held an auction to raise funds to assist with orphans in that Diocese.

Clarke Parish includes Grace Church and St. Mary's Memorial Church. Among other projects we have helped support the Campus Ministry at James Madison University and have offered help to the Youth Group of Calvary Church, Front Royal, on their annual visit to run a Bible School on a Lakota Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Click on Outreach Efforts for an extensive description of outreach activities at Grace Church.