On this page, you will find a selection of Bishop Lee’s speeches and sermons.
Bishop Lee preached this sermon on November 23, 2019 at the 182nd Annual Convention of the Diocese of Chicago. It was his final annual convention Eucharist as bishop; he will retire in August 2020. Some of you may have heard me tell what is quite possibly my favorite story from all the twelve years I…
Bishop Lee preached this sermon at the 181st Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago on November 17, 2018. Inspired by the thought of Ray Suarez speaking to us about demographic trends in this country and their implications for the future of the church, I took note of a recent report in a church news website…
Bishop Lee preached this sermon on Ascension Day, May 10, 2018, at Church of the Ascension, Chicago. A couple of years ago I had the great privilege of traveling to Ghana. I was there with a delegation of other clergy and lay leaders from the Episcopal Church to hold a consultation with our sisters and…
Bishop Lee gave this sermon on Tuesday of Holy Week, March 27, 2018, to clergy and lay leaders renewing their baptismal vows at St. James Cathedral: It was a Holy Week many years ago. I was a second year seminarian, full of piety, longing to serve God as a priest of the church, and deeply…
Bishop Lee preached this sermon at the 180th Convention of the Diocese of Chicago on November 18, 2017: In the last parish I served as rector, a parishioner there named Tammy taught me one of the most significant lessons I have ever learned about the nature of leadership and serving with love. She was a…
Bishop Lee gave this keynote address at the 180th convention of the Diocese of Chicago on November 17, 2017: [A deacon reads the story of the Feeding of the 5000 from Mark 6: 30-44] Whenever I think about the topic of leadership I can’t help but remember a presentation I heard many years ago by…
In the fall of 1990 my family and I moved to Fishers, Indiana—is Holy Family in the house? We invited a dozen or so people to join us in our living room and we started a church together. We outgrew the living room pretty quickly and started moving around in that fast-growing suburb. There weren’t…
Bishop Lee gave this sermon on November 19 at Diocesan Convention 2016: At my house, we’ve got the coolest front door. As some of you may know, Lisa and I and our son Jonathan moved this summer into a house in the Edgewater neighborhood of Chicago. As part of the move we had the front…
Bishop Lee gave this address on November 18 at the 179th Annual Convention of the Diocese of Chicago: I want to share with you some reflections on the state of the diocese and some hopes I have for our future together. My intention, my commitment is to keep us focused on our share in God’s…
175th Diocesan Convention, Part II June 8, 2013, St. James Cathedral When I was serving as rector of a church in Milwaukee I had a parishioner who was the CEO of a large manufacturing company. The leadership of the company had made a difficult decision about a plant closing that resulted in the elimination of…
