Virtual Morning Prayer builds unlikely friendships, community in the Diocese of New York

Over the last three years, Episcopalians across the Diocese of New York have built community and forged relationships through online Morning Prayer. Photo: Zoom screenshot

[Episcopal News Service] Every weekday at 8 a.m., over a hundred Episcopalians in the Diocese of New York log on to Zoom for Morning Prayer. From those on bus commutes to those sitting in living rooms, Bishop Matthew Heyd said, this daily service has brought the diocese together.

“It’s a wonderful collection of the diversity of the diocese every day,” Heyd told Episcopal News Service.

The Diocese of New York covers 10 counties, including three New York City boroughs – Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island – and the city’s suburbs and upstate cities and towns. Within its 190 worshipping communities, there exists a variety of liturgical styles and languages spoken. Morning Prayer is a chance to uplift each corner of the diocese and make connections where they might otherwise be unlikely, Heyd said.

“I’ve met people,” the Rev. Cindy McCloskey, a deacon on Staten Island, told ENS. “Sometimes it’s just through that box,” she said. “We’ve never met formally, but sometimes I get a chat box, words from someone, and I’ll go someplace and they’ll say, ‘I know you from Morning Prayer!’ and it opens up conversations. Oh, my goodness, it’s amazing.”

McCloskey was a postulant for the diaconate in 2023 when Morning Prayer began, and Heyd invited postulants for ordination to officiate. During the week of her ordination, she credited the daily services with preparing her spiritually, especially the Gospel readings and reflections on “new wineskins.”

Three years later, McCloskey now helps run the slides and invites participants to read.

In addition to the officiant, multiple people read per day, and over 100 people have preached from all over the diocese and The Episcopal Church. For the particularly isolated parts of the diocese, like the churches on Staten Island or rural areas, McCloskey said this is a way to feel integrated with other Episcopalians.

Ashley Shepherd has attended nearly every day since it began – even from vacation. A parishioner at the Church of the Epiphany on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Shepherd said this Morning Prayer differs from other daily office services because of the regular sermons and the sheer number of prayer requests.

“I write my prayer really quickly, and I read the others, and I pray with them,” Shepherd said. “Sometimes the support that we get from [each other] can carry us.”

When the call goes silent for intercessory prayer, the chat box floods with long lists of names, places and concerns. Heyd said Morning Prayer has been a place to process current events as they unfold, and there are frequent prayers about ICE activity in New York City and for peace in Gaza.

“We’re living in a tough time,” Shepherd said. As an activist, she told ENS, she has witnessed frustration and despair at community gatherings like anti-ICE rallies. “Maybe I would not be as engaged [in Morning Prayer] if times were not this horrible. I don’t know.”

Morning Prayer also has been a source of grounding and routine for Judy Douglas, director of programs for Episcopal Charities and a postulant for the diaconate. She officiates once a month and attends multiple times a week, usually with her camera off as she gets ready for the workday.

In addition to making new connections online, Douglas described one morning in particular when she invited a friend at just the right time.

“I had been walking in Rye with a dear friend who had recently lost her husband,” Douglas said. “The time was coming for morning prayer, we were still walking, and I thought to myself, ‘oh, my gosh, should I just invite her to come to Morning Prayer?’”

Douglas said she hesitated because her friend was Jewish, but they logged on together. Archdeacon Denise LaVetty began her reflection that day with a Yiddish term that Douglas said she didn’t know but moved her friend to tears.

“Not only did it mean a lot to me to invite her in even though she was Jewish, that particular one she signed into was what she needed to hear at that time,” she said.

Heyd wrote in a newsletter to the diocese that Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, the original author of the Book of Common Prayer, would not have predicted that Anglicans would pray the daily office online, in multiple places at once. But in other ways, Heyd said, virtual Morning Prayer that celebrates the different charisms across the diocese follows in the Anglican tradition.

“The diversity in the expression of the Gospel; actually in that way, Cranmer would have anticipated,” Heyd said. “The Gospel in our own language was a wonderful part of the English Reformation, and that reformation continues.”

Praying individually is something Douglas enjoys, but she said the community that has been built from gathering day in and day out is “unbelievable.”

“Where two or more are gathered, God is in the midst,” Douglas said. “When we see each other out and about, we recognize the person that we see on Zoom. And it brings us even closer together.”

-Logan Crews is a freelance journalist and hospital chaplain resident in the Diocese of Missouri.