August 2026 eNews: From Bishop Monnot

Photo by Bishop Monnot from the Shalom Center in Dubuque, 9/13/2024

Dear Siblings in Christ,

As I write, we have just come through one of the summer thunderstorms that Iowa is well known for—flashing lightning, booming thunder, gusting wind, pouring down rain, the drain in the road at the bottom of my driveway challenged by all the water flowing into it at once. It was the kind of storm that can flatten smaller plants. We see them after the wind and the rain stops, bent over as though someone has taken hold of their tops and pushed them to the ground.

It makes me think of the resilience of the tallgrass prairie that once covered most of Iowa. The tallgrass prairie evolved to withstand these summer thunderstorms, with all the wind and pounding rain that they bring. It is notable that the survival of the prairie plants isn’t based on the individual plants becoming bigger and stronger, or better adapted as individual plants to withstand the forces of the rain and the wind. Each individual prairie plant, by itself, could easily be flattened by the thunderstorms. The adaptation of the tallgrass prairie that allows it to survive is that the plants are surrounded by each other and depend on each other for support. Individually, plants of the prairie would struggle to survive. Together as one prairie, one mutually interdependent ecosystem, they not only survive but thrive in the Iowa environment.

I have been thinking about how we are developing a Prairie Model of church here in Iowa. Each congregation, like each plant in the prairie, is separate, yet part of one interdependent whole. Different congregations, like different plants, bring different strengths to the whole, and all are needed to make the whole the best and strongest that it can be.

Part of the Prairie Model is the way the congregations support each other as we weather challenges that could flatten us. When we support each other, like the prairie, we discover that we are stronger than we knew. When we are able to lean on each other during challenging times, we find that we can face those challenges and make it through the storm.

We live in challenging times. The church faces threats from climate change in the form of worsening weather conditions that impact our buildings, from the secularization of our culture that leads fewer people to our doors, from the polarization of our politics that makes it more challenging for people with differing views to sit next to each other in the pews, from our demographics that show us as an aging and shrinking denomination, and more. If we try to face these challenges each on our own, we will be flattened like a single stalk of grass in a thunderstorm.

On the other hand, if we learn from the prairie and live into the Prairie Model of church, we will learn to lean on and support each other during challenging times. The strength of one congregation can support the relative weakness of another, and so on throughout Iowa. You and your congregation have something to offer another congregation that they may need. The Prairie Model teaches us to stand up to challenges together, and thrive through interdependence.

Many thanks to Canon Donna Wong-Gibbons for the inspiration for this article!

Yours in the abundant life of Christ,
+Betsey

The Rt. Rev. Betsey Monnot, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Iowa