Click on the above button to enter and register for SIMnetConnect

SIM alumni have expressed a desire to give back to the organization that provided support in their seminary years so that future leaders will have the opportunity for similar assistance. We have created a forum, called SIMnet, through which SIM alumni may communicate with each other, reach out to each other for resources, advise, and friendship. Through SIMnet, various avenues of giving back are available – donating time and effort, contributing financially, or both. In order to keep SIMnet a safe community, we have made it password protected. You will need to create an account and be approved, prior to being allowed in. Please go here: SIMnet, the SIM Community for Alumni, to register, create an account and be approved. It only takes a couple of minutes and you will be approved almost immediately.

Alumni will have the opportunity to give back to SIM by assuming operational SIM functions, such as delivering grant checks to seminarians, pastoring them during their time at seminary and mentoring SIM graduates in the early years of their priesthood. SIM alumni can organize fund raising meetings and help raise the awareness of issues facing the Church’s future leaders. Alumni can represent SIM at diocesan conventions and host events when SIM representatives are visiting. The web site will be a key mechanism for communications.

Another way is financial support. Recently a SIM alumnus was inspired to pledge his grant multiplied by his years of ordained ministry. Asked why he responded to a SIM message with this creative model for giving, he replied that SIM had granted him funds when most needed and, until hearing SIM’s message, he had never considered paying SIM back. His grant of 30 years ago was $400.

The SIMnetConnect web site will be self-organizing. This community dedicated to the alumni network can be used for blogging, sharing opportunities, research and support for persons called to a lonely vocation. Priests will be able to share information pertinent to their lives and calls as priests and will evolve with the way priests share information. Information of interest to alumni could include clerical openings, mission initiatives, partnering with other parishes, recruiting, grant awarding resources, sermon writing, fresh idea sharing, and the like.

Different areas of the country may be organized into a structure of regional “chapters” that could be called upon for involvement in fund raising events, seminarian support functions, and raising seminarian issues to The Church. Information will be disseminated through the SIMnet and via email.

This small organization has the opportunity to play the role of a catalyst for meaningful change in shaping the future of The Episcopal Church. The alumni network will play a major role in fulfilling this vision.

The successful outcome of this program will benefit a multitude of stakeholders in the future of The Episcopal Church – parishioners, parishes, dioceses, bishops, the Church Pension Fund and the seminaries themselves.