05/13/2026
A Patriarch Has Been Enthroned: The ICCEC Gathers in Paris
Three Streams United and Jesse Harris
May 12, 2026
Installation Service: Photos by Charlize Cosio ()
On the Fifth Sunday of Easter, at the Church of Saint Paul the Apostle in Paris, Archbishop Charles William Jones was enthroned as the third Patriarch of the International Communion of the Charismatic Episcopal Church. The service was the concluding act of the Aslan Roars Healing Conference and continues the story that began three months ago in Madrid, when the Patriarch’s Council selected Bishop Jones unanimously and by consensus to the office.
It was the first patriarchal enthronement most of us in this Communion have ever seen. It will not be the last great moment of this new chapter, but it was a fantastic beginning.
Why Paris?
Bishop Elmer referenced the decision for Paris during the service, Archbishop Jones had told him, “Because I want to make a proclamation to the whole Communion, that the Charismatic Episcopal Church is an international church.”
Paris was no accident. To enthrone a Patriarch in a church in France, with bishops from Pakistan and the Philippines blessing him in their own languages, and communicant members from around the world was to make a visible argument: that this Communion’s center of gravity is not held in any one nation, and that the office of Patriarch belongs to a global body.
Aloha to those who came from Hawaii, the Bishop Belmonte said at the start of the service. Bonjour to the French. Buongiorno to the Italians. Guten Morgen to the Germans. The list grew until Bishop Prakash Yuhanna had been added for Pakistan and Archbishop Ariel Santos for the Philippines. The greeting itself was the proclamation.
The Liturgy of Enthronement
Bishop Elmer Belmonte, General Secretary of the Patriarch’s Council, led the service. The rite of enthronement followed the historic pattern of the Church: a petition, a witness, the consent of the people, the prayers, the renewal of vows, the investiture, and the seating of the new shepherd in his chair.
Archbishop Jones came forward and spoke the words that opened the rite: “I, Charles William Jones, whom God has ordained to be a shepherd and servant, and who now has been chosen as Patriarch of the International Communion of the Charismatic Episcopal Church, come to you desiring to be recognized and invested and enthroned in the chair which is the symbol of that office.”
Bishop Belmonte then turned to the congregation and asked the question the Church has asked of its people for centuries: “Do you recognize and receive Charles William Jones as your Patriarch? Will you uphold him in this ministry?” The answer came back, simple and corporate: “We will.”
There followed a long litany of intercession — for the Church, for her bishops, priests, and deacons, for Charles our chosen Patriarch, for his family, for the unity of all Christians, for the mission of the Church, for the poor and the persecuted, for those in positions of public trust, for the peace of the world. It is the kind of prayer that situates a man inside a vocation that is older and larger than himself, and it was prayed with care.
When Bishop Belmonte placed the pastoral staff in the new Patriarch’s hands, he did so with the words the Church has used for generations: “On behalf of the people and the clergy of this Communion, I give into your hands this pastoral staff. May Christ the Good Shepherd uphold you and sustain you as you carry it in his name.”
Archbishop Jones received it with a vow of his own: that he would, by the grace of God, fulfill the responsibilities of this office, “striving according to his power which mightily works within me to be a faithful shepherd to the flock of Christ.”
Then he was seated. The Communion has a Patriarch.
Three Witnesses
Before the Eucharist, three bishops were given space to speak. Each carried a different angle on the same moment.
Archbishop Ariel Santos went first. He had been in Madrid in February for the conclave, and for him the contrast with the rest of his ecclesial experience was worth noting. “It was the most peaceful, stress-free, bloodless church meeting I have ever been to that required consensus,” he said, to much laughter in the room. “There were no threats, no politics. Nobody brought any guns with them, or clubs. It was just consensus government at its best.” Then he turned the matter pastoral: “Archbishop Chuck is not Jesus. He is not God. But I can tell you he is a good shepherd, because he is a man after God’s own heart. Pray for him. Support him. Imitate him as he imitates Christ.”
Bishop Prakash Yuhanna spoke next, and he spoke the way he always speaks — with the gentleness of a man who has carried real weight in a hard country and still believes peace is the better word. He sang a small fragment of a song, that touched the heart of everyone who knows his story: “Shalom, shalom, oh my friend.” He thanked the room. He reminded everyone that the CEC is not only for America, the Philippines or Europe but for all of Asia as well, and that even amid the challenges of Pakistan he and his people came to extend their love to the new Patriarch. “We support him,” he said, “and we all will pray for him.”
Bishop Belmonte’s remarks framed the moment in the long arc of the Communion’s life. He began with Archbishop Randolph Adler, the first Patriarch, and the famous Charisma article that put San Clemente on the map and made the phones ring. He recalled the founder’s words: “If we have one hundred churches in ten years, I’ll be very happy.” He recalled the turbulence of the early years — “these three streams coming together produced a whirlpool” — and the cost of canoeing the mountains of uncharted ecclesial territory.
He recalled the election of Archbishop Craig Bates in 2007 and the long, often unseen work of stabilizing the Communion through difficult years. “I would characterize his tenure,” Bishop Belmonte said, “as one that brought stability to the Communion.”
And then he turned to the present. “Now we are ready, and God is ready to do something new in our Communion. It is a new chapter; a new page is turned. The Holy Spirit is ready to write new things, and we are the ink and the pen, as it were.”
The text he kept returning to was Esther 4:14 — the verse the Lord had given him, he said, all through the conclave process: “for such a time as this.” “It is not our doing,” he said. “It is God’s doing. And we are all part of it. We are all part of it.”
He closed with a story that exemplifies the t
rust in God that lies at the heart of our Communion. Years ago, in Selma, when the first Patriarch, Abp. Adler, was blessing his successor, Abp. Bates, he said as he blessed Abp. Bates, “Remember, this is not my church, and this is not your church. This is Jesus’s church.”
It is the kind of word a Communion needs to hear at every transition.
The Patriarch’s Vision
After communion, before the final blessing, Archbishop Jones rose to give a vision for what is ahead:
“I believe that God is saying to all of us in the CEC around the world,” he said, “that God created the CEC to be a church in revival, not just one that is for revival. And that revival is normal, and we see its pattern in the book of Acts. I believe that we will see every church in every continent, and every person in every parish, moving in revival.”
That sentence is worth sitting with. There is a difference between a church that prays for revival and a church that understands itself to live inside one. The Patriarch’s claim was the latter — that the CEC’s vocation is not to import revival from somewhere else but to recognize that the Spirit who founded this Communion has not stopped moving, and that the work of his leadership is, as he put it, to fan that flame.
In characteristic humility and that slow southern rumble, he said: “My hope is I just won’t bu**er it up. So pray that I won’t bu**er it up.”
Earlier in the service he had made a promise to the Communion that ought to be remembered. “My promise to you is this: that in the Holy Spirit, I will love him with all my heart. And by the Holy Spirit, I will love each person in the CEC — in Africa, in Asia, in Europe, and America — with all of his heart.”
The Eucharist
The new Patriarch then celebrated the Eucharist. The readings of the day did much of the preaching themselves: Isaiah 6, with its vision of the Lord high and lifted up and the question that rings down through every vocation — “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Psalm 132, with the Lord’s promise to David and the choosing of Zion. 1 Peter 5, with its charge to elders to shepherd the flock of God willingly, eagerly, not as lords over those entrusted to them but as examples to the flock. And John 15: “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, bears much fruit.”
It is hard to imagine a more fitting set of texts for the day. A man called by God to a ministry he did not seek. A people gathered around a chair that does not belong to them but to the Shepherd whose place it represents. A vine, and branches, and the quiet insistence that without him we can do nothing.
Pray for our new Patriarch. Pray for his family. Pray for the bishops who will gather around him as the new Patriarch’s Council comes together in the months ahead. Pray for the parishes of the Communion in Africa and Asia, in Europe and the Americas, and for every person whom this office now serves.
And give thanks. The best days of this Communion really are ahead of us.
Non nobis Domine — “Not to us, O Lord; not to us, but to your Name be the glory.”
-Dcn. Jesse Harris is a deacon in the ICCEC and a contributor to Three Streams United. Watch the full enthronement service on the Three Streams United YouTube channel, and follow continuing coverage on Substack and Instagram.
