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Executive Council Responds to Windsor Report, Affirms Budget Increase in Diocesan Giving

Episcopal News Service. February 14, 2005 [021405-1]

Matthew Davies, Jan Nunley, Bob Williams

Seeking to "listen to and learn from other provinces in the Anglican Communion," the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church adjourned its February 11-14 meeting in Austin, Texas, after responding to the international Windsor Report and affirming a $49.6 million 2005 budget reflecting a 3.7% increase in funding from dioceses.

Additional actions addressed U.S. Social Security reform, anti-racism initiatives, and international nuclear disarmament, among other issues (see resolution texts to follow online).

"The Executive Council has begun its part in the consultative processes called for by the Windsor Report," the Council states in a document titled "Our Commitment to Partnership in the Gospel: A Word to the Church" (full text on-line at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_58408_ENG_HTM.htm ). "We urge all of the Episcopal Church to join us in this process of considering the report and growing in communion with each other and with the whole Anglican Communion."

Adopted by the 38-member elected Council, the statement cites the "need to listen to and learn from other provinces in the Anglican Communion" and encourages the "Communion-wide study of human sexuality recommended by Lambeth Conferences since 1978."

The Council's statement precedes the February 21-25 meeting in Ireland of the Primates, or leading archbishops, of the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion, which includes 77 million members in 164 countries.

The Primates called for the Windsor Report -- issued last October after an international panel's yearlong study -- in order to assess factors of communion, or interrelationships, among Anglicans, especially amid deeply held differences of opinion. The report followed the ordination in New Hampshire of a bishop who is in a committed relationship with a person of the same sex, and the introduction of rites to bless same-gender unions in the Anglican Church of Canada's Diocese of New Westminster.

The statement echoes a similar document adopted in January by the House of Bishops of the 2.3 million-member U.S.-based Episcopal Church (see text online at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_56787_ENG_HTM.htm ). The Episcopal Church's Presiding Bishop, Frank T. Griswold, told the Council that both statements will be very helpful in providing "context and clarity" as he confers with his fellow Primates in their meeting next week. While such meetings are closed to visitors and media, it is expected that the Primates will issue their own statement following their consultation.

The Windsor Report will next be addressed by the international Anglican Consultative Council meeting in June in England, and by the U.S. bishops at their regular meeting in March.

Fiscal forecast stable

In other business, the Council affirmed a $49.6 million budget for 2005; this budget reflects diocesan giving that is expected to increase by 3.7 percent above 2004 levels.

Total fiscal commitments from among the church's 112 dioceses, which are mostly domestic, are budgeted at more than $28.5 million for 2005, according to Episcopal Church treasurer N. Kurt Barnes. This figure is up from some $27.4 million budgeted for 2004.

As of November 30, nearly $22.8 million of the 2004 budgeted diocesan income had been received. Barnes said that he expects that the budgetary target will be met or exceeded when diocesan contributions received in December 2004 and early 2005 are recorded.

Diocesan giving in 2003 exceeded budget expectations for that year, Barnes noted. He said income from diocesan giving in 2003 totaled $31,210,974, some $2.1 million more than the $29,092,049 budgeted by the Council for that year. These figures stand in contrast with forecasts that diocesan giving would be reduced by the New Hampshire election and related issue the same year.

For 2004, three of the Episcopal Church's 112 dioceses -- Dallas, Pittsburgh, and Springfield (Illinois) -- pledged zero to the national budget in protest of the New Hampshire election and General Convention actions, but Episcopalians in those regions sent a total of $66,157 through non-diocesan channels to fund the budget for churchwide mission, Barnes said. To date, in addition to 2004 budgeted contributions, more than $180,000 has been received from at least 26 dioceses.

In approving a budget for 2004, the Executive Council had previously reduced spending by approximately 5 percent anticipating a decline in diocesan income from $29 million in 2003 to $27.4 million in 2004 due to reaction to General Convention decisions, and the impact of significant economic down-turns throughout the nation.

The 2005 budget specifies that within accounts held for national or churchwide ministry, "investment income is projected to decline in 2005 by $65,000 relative to 2004 due principally to lower-than-anticipated interest rates earned on short-term fixed-income investments, economic justice loans, and operating cash."

Estimated diocesan giving is confirmed at $27.4 million in 2004, $28.4 million in 2005, and $29.6 million in 2006. The 2004-2006 figures are part of the three-year budget approved by the churchwide General Convention. Each diocese is asked to give 21-percent of its total diocesan income annually to the churchwide budget, which funds mission programs ranging from global Anglican relations, to national communication and advertising, evangelism, clergy development, and support for planting new congregations.

Episcopalians churchwide give more than $2 billion annually to fund local, diocesan and national mission. According to statistical analysis, the collective endowment across the church is the highest of any U.S. mainline denomination, and the average parish pledge increased in 2003 to some $1,700 per year contributed by individual or family donations.

Austin parish hosts four-day meeting

Additional resolutions adopted by the Council will be reported and posted on-line. Additional measures include endorsement of Christian Churches Together, a new ecumenical organization; recommendation that the parochial report be adjusted to include age, gender and ethnicity of parishioners; and new steps for securing mission funding.

The Council's anti-racism recommendations include a memorandum to dioceses reminding them to comply with General Convention's 2003 resolution mandating that training be completed in dioceses, church agencies, seminaries, and national boards and commissions by 2006.

Council actions reflect the study and deliberation of its four standing committees: Administration and Finance, chaired by Russell Palmore of Virginia; Congregations in Ministry, chaired by the Rev. Cynthia Black of Western Michigan; International Concerns, chaired by Bishop Catherine Roskam of New York; and National Concerns, chaired by the Rev. Kwasi Thornell of Washington, D.C.

The Council meeting was chaired by the Presiding Bishop, assisted by the Council's vice-president, the Very Rev. George L.W. Werner, president of the General Convention's House of Deputies.

Guest presenters included Palestinian Anglican priest Naim Ateek; Duncan Bayne, member of the committee charged to revise the Episcopal Church's Title IV on professional standards; Janet Chisholm, Episcopal Peace Fellowship's national coordinator for non-violence training; Dr. Kirk Hadaway, the Episcopal Church's director of research; Bishop Michael Ingham of the Canadian Diocese of New Westminster; the Rev. Dr. William Sachs, director of research for the Episcopal Church Foundation; and Christopher Wilkins, representing the Via Media USA network.

Hosted at the historic 156-year-old St. David's Episcopal Church in Austin, the Council meeting included tributes to outgoing Secretary of Convention Rosemari Sullivan, who has begun a new ministry at the Virginia Theological Seminary, and to Sandra Swan, who will retire in May as president of Episcopal Relief and Development, a non-profit agency that has to date raised more than $3 million in emergency funds for the South Asia tsunami disaster.

The Council will next meet in June in Louisville, Kentucky.

[thumbnail: Members of the Executive...]