Questions of how church must change continue to challenge Executive Council members
Episcopal News Service – Fort Worth, Texas. February 16, 2011 [021611-04]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
The Episcopal Church's Executive Council began its three-day meeting here Feb. 16 considering how the church must change to serve a changing world, and the effectiveness of how the Church Center staff has been reconfigured to begin addressing that change.
House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson used part of her opening comments to say that "our society is changing both demographically and economically, the size and resource base of our Church is changing and the world is changing through climate change, population change, technology and a host of other factors." The church, she said, must respond in ways that are "rooted in our core values as Episcopalians and that includes the gifts of all the people of God in our church."
Anderson said that it is the job of council and of the members of the church's committees, commissions, agencies and boards "as leaders of the church to embrace this change in an intentional and proactive manner." That leadership must be aimed at trying to "figure out what will bring us closer to Jesus, guided by the Gospel and rooted in the Book of Common Prayer, and using our representative governing system."
Some of the CCABs are already considering proposals for change, Anderson said, adding that that she had asked the council's Governance and Administration for Mission Committee to "coordinate ideas and proposals for change to enable our governance structure, and bring them to Executive Council to be considered in a thoughtful, well-planned and informed manner."
"This work needs to be coordinated; there needs to be a place where the incredible energy can be harnessed, where the creativity can be brought to bear" so that "we can bring as the leaders of this church some concrete, agreed-upon, well-thought-out proposals" to the next meeting of General Convention in 2012, Anderson said.
Anderson's remarks followed on Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori's remarks at the October council meeting about her perception that the governance structure of the church needed to be more nimble and flexible. Jefferts Schori did not return to that theme during her opening comments here.
Two executive sessions on the agenda
On Feb. 16, the meeting's first plenary gathering ended with an executive session for council members only. They received a report from the council's audit committee, along with a separate report from the law firm McDermott, Will and Emery, which the audit committee hired to help it with its work. No information was released about the nature of either report.
Council will meet in another executive session on Feb. 18 to receive the report of the A&F 093Task Force, which was formed to conduct a comprehensive review of the human resources practices of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society (the Episcopal Church's corporate entity) relating to all employees, contractors and consultants.
Episcopal Church Center Chief Operating Officer Linda Watt noted in her opening remarks that the meeting was "going to be heavy on looking at human resources and staff issues" and she offered an overview of changes in the configuration of the church center staff since 2006.
Watt began by saying that a human resources consultant hired by the Episcopal Church Center (located at 815 Second Avenue in New York) in 2006 "reported his impression that we were a place of broken wings where the primary focus was placed upon caring for individual staff members and less attention was paid to the work those individual staff members were accomplishing."
She said that "this inward focus was troubling" to Jefferts Schori, who was just beginning her term, and who "also recognized that there were dangers inherent in a staff that consisted in considerable part of individuals whose working style was fundamentally isolated in silos."
"Many mission staff considered themselves to be in charge of an area – to be the expert – individually in control of events and budget and information," Watt continued. "Bishops and others in leadership positions around the church expressed annoyance and even hostility toward 815, and some staff members exhibited some patronizing attitudes. There was really very little accountability on how money was spent, or if events had to take place or if goals were met, if indeed goals were set."
In the intervening years, Watt said, management at the church center has been "in the process of transforming that culture" to the point that "today our modus operendi is to host conversations, to exchange, share, facilitate and enable the work that is going on around the church. We aren't the bank and the answer book anymore."
The program departments were reconfigured first into centers and then, after budget cuts during the 2009 meeting of General Convention forced a layoff of 20 percent of the church center staff, into teams after "an entire layer of management was eliminated," Watt said. She called the team approach "a construct that called for even more nimbleness and interconnectedness."
The on-going "transformation does not come easily nor has the significant culture change been without angst," Watt said, adding that some staff members were "invested in and supportive of a system in which one person owned the information, the power, the money related to a particular area [and] who didn't appreciate having to answer to anyone about it."
In addition, she said, some of the people who were laid off after the 2009 General Convention were allowed to leave when they wanted to. But Watt told the council that "frankly this was a drain on morale because a number of those people were understandably quite unhappy and that unhappiness seeped through the system."
Now, however, Watt said church center management and staff are "constantly evaluating the effectiveness" of programs and the work being done and "we believe that this is our turning-of-the-tide moment." She said that the staff is engaged with the church and "we have a renewed spirit and an unwavering dedication to this new way of working."
Council shows support for Fort Worth Episcopalians
The Feb. 16-18 council meeting at the American Airlines Training Center is taking place in the seat of the Diocese of Fort Worth. Council will hear about the mission and ministry of the diocese on the evening of Feb. 17 at St. Alban's Episcopal Church, which meets at Theater Arlington in Arlington, Texas.
On the evening before council began its meeting, nearly 700 people attended an evening of conversation and reflection with Jefferts Schori at Congregation Beth El.
The council decided to meet in Fort Worth to show its support for the Episcopalians who remained after former diocesan leaders left the Episcopal Church in November 2008, realigning with the Argentina-based Anglican Province of the Southern Cone. The continuing diocese reorganized in Feb. 2009, electing then-Diocese of Kentucky Bishop Edwin F. (Ted) Gulick Jr., as its provisional bishop. The diocese in November 2009 elected retired Diocese of Northwest Texas Bishop Wallace Ohl to succeed Gulick.
The Episcopal Church and the continuing Fort Worth diocese have sued the former diocesan leaders in the Texas courts, seeking recovery of property and other assets.
After the council's opening plenary session, the members and staff celebrated Eucharist with the help of members of St. Alban's, who showed the council and staff how they have to set up their worship space from scratch each time they gather at the Arlington theater. The Episcopal congregation has been shut out of its building since the diocese split.
A folk mass band from Trinity Episcopal Church in Fort Worth provided music for the Eucharist. Trinity retained its property after the split.
Council member Katie Sherrod, a leader among the Episcopalians who remained in the Diocese of Fort Worth, said during her sermon that there have been days in the past two and a half years that were "darker than midnight under a skillet." Shut out of their churches and having lost friends, Sherrod said, Episcopalians turned to God and each other.
The challenge to the continuing diocesan members, she said, is to create a "healthy and welcoming diocese out of the remnant of a diocese that was founded in anger and fed on dissatisfaction, dysfunction and disinformation." Sherrod said the diocese wants to focus on reconciliation and renewal, yet it ponders "how to welcome back people who sat in silence while many of us were called terrible names, subjected to public shaming, asked or told to leave our church homes because we were not 'real Christians.'"
Fort Worth is one of four dioceses in which tensions over decisions made by the wider church resulted in the leadership leaving the church. In her opening remarks, Jefferts Schori said that in the coming weeks she would be visiting the dioceses of Albany and Springfield.
While some of the members and leaders of those dioceses have been highly critical of the wider church's choices, there has been no effort on the part of the leaders to leave the church.
"I am very glad to be able to go to both of those places," the presiding bishop told the council.
The Executive Council carries out the programs and policies adopted by the General Convention, according to Canon I.4 (1)(a). The council is composed of 38 members, 20 of whom (four bishops, four priests or deacons and 12 lay people) are elected by General Convention and 18 (one clergy and one lay) by provincial synods for six-year terms, plus the presiding bishop and the president of the House of Deputies.