Executive Council begins four-day Omaha meeting
Episcopal News Service – Omaha, Nebraska. February 19, 2010 [021910-01]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
The Episcopal Church's Executive Council began its four-day meeting here Feb. 19 by getting briefings on the work it faces and by hearing a renewed call for the church to stand with its Diocese of Haiti.
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori also told the council that tension is mounting in the Diocese of South Carolina over efforts to ascertain the diocese's plans for dealing with disaffected Episcopalians.
The Feb. 19-22 meeting at the Omaha Hilton is taking place in the seat of the Episcopal Diocese of Nebraska. Council will hear about the mission and ministry of the diocese on the evening of Feb. 21.
Council members spent the morning of Feb. 19 in plenary session and broke into committees in the afternoon. Those committee meetings will continue all day on Feb. 20. Council reorganized itself during its last meeting in Memphis, Tennessee, into five new standing committees: Local Ministry and Mission (LMM), Advocacy and Networking for Mission (A&N), World Mission (WM), Governance and Administration for Mission (GAM) and Finances for Mission (FFM).
In her opening remarks to the council, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, council president, told the members that relatively few people, including Episcopalians, know that the Diocese of Haiti is the numerically largest diocese in the Episcopal Church with some 200,000 members.
"Our destinies and, I would say, our salvation are tied up with each other," Jefferts Schori said of Haiti and the rest of the church, especially since the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. "How we continue to respond in solidarity and partnership and in Christian fellowship with the people of Haiti in the coming years is of immense importance."
However, she echoed her ongoing message that while Haitian Episcopalians are not yet ready to formulate rebuilding plans, people should continue to donate to Episcopal Relief & Development.
She also said that the diocese "will need our long-term partnership to reestablish some of the infrastructure of the church, so start thinking, continue to think, encourage your congregations to learn about the history of our relationship between the United States and Haiti. There is much there to repent of and there's much to learn from."
Jefferts Schori also told the council that as it gets down to the business of the 2010-2012 triennium "the work we're here to do is about equipping the larger church to serve the needs of our neighbors for transformation in this country and beyond."
"There is abundant need for that work of transformation, for the voice of the Gospel and the presence of the Gospel in changing people's lives, in changing structures, in changing our relationships towards something that looks more like what God designed us for," she said.
"As we go about our work I would simply encourage us to remember that our intentions are the best and our disagreements in the midst of that are an opportunity for greater engagement rather than avoidance," she continued. "Our struggles are a gift if we stay engaged; if we don't stay engaged, they become destructive."
Jefferts Schori concluded her remarks by telling council members that "things are heating up in South Carolina."
She noted that Diocese of South Carolina Bishop Mark Lawrence has delayed the diocese's annual convention and attributed the delay "supposedly to my incursions in South Carolina."
"He's telling the world that he is offended that I think it's important that people who want to stay Episcopalians there have some representation on behalf of the larger church," she said, asking for the council's prayers for the people of the diocese.
In a Feb. 9 letter to the diocese Lawrence said that the convention would be delayed from March 4-5 to March 26 in order for him, the diocesan standing committee and the diocese "to adequately consider a response" to what he called an "unjust intrusion into the spiritual and jurisdictional affairs of this sovereign diocese of the Episcopal Church."
According to a series of letters the diocese has posted here on its website, Thomas Tisdale Jr., a Charleston, South Carolina, attorney and former diocesan chancellor, wrote Jan. 25 to current chancellor Wade Logan III confirming a telephone conversation between the two of them. Tisdale said in the letter that during that phone conversation he had learned that Lawrence does not intend to take legal action to protect parish property with regards to what Tisdale calls "recent and ongoing actions by some congregations in our diocese that threaten to 'withdraw their parishes from the diocese and the Episcopal Church.'"
Tisdale followed up that letter with others asking for a variety of documents, including a list of recent ordinations along with copies of the required oaths of conformity that each ordinand signed, standing committee minutes during Lawrence's episcopate, parish by-law amendments made since 2006 and a number of documents related to four specific parishes: St. Luke's, Hilton Head; St. Andrew's, Mount Pleasant; St. John's, Johns Island; and Trinity, Myrtle Beach.
In the first of those letters, Tisdale refers to himself as "South Carolina counsel for the Episcopal Church."
Logan responded with a letter saying that no parishes have left the diocese and that "the bishop, as the sovereign authority in this diocese, will work pastorally with diocesan parishes and their members in ways that will seek to keep them a part of this diocese."
The chancellor refused to supply the information requested and said that "it seems transparent that the Episcopal Church is trying very hard to find reason to involve either the bishop or the diocese, or perhaps both, in an adversarial situation."
On Oct. 24, the diocese voted to distance itself from the Episcopal Church by authorizing Lawrence and the standing committee to begin withdrawing from church-wide bodies that assent to "actions deemed contrary to Holy Scripture, the doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ as this church has received them, the resolutions of the Lambeth Conference which have expressed the mind of the Communion, the Book of Common Prayer and our Constitution and Canons, until such bodies show a willingness to repent of such actions."
The special convention also declared as "null and void" two General Convention resolutions that had been passed the previous month. Resolution D025 affirms "that God has called and may call" gay and lesbian people "to any ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church." Resolution C056 calls for the collection and development of theological resources for the blessing of same-gender unions and allows bishops to provide "a generous pastoral response to meet the needs of members of this church."
When Lawrence was first elected bishop in September 2006, he faced numerous questions about whether he would attempt to convince Episcopalians there to leave the church. In a November 6, 2006 letter to the wider church he wrote that he would "work at least as hard at keeping the Diocese of South Carolina in the Episcopal Church as my sister and brother bishops work at keeping the Episcopal Church in covenanted relationship with the worldwide Anglican Communion."
Lawrence did not receive the required consents to his consecration in 2007 because some standing committee consent forms were canonically improper. He was subsequently re-elected, received the consents required for all bishops-elect and was consecrated January 26, 2008.
Near the end of the 2008 Lambeth Conference, Lawrence told reporters that during a meeting of conservative Anglicans and Episcopalians in Jerusalem a few weeks earlier he had witnessed a "new prince" being born.
Lawrence said he knew that his role is now to "hold together as much as I can for as long as I can that when he comes to his rightful place on St. Augustine's throne in Canterbury Cathedral he will have a faithful and richly textured kingdom."
Other council business
Episcopal Church Center Chief Operating Officer Linda Watt also updated the council Feb. 19 on the work of the church center, especially in light of a $23-million reduction in the 2010-2012 budget required by the 75th General Convention. She called the resulting loss of nearly 40 staff positions "a very challenging and difficult time," but added that the church center had "turned a corner in terms of morale and sadness."
Watt also said that the reduced staff will soon consolidate into less office space in the church's building at 815 Second Avenue in New York with the aim to rent out at least part of another floor. The Ad Council already rents two and a half of the nine office floors in the 11-story building.
Another result of the budget cuts was the need to "re-compete" the church center's contract for cleaning services to reduce the $700,000 annual cost, according to Watt. The contract was awarded to a non-union, woman-owned firm that "specialize[s] in bringing people who need a chance to a working life," she said, adding that this approach "was a big plus for us in terms of our value system."
Unions have protested the change outside the church center and Watt acknowledged that the switch was "a very difficult transition." Union bids were considered when the decision was made, she added. At least two council committees are scheduled to talk more with Watt about that decision.
The council deferred until its June 16-18 meeting the election of the episcopal member of the church's Anglican Consultative Council delegation to succeed Diocese of New York Bishop Suffragan Catherine Roskam, whose term ended after the May 2009 ACC meeting.
Executive Council member Rosalie Ballentine suggested the delay so that the council could consider "all possible names who would be eligible for nomination," including fellow council member and Diocese of Connecticut Bishop-elect Ian Douglas. Douglas is currently the clerical member of the delegation. In May, he attended the first ACC meeting of his three-meeting term.
Douglas will resign from the Executive Council at the end of the Omaha meeting and council will choose a person to fill out the remainder of his six-year term, which expires after General Convention in 2012.
Also new to the council at this meeting is Anita George, named as a Province IV representative to succeed Belton Ziegler, who resigned in October due to family circumstances. George will serve out his term until the next General Convention.
Bonnie Anderson, president of the House of Deputies and council vice president, was not able to attend the Feb. 19 sessions and will speak to council at its next plenary session Feb. 21.
The rest of the meeting
While in Omaha, the council is also expected to:
- discuss the process for calling special meetings of council in between its regularly scheduled gatherings;
- hear a report from researcher Kirk Hadaway on the most recent statistics about Episcopal Church membership and worship attendance;
- get an update on the church's relief efforts in Haiti;
- consider the draft of a strategic plan for itself and
- worship with two Omaha parishes, All Saints and Church of the Resurrection, on Feb. 21.
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.