Executive Council begins three-day meeting, contemplates response to Primates' communiqué
Episcopal News Service. March 2, 2007 [030207-05]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
The Executive Council of the Episcopal Church on March 2 spent part of its morning session in private conversation about the communiqué recently issued by the Anglican Primates' Meeting.
The hour and a half gave council members a chance to talk with each other, ask questions of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and discuss possible responses. Normally, the council votes on resolutions on the last day of its meeting.
The Executive Council is meeting March 2-4 at the Lloyd Conference Center in Portland, Oregon.
The Executive Council carries out programs and policies adopted by the General Convention, and oversees the ministry and mission of the Episcopal Church. The council is comprised of 38 members, including bishops, priests or deacons, and lay people, 20 of whom are elected by General Convention and 18 by provincial synods.
Also on March 2, council member the Rev. Dr. Ian Douglas was unanimously elected as a member of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC). Douglas also serves, among other capacities, on the Design Group for the 2008 Lambeth Conference of bishops in the Anglican Communion.
He joins New York Bishop Suffragan Catherine Roskam and Executive Council member Josephine Hicks of the Diocese of North Carolina as one of the Episcopal Church's three ACC members, succeeding the Rev. Robert Sessum of the Diocese of Lexington.
The ACC's role is "to facilitate the co-operative work of the churches of the Anglican Communion, exchange information between the Provinces and churches, and help to co-ordinate common action," according to its website, in addition to advising on the "organisation and structures of the Communion" and developing "common policies with respect to the world mission of the Church, including ecumenical matters."
Membership includes one to three persons from each of the Communion's 38 provinces, based on the province's size. Where there are three members, there is a bishop, a priest and a lay person. Where fewer members are appointed, preference is given to lay membership, according to the website. Each member's term lasts for three ACC meetings, which normally occur every three years. Between meetings, members watch the on-going life of the Communion and "speak to the wider Church on behalf of the churches they are members of," Douglas said.
The last time the ACC met in 2005 in Nottingham, England, the members from the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada were observers because they had voluntarily withdrawn their participation from ACC proceedings until the next Lambeth Conference in 2008 after being requested to do by the Primates of the Anglican Communion.
Three task forces made reports to the Executive Council on March 2. One group proposed a resolution for a Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Inspiration Fund, using the $924,000 MDG line item in the church's budget.
That money would be used to match contributions to build a $3 million budget for anti-malaria projects by Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD), Jubilee Ministries and the Episcopal Church through the Executive Council.
ERD, which would manage the fundraising efforts, would identify additional contributions to bring the $924,000 amount up to $1 million in order to "seed the fund" and then individuals, congregations and dioceses would be encouraged to contribute $2 million.
The proposed resolution would allocate $2 million to ERD's work with the "NetsforLife" initiative in Africa, with a possible similar pilot project in Asia. The other $1 million would be allocated to initiatives in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Rev. Dr. Lee Alison Crawford, Executive Council member from the Diocese of Vermont and task force chair, told the Council that the task force was concerned that the initiatives not be "another top-down Northern Hemisphere" initiative.
The Council will act on the resolution later in the meeting.
Douglas, of the Diocese of Massachusetts, reported on the work of the four-member Convocation on the Anglican Mission of the Americas Task Force. The task force was formed at the last Executive Council meeting in Chicago in November after House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson reported a conversation about such a regional conversation that took place during her 2006 visit with the Council of the Anglican Church of Canada's General Synod.
Douglas said the task force's initial goal would be seen if there was interest in having a regional conversation about how the Anglican provinces and extra-provincial Anglican churches in the Americas can be "agents of God's mission in the wider world."
The task force has identified the leaders who should be approached to inquire about their interests in having such a conversation, Douglas said, and a letter of invitation is being drafted.
The third task force, one meant to develop a strategy for facilitating online donations to the Episcopal Church's mission and ministry, reported that it was considering how to set up a way for people who visit the church's website can be invited "to help make a difference through the various ministries we have to offer," according to Executive Council member Thomas Gossen, Diocese of Kansas.
Council members spent time during the evening of March 2 in a community-building exercise. Also on the agenda for the Council's meeting are reports about companion churches and developing major gift-giving to the Episcopal Church, dinner with the leadership of the Diocese of Oregon and Province VIII, and Eucharist on March 4 at St. Michael and All Angels in Portland.