Executive Council begins three-day meeting
Episcopal News Service – Linthicum Heights, Maryland. June 16, 2010 [061610-04]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
The Episcopal Church's Executive Council began its three-day meeting here June 16 by hearing about the efforts to rebuild two dioceses: Haiti and San Joaquin.
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori also told the council that they could expect to have a question-and-answer session at 9 a.m. June 18 with the Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, secretary general of the Anglican Communion. Details of that plan are here.
The June 16-18 meeting is taking place at the Conference Center at the Maritime Institute in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. Council will hear about the mission and ministry of the diocese on the evening of June 17.
Council members spent the morning of June 16 in plenary session and then broke into committees in the afternoon. Those committee meetings will continue all day on June 17. The five council committees are 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). On June 18, council will consider resolutions from those five committees.
In her opening remarks to the council, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, council president, updated the members on her travels around the church and the Anglican Communion in the past few months. She began her remarks by noting the death of retired Diocese of Idaho Bishop Harry Bainbridge and praising his work on the Episcopal Relief & Development board. Calling him "a remarkable human being," Jefferts Schori said "we give thanks for his life."
And, looking to the future, she told the council that the House of Bishops had decided to maintain its plan to meet in September in Phoenix, Arizona, despite public outcry over Arizona's recent enactment of the nation's toughest immigration law and calls for a boycott. She noted that there will be a pre-meeting trip to the U.S.-Mexican border
"The sense is it's very important to go Arizona to listen to and be in solidarity with the Latino community there," she said.
Jefferts Schori also noted that "it is singularly important for us to recognize that many of the bishops who will be in attendance at that meeting are also themselves likely to be subject to this new law -- capable of being stopped on the street. I think our presence there and our ability to speak in that context is extremely important."
Haiti plans beginning to take shape
Jefferts Schori also said that a rebuilding plan for Haiti "is beginning to emerge and I know that some of the committees here are going to deal with that in the context of this meeting."
During its last meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, the council challenged the Episcopal Church to raise at least $10 million to help pay for the Diocese of Haiti's rebuilding efforts after the massive Jan. 12 earthquake.
Episcopal Church Center Chief Operating Officer Linda Watt told the council June 16 that she and Jefferts Schori have met several times with Haiti Bishop Jean Zaché Duracin "to listen to his needs, to think through how all of us can support the Diocese of Haiti as they rebuild the facilities that nurture their spirits." Watt noted "the incredible work" of Episcopal Relief & Development, adding that the agency does not rebuild diocesan facilities.
The diocese has lost about half of its income, which used to come from tuition, apartment rentals and parishioner contributions, Watt said, adding that the loss equals about $30,000 a month. She said many clergy have lost their homes, are receiving less than full pay and are in need of respite from the post-earthquake work. The Church Pension Group and CREDO is helping with the respite needs, Watt said.
Watt said that Duracin had recently given church center staff an assessment of damage to diocesan facilities in and around the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. Watt said the assessment, which is the first part of the diocese's master plan for rebuilding, is "partial, it's incomplete, it's rough" and it carries a $60 million price tag. The cost of rebuilding Holy Trinity Cathedral is put at $10 million, she said.
"We do not yet know what the full cost will be. We do not know what the rebuilding plan will be," she said. "What we do know is that this will be the work of many hands, many dollars and many years."
She said that conversations with Duracin have led to the conclusion that the diocese needs a reconstruction coordinator to help finish and then implement the master plan. An Episcopal Church missionary will be hired for that job, Watt said, as will a second missionary to continue the work of coordinating the diocese's many partnerships in the church.
"They're thinking strategically. They're considering options for different types of worship space, for example," Watt said. "They can't do it by themselves. We are remembering that this is their work to do in their way and that our job is to support them and pray for them and do what we can to facilitate and enable their work."
San Joaquin bishop briefs council
Bonnie Anderson, president of the House of Deputies and council vice president, yielded the majority of her time for opening remarks to Diocese of San Joaquin Provisional Bishop Jerry Lamb who updated the council on the work to rebuild the central California diocese since the group met there in January 2009.
"I want to tell you clearly and loudly that the clergy and laity of the Diocese of San Joaquin are committed to the Episcopal Church and to the Episcopal sense of what it is to be God's people," he said.
He said that the Episcopalians who remained after the former leadership and a majority of its members joined in December 2007 the Argentina-based Anglican Province of the Southern Conehave tried to reconcile, revive, renew and rebuild. Lamb said that efforts to reconcile with those who left "bore very, very little fruit" but that 21 worshipping communities have reformed and 18 of them have shown "significant but slow growth."
"They are becoming much, much stronger," Lamb said.
He said he has recently experienced "a palpable shift" of attitude in many congregations from survival mode to how to be active in mission and ministry in their wider communities. "We truly are a missionary diocese in San Joaquin," he said.
The diocese had to be rebuilt from "nothing but a commitment to remain in the Episcopal Church," Lamb said. Much work needed to be done and still needs to be done to teach the basics of the Episcopal expression of the Christian faith as well as its polity and tradition, and leadership skills in general, he said.
The diocese has created an equality commission to look at ways to incorporate women, gays and lesbians and people of color into the church and "to renew that sense of the church as a wide tent," he said.
Property litigation "has been enormous and extremely lengthy" and even though the state courts have consistently ruled in favor of the diocese and with the wider church, "yet we are quite a bit behind where we thought we would be" in the effort to regain property, he told the council.
Lamb also said that he had recently asked the diocese and Jefferts Schori to begin a search for a second provisional bishop. He said he realized earlier this year that "I was wearing out and I needed a break." Lamb has been the diocese's provisional bishop since March 2008. He said he has only had a few months off since he retired from the Diocese of Northern California in January 2007.
Watt also updated the council on the work of church center staff on evangelism, nurturing congregations and "empowering Episcopalians for ministry." Those efforts include research efforts to define similar attributes of growing congregations and to find ways to share that information with the wider church; an Office of Communication effort to determine what "emotional drivers" bring certain newcomers into the church; and ways to nurture innovative ministry by all Episcopalians.
The rest of the meeting
While in Linthicum Heights, the council is also expected to:
- Meet in executive session the evening of June 16 to receive a report from its audit committee. Jefferts Schori, who announced the session earlier in the day, gave no details about the contents of the report.
- Consider a study guide that the task force charged with monitoring the development of the Anglican covenant has written and hopes to release to the church at the end of the council meeting.
- Elect the episcopal member of the church's Anglican Consultative Council delegation who will be a successor to Diocese of New York Bishop Suffragan Catherine Roskam, whose term ended after the May 2009 ACC meeting. The election was delayed during the council's February meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, so that then-fellow council member and then-Diocese of Connecticut Bishop-elect Ian Douglas could be considered for the seat. Douglas, who has since been ordained and consecrated, attended the first ACC meeting of his three-meeting term in May 2009 as the church's clerical representative.
Douglas resigned from the Executive Council at the end of the Omaha meeting and the Rev. Jim Simons of the Diocese of Pittsburgh was chosen to fill out the remainder of his six-year term which expires after General Convention in 2012. Simons joined the council in Linthicum Heights.
The council is also expected to elect an ACC clerical member to serve out the rest of Douglas' term.
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 each) by provincial synods for six-year terms, plus the presiding bishop and the president of the House of Deputies.