Executive Council begins budgeting process for 2012 and beyond
Episcopal News Service. October 21, 2011 [102111-01]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori called on the Episcopal Church's Executive Council Oct. 21 to remember as it moves into nine months of work on the church's 2012 and 2013-2015 finances that "budgets are moral documents."
"These budgets should – we should expect that they will – reflect our values both as Episcopalians and as Christians, and they should reflect our understanding of our part in God's mission, given that we are the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society," she said at the beginning of council's four-day meeting at the Hilton Salt Lake City Center.
"We should be building budgets that clearly reflect our commitment to mission," she said, calling for stewardship of "human vocational resources," of finances and of creation.
Mission, the presiding bishop said, is about reconciling the world to God and each other in Christ as the Book of Common Prayer says. Jesus refers to "caring for the least of these," she noted, adding that mission is also about baptizing and teaching others about the reign of God in Jesus' work.
"Mission is about transformation because we don't yet live in the fullness of the kingdom of God," she said.
Jefferts Schori added what she called a caveat. "The dollars identified in a particular segment of the budget do not necessarily reflect the value we place on an area of mission," she said. "The budget overall needs to reflect our commitment to the different varieties of mission but, we are not to judge one part of the budget against another only on dollar value."
The presiding bishop asked if the council would be willing to lead "or will we continue to be primarily focused on regulation?" She asked if the budgets the council develops can become "a source of leadership of vision for the wider church and, indeed, for the wider world," and whether the council can "relinquish our excessive focus on control in favor of a networked sharing of information and resources in the service of mission."
"I don't believe that we are solely a regulatory body. I believe that we are visionary leaders as well," she said, posing additional questions about whether council members were "willing to offer up the sacred cows in the interest of mission."
She noted that the last meeting of General Convention, at the behest of House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson, called for the church's 2013-2015 budget to be centered on the Anglican Communion's Five Marks of Mission.
Jefferts Schori suggested that the work she outlined is challenging but it is also the way of rejoicing "because Jesus is in our midst."
"Just remember that it leads to sacrifice – a making holy for the whole of creation," she concluded.
Anderson said in her opening remarks that she had two "fundamental beliefs," first that "our governance system, in its fundamental form, works; and, second, mission is best done by congregations and dioceses."
"I'd also like us to consider, as we work on the draft budget for the next triennium, how we might realize savings by focusing our churchwide work on governance and coordination and leaving more money in congregations and dioceses to do the mission that we know God is calling us to do," she said.
Anderson and Bishop Stacy Sauls, the church's chief operating officer, both used their opening remarks in part to address the way in which Sauls in September introduced to the House of Bishops a proposal to engage the laity and clergy in conversation about the kind of structural reform that he said could shift the church's focus toward mission.
Anderson was among some in the church who felt Sauls ought to have alerted them to his intention to propose such a conversation and she said in her remarks to council she had told Sauls this. In turn, Sauls referred in his remarks to "the matter that has come between some of us," which he called "a breach that has been carried on very publicly and regrettably without talking to one another."
Anderson suggested that the church needs to "slow down" the conversation. She said that the church's Standing Commission on the Structure of the Church "has developed a sample resolution to help all of us – clergy, lay people and bishops – structure our conversations and work together toward change that best facilitates mission and best limits unintended consequences."
At council's request, the structure commission in May gathered representatives of the church's committees and commissions that have been discussing strategic planning and possible changes in the structure and governance of the church. The commission will report to convention about that gathering.
"I am worried about the outcome of a structure conversation that starts by leaving out clergy and lay people," she said, in reference to Sauls' presentation to the bishops.
"We need to focus on what we do best at the local level – mission and program. And we need to focus on what we do best at the churchwide level – representative governance and coordination," Anderson said. "We need to talk together about how we should change our structure – and why."
Sauls told the council that his presentation to the bishops stemmed from his belief that "our church requires significant structural reform" that is "critical to our missional challenges that are challenges the church has never faced before in its life." To engage in that reform "is going to require some new thinking and no small amount of risk," he said. "On the other hand, it presents the opportunity to us for adventure, which is something I find to be generally desirable and especially desirable spiritually."
He took exception with the way some in the church have labeled his presentation to the bishops as "the Sauls proposal." The only things he proposed, Sauls said, was that "the people of the church – all the baptized, laity, clergy and their bishops – need to be having a conversation about mission, about how to participate in mission and how to structure ourselves to best participate in mission." He said he suggested a way to "encourage and empower" that conversation.
"I have not proposed an answer to that question," Sauls said. "I have made some suggestion of things we might think about in that regard, but the only proposal on the table is to enable the people of the church at the grassroots level to have the conversation they deserve to have."
He said what is "most regrettable, I believe, is that the way I went about doing that has provided a reason, maybe an excuse, for avoiding the conversation we need to be having and engaging the people we serve in that conversation."
Sauls said that if he were to deliver his presentation to the bishops over again, "I would have notified Bonnie of the one thing I presented that was new," which was a model resolution (found at the end of his presentation to the bishops here) that he described as "a vehicle for bishops to take this conversation to the people with whom they work."
Also in his remarks, Sauls spoke about how in September when he came to work at the Episcopal Church Center in New York he found a "demoralized staff" that was fearful, overly regulated, distrustful and that felt their creativity was stifled. He said he has begun to refer to the staff as "missionaries" in keeping with the church's corporate identity as the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society "because it suggests something about the reason for our being."
"I want them grounded, not in a place, but in an endeavor and that endeavor is to participate in the mission of God and to lead others to participate in the mission of God," he said.
"I am surprised that there is so much confusion about what mission is," Sauls said. "The mission is to meet Jesus and the place that Jesus said we would find him is with the poor."
Council spent the remainder of Oct. 21 meeting in committees and will continue to do so the morning of Oct. 22. The members will reconvene in plenary session that afternoon. They will worship with Episcopal congregations in Salt Lake City on the morning of Oct. 23 and reconvene in committee meetings that afternoon. Council will spend the entire day Oct. 24 in plenary considering reports and resolutions.
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.