Executive Council receives draft response to proposed Anglican covenant
Episcopal News Service. October 26, 2007 [102607-04]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
Members of the Episcopal Church's Executive Council received copies of a proposed Council response to the draft Anglican covenant during private conversation the afternoon of October 26.
The Council, the church's governing body between meetings of General Convention, will discuss the draft response on October 27 in another private conversation during the second day of its three-day meeting at the Hyatt Regency in Dearborn, Michigan.
Also on October 26, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, during her opening remarks to the meeting, discussed her plan to reorganize the staff of the Episcopal Church Center in New York. The goal is to create an "organic and flexible structure that is mission-driven" that is dispersed in terms of decision-making and actual location, she said.
"We're looking for a system that tends to be more self-organizing rather than directed from the top," she said.
Draft covenant response consideration begins
Rosalie Ballentine of the Virgin Islands, chair of the work group assigned to draft the response, told the Council's International Concerns Committee (INC) earlier in the day that the drafting group was representative of the whole Episcopal Church and set a goal "to try to be reflective of the various views within the Episcopal Church."
She said the group found that "the Episcopal Church is not of one mind with respect to anything in the draft covenant."
The Rev. Canon Mark Harris of Delaware, a member of the drafting committee, told INC that "there was a lot of generosity with the group itself," adding that "there was real listening" during the group's writing efforts. Harris said that the resulting draft makes "an honest attempt" to reflect the diversity of the church's feelings.
Ballentine reminded the committee that the idea of an Anglican covenant is "evolving" and that she understood that "the decision about signing any covenant would have to be General Convention's."
In a letter to the Episcopal Church at the close of its March 2-4 meeting in Portland, Oregon, the Executive Council said "responding to the draft covenant does not presuppose agreement with the terms and principles advanced in the draft."
Responses to the proposed draft covenant from around the Anglican Communion are due by January 1, 2008. Responses received thus far are available here.
Ballentine's group was convened as a result of Executive Council Resolution INC021, which authorized Jefferts Schori and House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson to appoint a work group to draft the Council's response. The drafting group will remain together to follow the covenant-development process, enable comments from the wider Episcopal Church and provide comments on behalf of the church to the Communion's Covenant Design Group.
The Windsor Report, released in October 2004, proposed a covenant as a way for the Anglican Communion to maintain unity amid differing viewpoints. The Primates received and discussed the draft during their February meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. They then released both it and an accompanying report to the entire Communion, asking for comment from the 38 Anglican provinces by January 1.
Based on those responses, it is expected that a revised version of the covenant will be presented to the 2008 Lambeth Conference of Bishops, to be followed by a final text that would be proposed to the 2009 meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC). If the ACC adopts the text, it would offer it to the provinces for consideration.
Presiding Officers make opening remarks to Council
Jefferts Schori summarized her work since the Council's last meeting in June, beginning with her description of the "health and vitality" she has seen during her travels around the Episcopal Church. She said it was exciting "to see the passion with which dioceses and parishes in this church are engaged in mission."
"More and more people in this church get mission," she said.
Jefferts Schori cited the vitality of the health ministry of the Diocese of Puerto Rico and the Diocese of Northern Michigan's exploration of various models of an episcopacy to succeed Bishop Jim Kelsey, who died in June, as the kind of "unexpected places" from which others in the church can learn lessons about being responsive to mission needs.
The Presiding Bishop also told the Council that she'd twice spoken to Diocese of San Diego Bishop James Mathes on October 25 concerning the devastating effects of the wildfires burning in southern California. "They are enormously grateful for the ministry of ERD" and others across the church, she said.
She also spoke during lunch on October 26 with Diocese of Los Angeles Bishop Jon Bruno about the somewhat less-dire wildfire situation in his diocese.
Saying that many dioceses and congregations will be taking up special collections on October 28, Jefferts Schori said "please, please, please keep the people of southern California in your prayers and bless them with your generosity."
Jefferts Schori also reported briefly on the September meeting of the House of Bishops in New Orleans. Noting the presence of members of the Joint Standing Committee (JSC) of the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates of the Anglican Communion at the New Orleans meeting, she said "the bishops heard some very challenging words from the visitors."
She said that she was pleased with the statement the bishops issued to the Anglican Communion at the end of the meeting. "Not everyone was comfortable where we stood, but we stood together," she said.
The JSC also recognized that the Episcopal Church has a "vocation in this season to keep the issues of human sexuality before the communion," Jefferts Schori said, adding that not all of the JSC members like that situation, but she said they do recognize the Episcopal Church's vocation.
The communion is involved in a "signal shift" these days, Jefferts Schori said, back to mission questions and "basic living issues." She cited the recent communiqué from the Council of the Anglican Provinces of Africa as an example.
Anderson spent the majority of her opening remarks describing her September visit in the Diocese of Fort Worth to meet with those Episcopalians who are not happy with the diocesan leadership's desire to distance the diocese from the Episcopal Church. Her presentation included a series of questions asked of her during that visit which were projected onto a screen in the Council's meeting room.
"These are heartfelt questions that are coming from faithful Episcopalians," she said.
Anderson said it was important for the Executive Council to know the kinds of questions being asked in Fort Worth and similar dioceses which she has visited. And, she said, the Council needs to help answer those questions.
Reorganization plans outlined
Members of the Church Center must become "self-effacing in our own ministry" and "servant leaders" who can help dioceses, build networks and "be responsive to the priorities and resolutions of General Convention" and to "emerging mission opportunities and challenges," Jefferts Schori told the Council in explaining her reorganization plan.
The staff must also be able to help all the members of the Episcopal Church use their gifts and skills for the mission of the church, she said. And, there must be "excellence in management" at the Church Center, along with ways to help managers achieve that excellence, she said.
Using the metaphor of a school of fish, a pod of whales, a flock of birds or a herd of deer which has no obvious leader to describe the dispersed sense of a new Church Center structure, Jefferts Schori said "they respond to cues in the environment and move as a body."
"That's the kind of responsiveness we're looking for," she said.
Chief Operating Officer Linda Watt, using a document available only to members, led the Council through the details of the plan. She said the reorganization was prompted by three concerns: the need to work within General Convention's priorities and governance structure, the need to listen to the church and the need to develop "new ways of working" similar to the ways being used in other organizations.
A concept for considering those new ways of working is based in that of "wikinomics," which essentially says that these days "customers expect to shape the product," Watt said. The Church Center staff must be able to engage the church in that way, she said.
The reorganization process "began by listening and is evolving by listening" and the reorganization task force heard a call for the Church Center to be relevant, Watt said. The Church Center must have speed, flexibility, and agility to respond to the needs of the church, using project teams that assemble and then re-assemble to meet new needs, she said. The "passionate, hard-working dedicated servants" who work at the Church Center have more work to do that they can currently accomplish in the existing structure, Watt said.
"The future as we see it is to have the Episcopal Church Center as a model of servant leadership," Watt said.
The Council, beginning with its committees, is due to discuss the budget implications of the reorganization during the Dearborn meeting. Watt also invited them to submit written questions on the reorganization.
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, plus the Presiding Bishop and the president of the House of Deputies.