Overseas Review Committee to Report to Convention
Diocesan Press Service. May 25, 1973 [73148]
GREENWICH, Conn. -- The Overseas Review Committee (ORC), a special committee in the Episcopal Church, will ask the General Convention this fall to endorse "the principle that this Church will work in cooperation with each overseas jurisdiction, agency, and institution . . . toward its self-government, self-support, and self-propagation."
ORC was brought into being by the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops in 1969. In addition to the 14 members of the committee, there are eight consultants who have worked with the committee to prepare its final report to General Convention.
At a recent meeting here, the report was reviewed by the committee, the consultants and 24 invited guests, many of them elected deputies to the General Convention, from jurisdictions throughout the Episcopal Church, both domestic and overseas.
The report basically presents the ORC's position on the Episcopal Church's mission relationships, autonomy and self-support for overseas jurisdictions, recent trends and suggestions about future mission work, and a series of resolutions calling for significant canonical amendments to implement its proposals for developing relationships.
The ORC report recommends that the directions suggested in its final report be adopted as "the official policy of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in order to provide guidance to the Church in its development of relationships and programs of Mutuality and Interdependence in World Mission."
The committee reaffirms its commitment to its recommendations in an interim report to Convention in 1970 -- no unilateral decisions; self-government, self-support, and self-propagation; strengthening relationships to overcome a sense of isolation; imaginative and innovative ways to do mission; rededication to the ecumenical principle; and increasing the visibility of overseas work.
The Episcopal Church, the ORC report says, must strengthen its relationships with its own 21 overseas jurisdictions, with autonomous churches of the Anglican Communion which were formerly overseas dioceses of the Episcopal Church, and with members of the Anglican Communion who are "beyond the constitutional limits" of the Episcopal Church. The form of these relationships, the report says, which hopefully "will increasingly characterize the future relationships " between the Episcopal Church and its present overseas missionary dioceses, contains "a quality of mutuality which has replaced dependency."
The ORC report states that the Episcopal Church is "in business of helping the development of national, indigenous churches related to the realities of their own societies." The committee's "data suggest that churches planted overseas grow best when they work to develop an indigenous expression of their faith, when they train an indigenous ministry, and when they are autonomous and to an increasing degree self-supporting."
Whether a jurisdiction must be self-supporting in order to be wholly autonomous, the report says, "is the most central question." The committee concludes that "some of the steps toward autonomy carry no price tag," including the inherent right to elect their own bishops and Council of Advice, the right to decide on their own programs and policies, and the right to set salary scales including that of their bishops.
However, the report says, such steps as training an indigenous ministry and supporting "worthwhile but costly institutions " which the Episcopal Church has established, will be "an immediate and considerable expense."
According to the report, the ORC committee, the overseas bishops and the Executive Council staff agree "that a compelling need is for some money which can be invested appropriately to use as development funds for the purposes of working toward self-support. "
The overseas bishops recommended to Executive Council that $500, 000 per year for the next 10 years be budgeted for a development fund to supplement "local stewardship in moving each diocese toward financial autonomy, thus freeing present base budget subsidies for new mission thrusts. "
The overseas bishops, at their meeting in the fall of 1972, said that if the development fund of $500,000 per year were provided, they would accept the present level of block grants for their jurisdictions in the Council's program and budget for the next triennium.
If this were done, the bishops "agreed to meet annually to undertake jointly, the difficult task of distributing block grants to the various diocesan budgets for which they are responsible. " This process is patterned after the one developed by 14 domestic aided jurisdictions, Coalition 14, which provides for full disclosure of all income, grants and endowments, with distribution of national budget grants determined by themselves.
The Executive Council, however, is recommending only $100,000 per year for the development fund in its program and budget proposal to General Convention this fall. The ORC, in commending the courage and faith of the overseas bishops, says in its report, " If this venture is as successful as we believe it can be, it may well be the largest step toward identity, self-understanding and eventual financial autonomy that has been taken in a long time."
The committee report notes that there are emerging new styles for mission planning, new patterns for projects, and the need for new patterns for mission.
The report endorses the concept of new, ecumenical styles for mission planning, such as the various regional councils which have been functioning as voluntary, consultative associations of neighboring jurisdictions. The overseas jurisdictions of the Episcopal Church participate in the Council of the Church in East Asia and the Anglican Council of North America and the Caribbean, and to some extent in the South Pacific Anglican Council.
The committee notes with approval the strong reaffirmation by the Anglican Consultative Council at its first meeting in Limuru in 1971 of "the force and values inherent in the concept of MRI" (Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ). The Episcopal Church, as well as other Anglican bodies, continues to participate in two major outgrowths of the MRI activity -- the Companion Diocese program and the Directory of Projects in Mission. To help overcome the time lag of 18 to 24 months under the pre- sent Directory of Projects, from the planning of a project and its inclusion in the Directory to its final adoption, the committee endorses the proposal that projects "emerge out of each provincial or regional consultation and be circulated more rapidly in the participating churches."
One of the significant sections of the report, the adoption of which will call for several important canonical changes, deals with patterns for mission, based on a position paper written by one of the committee members. The paper calls for "new, more experimental systems and functional styles of mission" which are able to "operate easily within, around, and through" existing structures such as churches, dioceses, missionary dioceses, provinces and councils.
The ORC report identifies two possible experimental systems. A mission front might be hunger, overpopulation, refugees, "and a host of other forces which individual dioceses have found it difficult to attack."
A mission area system would involve initiating missionary work, not by creating a structure designed to mature into an Episcopal diocese, but by simply starting a "mission" in a defined "area," which might take different sizes and forms and which would transcend diocesan structures. It could eventually become a diocese but not necessarily in the Episcopal Church.
Two possible functional styles of mission are suggested in the report. A mission force would be a team of trained persons who would "be assigned to a particular place at a particular time for a particular task." Such teams might include leadership trainers, medical experts, or evangelists.
A single individual, such as a consultant, interpreter, or technical advisor, Is another kind of style of mission which the committee suggests.
The ORC report concludes with a series of resolutions calling on the General Convention to endorse as the general policy of the Episcopal Church the principles contained in its report, to establish a Joint Commission on World Mission to replace the ORC, and to approve a number of canonical amendments to implement the proposed policy.
One of the major proposed changes In the canons would provide a completely new section which would unite in one canon the organizational matters having to do with area missions and with missionary dioceses, superseding some matters now in other canons.
Another set of proposed amendments would revise the present provisions affecting organized missionary dioceses which would make them dioceses in every sense and missionary only in name. Provisions would include an elected Standing Committee to supersede the existing appointed Council of Advice, a diocesan Convention replacing the Convocation, self-determination in budget making and other planning, the inherent right to elect their own bishops, and the recognition of a future status for the overseas jurisdictions outside the Episcopal Church structure.