Executive Council Calls Communication Key to Church's Healing
Episcopal News Service. February 24, 1995 [95032]
(ENS) The Executive Council of the Episcopal Church underscored the importance of communication -- both of good news and bad -- in a meeting dominated by the report of possible misuse of funds by the church's former treasurer.
Meeting in Providence, Rhode Island, February 13-17, council members struggled with their own reactions to the difficult news. Having shared the "common pain, common tragedy" through the meeting, the members may well have become "more of a council" as a result, observed Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning. And several members expressed their hopes that the event, rather than impede the church's mission, might in a similar way draw the church together. The key to that, they said, was as complete disclosure of the facts of the case as possible.
Little in the way of details was known, Browning said, beyond that certain "irregularities" had been discovered after the departure of Ellen Cooke, who resigned as treasurer January 6. He reported that an independent auditing firm, Coopers and Lybrand, had been called in and was expected to produce a report in a few weeks. He promised to share as much as possible within limits imposed by legal considerations.
Given the shocked response of council members, the timing of the two-day retreat before the council meeting itself was a "grace-filled" coincidence, offering a spiritual context in which to deal with the news, Browning noted. "No one knew when we made our plans how very necessary those days would be, or what they would hold."
In a candid presentation toward the end of the meeting, Browning and Diane Porter, senior executive for program, described a three-way working relationship with Cooke that they admitted had hampered the work of the national church office. A retreat in September for 40 senior staff members brought issues to a head, they said, and pushed the three to meet with a consultant to improve their working relationships.
At the retreat, "a lot was put out on the table, and it was put out about as frankly as I've ever seen," Browning said. The picture presented, he said, was of staff "living in separate boxes" or in "two silos" that represented the units directed by Cooke and Porter. "We engaged in interdepartmental competition as though it were an Olympic event," agreed Porter.
Porter acknowledged regret for what she called her own "complicity" and pledged a more cooperative style, noting that she already finds collaboration easier with Donald Burchell, elected by the council to replace Cooke as treasurer (see separate article). "We talk a common language. We laugh at the same time. We smile at the same time. We cry at the same time," she said. Browning, Porter and Burchell will continue to work with the consultant and have pledged to meet regularly to keep lines of communication open.
In a departure from tradition, both Browning and Pamela Chinnis, who as president of General Convention's House of Deputies serves as the council's vice-chair, addressed the council.
Chinnis described the daunting task of making committee appointments that adequately balance different elements and views of the church. "Bishop Browning, of course, has a fixed pool of bishops from which to make all his appointments, but there are many thousands of potential clerical and lay appointees," she said. "The problem is finding them, and matching them to actual vacancies."
In the current balance, "30 percent of the clerical members on interim bodies are women, and of those whose race or ethnicity is known, 22 percent are not white," she said. "Of lay members, 30 percent are women and 32 percent minorities."
The structure of the committees themselves is under review, she added, and will be discussed at a joint meeting in Minneapolis next October of all the interim bodies that meet between General Conventions.
The church is strengthened by differing opinions unless "we believe our meaning is the only meaning," Browning said in his address. "Tolerance is just not enough," he said. "It isn't good enough if you are trying to follow the way of Christ, the way of the cross. We are called to go much deeper into the meaning of the other."
Browning decried what he called diversions that pull the church from the path of accomplishing its mission. "Enormous amounts of energy that should be used responding to the imperatives of the gospel, are diverted by inappropriate demands and preoccupations," he said. "We need to deal with what's on our plate and not lose sight of our call to mission."
While Browning and Chinnis called their collaboration a natural outgrowth of their close working relationship, the council encouraged making the shared leadership a formal policy.
To help strengthen ties to the wider church, the council endorsed a second round of the visits members made to virtually all the church's dioceses before the 1994 General Convention. In the first six months of 1996, members will once again fan out across the country to listen and respond to what dioceses say about the church's mission.
The first in a series of more targeted visits to dioceses this year provided a wealth of information about possible shared ministries, Browning reported. The trip by Browning, Chinnis, Porter and other national church staff to the Diocese of Nevada offered "a new model of a relationship that can be held up to the national church," he said.
"We have something to give from the national program," said Porter, "but they have much to give to us."
Over the next few months, trips are scheduled to the dioceses of Connecticut, Olympia and Mississippi. Council members urged that the targeted trips made in the future include some of the dioceses that have been less supportive of the national church program.
Noting that "some would say this is the winter of ecumenism," the Rev. David Perry, the church's new ecumenical officer, suggested that the opposite is true, offering as examples current collaboration with both the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches.
A recent pilgrimage by Catholic and Episcopal bishops to Canterbury and Rome underscored that "the ecumenical enterprise is humans in relation to other humans," reported Bishop Frank Griswold of Chicago, co-chair of the dialogue with Roman Catholics in this country. The day-to-day events of the journey, as much as any theological discussions, he said, provided "a much deeper sense of unity."
In a second report, Bishop Ted Jones of the Diocese of Indianapolis called himself "a passionate advocate" for the Episcopal-Lutheran Concordat that, if approved in 1997, will bring the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) into "full communion." The concordat will not merge the two churches, but will "enable us to do things together that we have rarely done before," he said, especially in sharing ministries and resources.
The council will invite ELCA representatives to its future meetings and encouraged provincial, diocesan and local church bodies to arrange similar dialogues. They also endorsed the idea of meeting with the ELCA's Church Council to parallel a planned joint meeting of Episcopal and Lutheran bishops.
Council approved creation of a committee to be called the "justice, peace and integrity of creation committee" that will assist with "strategies for justice" at all levels and will advise the council and national church staff on "issues and concerns of church members regarding ministries for social, economic and environmental justice and stewardship."
The council put in motion calls by General Convention and Executive Council to support shareholder resolutions on a wide range of social issues, and pledged to continue to "seek to work in partnership with government" to "promote peace with justice and social well-being for all in the United States."
The council gave strong support to women's ministries, endorsing the Anglican Women's Network, which helps connect Anglican women's organizations around the world, and reaffirmed the United Nations convention on elimination of all forms of discrimination against women.
A committee formed by the administration and finance committee and made up of council members, was asked to look into claims of high administrative costs and possible overfunding of the pension accounts at the Church Pension Fund.
Approval was completed for several resolutions authorizing and continuing world mission work that were brought originally to General Convention but not finally approved because of an oversight. Council members also elected Judy Conley of Iowa to replace Pam Chinnis as the third U.S. representative to the Anglican Consultative Council, the international group that helps direct the inter-relations of the Anglican Communion.
The council also urged dioceses that host their meetings to include youth in their presentations to the council, and encouraged council members to participate in youth events at all levels of the church.