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Executive Council Endorses Change in Budget Process, Addresses Crisis in Mexico

Episcopal News Service. June 23, 1998 [98-2182]

(ENS) At its June meeting in Vermont, the church's Executive Council continued to shape its response to decisions from last summer's General Convention, endorsed changes in the budget process, addressed the crisis in the Chiapas province of Mexico, and bid farewell to its executive officer.

In her opening comments, Pamela Chinnis, president of the House of Deputies, reported that reviews of last March's meeting of all the church's interim bodies were "extremely positive." More than 250 members of 19 different committees and commissions met in Minneapolis "to organize their work for the triennium and explore ways of coordinating their work better with each other and with the various support services offered by staff."

Chinnis said that the meeting "was an important step away from our previous pattern of interim bodies working in isolation -- and sometimes ignorance -- on aspects of the church's mission..." Participants "built a foundation of community that cannot help but improve the quality and accountability of all our contributions to the church's life and mission," she said.

Chinnis also observed that the third meeting of the council in the new triennium "marks a sort of turning point from our focus on follow-up from the previous convention," slowed a bit because of the transition of leadership in the office of presiding bishop.

New budget process

In a development that could have considerable impact on the way the church does its business, the council endorsed a recommendation from Treasurer Steve Duggan that would alter the whole budget process.

In describing the new "interactive budgeting process," Duggan said that the church's budget is "a theological statement of what we believe and value." In the new process staff and committees would "work together, testing priorities, listening to the church at all levels." By incorporating more flexibility, the budget process would provide opportunities to listen and respond at General Convention, which has been almost impossible because in the past the budget has been prepared well in advance. "We have been wasting an opportunity to get everyone involved in mission," he said.

"This will be a vision-driven budget," said Bishop Russ Jacobus of Fond du Lac, who joined Duggan in the council presentation. "Most people in the pew have no idea what our mission commitments are and this process will make that possible." Instead of fueling the frustration that General Convention resolutions are passed without any realistic hope of being funded, he said that the new process will be more responsive.

When asked about the tight time-line, Duggan said that the process is "ambitious because it is a significant change -- but it can work." He said that he is convinced that the process will help church members see it as "our church, our budget, our mission."

Executive Council will appoint a group to oversee the process and lay its foundation with church leaders and begin implementation at diocesan conventions, beginning this fall. By the fall of 1999 the council will react to a draft, with final approval in January 2000.

Duggan reported that budget requests from interim bodies "so far exceed budget available that we have a problem." He attributed the problem to an enthusiasm among the interim bodies but also a misunderstanding about how many meetings they should hold in the triennium.

PB is testing his new role

Addressing the council exactly five months after his investiture, Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold said that the church "is alive and well and faithful, filled with good energy and spirit."

The House of Bishops "has become a house of faith, filled with incredible grace, and a realization that we don't always have to speak a language of contention," Griswold said. The bishops are finding a common meeting place, a new vocabulary and the Kanuga meeting last March was "a positive and encouraging event."

Arriving late for council because of a commitment to participate in a conference at Virginia Seminary for clergy under the age of 35 (see separate article), Griswold said that the meeting modeled a way of maintaining balance in a group with a wide diversity of experience and theological convictions. Yet many of the young clergy wonder why they are being sidelined by the church and subjected to the "inhospitality of the ordination process," Griswold reported. "They deserve to be taken seriously," he said.

Griswold said that his participation in clergy retreats in several dioceses had been "intensely life-giving," an opportunity to build relationships and develop his role as "a teacher of prayer."

"As one living into a new role, I've found it sort of problematical to figure out who I am as a public person and who I am as a private person, when I am off-stage and when I am on-stage."

As an example, he said that after the consecration of Mark Sisk as bishop coadjutor of New York he woke up the next morning "quite exhausted and I thought, you know what I want today, I just want to sneak off and be by myself and Jesus and just not have to deal with the sort of public face of being the presiding bishop and all that entails." He remembered a Roman Catholic church close to the Church Center. "I thought, well, that's certainly a place I won't be known. And so, in blue jeans and a red plaid shirt I crept off and when I got there I found that a mass was about to begin.... I thought, this is just what I need, just Frank and Jesus and this small community of worshippers. And it came time for communion and I thought, acting out of my own sense of need.... I don't think it will cause any scandal...so I received communion with the other 30 people who were there."

Several weeks later articles in several publications reported the incident, that someone had recognized him and followed him back to the Church Center. "I realize out of that there are no off-stage moments and I'm in a way grateful for that learning."

In a discussion of the upcoming Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops, Griswold said "once again we are hearing predictions that this is the end of the Anglican Communion." He said that the conference is not legislative but an opportunity "to take counsel together on broad concerns that are a part of the world and the church's attempt to address those concerns." The archbishop of Canterbury, he reported, is clear that the focus of the conference will be on community and common prayer, that any statements or resolutions that emerge could not bind the provinces of the communion. "And the archbishop is absolutely clear that women bishops are part of the Anglican Communion. The conference will honor the reality of women."

Farewell to a friend

The council called on the U.S. government to condemn the "massacre" of Mayan Indians in the Chiapas region of Mexico. Concern surfaced at the February council meeting and the international and national concerns committee researched the issue and brought a strong resolution to council.

"The U.S. government has been largely silent in the wake of this massacre in a neighboring country, even as it has rightly condemned the suppression and killings of ethnic peoples in Kosovo, Yugoslavia," the resolution asserted. It also linked Mexican military training at Fort Benning with paramilitary forces that are widely thought to be responsible for the massacres.

"We look forward to continuing the dialogue with the Anglican Church of Mexico about this disturbing situation," said the Rev. Reynolds Cheney of Tennessee who chairs the committee. The Mexican bishops have reacted to the situation with some caution, attributing some of the violence to ancestral tribal attitudes.

In closing comments, Griswold expressed appreciation for the Diocese of Vermont and Bishop Mary Adelia McLeod, saying that they are "wonderfully grounded," reflecting a community that is "well-ordered and oriented toward community outreach."

Griswold, Chinnis and council members expressed deep gratitude to the Rev. Canon Donald Nickerson, executive officer of the General Convention and secretary of the council and the Episcopal Church, at his last council meeting. Chinnis said that she had always treasured his "highly capable, superbly organized and always reassuring presence on the platform" at General Convention.

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