Executive Council begins three-day meeting
Episcopal News Service – Linthicum Heights, Maryland. June 15, 2011 [061511-01]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
The Episcopal Church's Executive Councilopened its three-day meeting here June 15 by hearing about the rebuilding challenges facing three dioceses: Haiti, Quincy and San Joaquin.
A report about the current state of the Diocese of Quincy was conducted in open session. A question-and-answer period on the needs of that diocese and the initial discussion of the San Joaquin report were both heard during an executive session of council's Governance and Administration for Mission (GAM) and Finances for Mission (FFM) committees, apparently due to the inclusion in both instances of information concerning litigation.
An update of reconstruction efforts in Haiti will be published by ENS on June 16.
After the opening plenary session, council spent the afternoon of June 15 meeting as its five committees. Committee meetings will occupy the entire day June 16.
The final day of the meeting will begin in an executive session during which council will be updated on the report of the A&F093 Task Force, which was formed in 2009 to conduct a comprehensive review of the human resources practices of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society (the Episcopal Church's corporate entity) relating to all employees, contractors and consultants. In February, council members passed Government and Administration for Mission Resolution 010 directing Episcopal Church Center management to report to GAM at this meeting with recommendations for implementation, a timeline and actions taken to date regarding recommendations contained in the A&F093 Task Force report and in a Joint Audit Committee evaluation of employment and personnel practices.
The June 15-17 gathering is taking place at the Conference Center at the Maritime Institute.
During their opening remarks, both Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson spoke about the calls for changes in the structure and governance of the church.
Jefferts Schori said she encounters many people who are "eager or at least willing to entertain those conversations."
She said she sees "a really significant rise in readiness for mission and connections to the need and concerns of people beyond our immediate congregations," adding that she sees that readiness "as a sign of enormous health … [and] renewed investment in the core work of the church."
"People are not focused inward by large; they are focused outward which is where the church is supposed to be," she said.
Anderson suggested that the church will not "find our way forward by debating questions whose answers are important primarily to people who live and breathe church governance -- as lovely as we all are!" Instead, she said, "we need to devote our energy to enabling the church to realize the possibility of real change -- courageous, life-giving and life-altering change -- for Episcopalians, for seekers, and for the lost and hurting and hungry in our midst."
Becky Snow, chair of the church's Standing Commission on the Structure of the Church, is due to report on June 16 to GAM about the results of a May 30-31 effort to begin coordinating the conversations going on in a number of the church's committees and commissions about strategic planning and possible changes in the structure and governance of the church. At council's request, Snow's commission gathered representatives from the joint standing committees on Program, Budget and Finance and Planning and Arrangements; the Standing Commission on Constitution and Canons; the Budgetary Funding Task Force, the House of Deputies Committee on the State of the Church, and council's Governance and Administration for Mission, Finances for Mission and Strategic Planning committees, as well as Jefferts Schori, Anderson, General Convention Secretary and Episcopal Church Executive Officer Gregory Straub and Treasurer Kurt Barnes.
Also on June 15, Episcopal Church Center Chief Operating Officer Linda Watt, who is retiring this month, said good-bye to the council. Saying that the Church Center's employees are "motivated by a deep love for the church and commitment to its role in fulfilling God's mission," Watt asked that the council continue to support them in their work.
"I will always pray for you and the church," she said.
Jefferts Schori told the council that she gives thanks for Watt's "enormously effective ministry." Watt had the courage and willingness to work for the transformation of the Church Center, she said, adding "I know that it has not been easy."
Current Diocese of Lexington Bishop Stacy Sauls will succeed Watt in September.
Small Quincy diocese looks to future
Diocese of Quincy Provisional Bishop John Buchanan told the council that the Peoria, Illinois-based diocese is a "small but faithful part of the church."
Even when it was created in 1877 by the division of the Diocese of Illinois into the current Chicago, Quincy and Springfield dioceses, there was concern about its viability or sustainability, he said.
In 1994 the diocese consisted of 21 congregations and 3,419 baptized members, and in 2008 just 2,283 belonged to that same number of congregations. In 2007, its diocesan operating income was $352,000 and its budget balanced.
Then, in November 2008, a majority of the diocesan synod voted to leave the Episcopal Church and to realign with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone, forming the Southern Cone Diocese of Quincy. Since that "schism," as Buchanan called it, the diocese is reduced to nine congregations, three of which worship in borrowed space. There are fewer than 1,000 baptized members and the average Sunday attendance diocese-wide is less than 375.
Its projected operating income this year is $76,000 (all from congregational assessments) and expenses are projected to be $162,000, an amount equal to the diocese's current bank balance. Its modest endowment (valued at $3.4 million in 2008) is frozen due to a pending lawsuit. The diocese is also involved in another lawsuit over the assets of Christ Church in Moline. The council gave the diocese a $109,000 grant in 2009 and loaned it $125,000 in 2010. The diocese pays four percent interest on the loan.
Buchanan asked the council for a $50,000 grant in 2012 and asked if it would be willing to convert the $125,000 loan into a grant or make the loan interest-free.
The bishop stressed that Quincy, the smallest of the church's four reorganizing dioceses (the others being Fort Worth, Pittsburgh and San Joaquin), is unique in "seriously considering its sustainability for the short-term and the long-term." A committee is considering various models for the episcopate, as well as possible merger (formally known as juncture) with a neighboring diocese or reunion with Chicago.
It is, Buchanan said, "a critical period" in the diocese.
The Executive Council carries out the programs and policies adopted by the General Convention, according to Canon I.4 (1). 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.