Episcopal Press and News
IV. Wrapping Up Executive Council
Episcopal News Service. November 22, 1988 [88251]
NEW YORK (DPS, Nov. 23) -- Summing up the first Executive Council meeting of a new triennium can never be a tidy process. The package wrapped is sure to have a lot of odd corners and bulges. As you have read in the first section of this coverage, half of the members of the first Council of a new triennium are new. This time, even old-timers felt they were on new ground because of Council's new committee structure.
The Council knew from the opening of the session and the Presiding Bishop's Address from the Chair that a new challenge was in front of them, one that could transform the Church and its mission in major ways. But no one, least of all the Presiding Bishop, was giving any assurance that the way would be easy.
Just as Executive Council and the Presiding Bishop had gone to Convention in July with their bold, new Mission Imperatives, so Council was being challenged to begin to put the Imperatives into force with bold and fearless strokes.
The Council -- and the whole Church -- were being challenged by the Presiding Bishop to build "a community of grace," a Godfilled and creative environment in which the problems of life and relationships and interconnectedness could be looked at straight on, without fear and retreat into the "structures of sin" that would provide quick and superficially easy solutions to problems, or, worse, escape into a blind hiding from the awesome business of grappling with the truth.
Executive Council's response to the challenges, to the newness of its new committee organization, was in the best tradition of the Episcopal Church. They got down to business -- the business of learning to work together; the business of making the vision of General Convention and the Mission Imperatives come to life.
As Council makes its triennial progress through the Church in the meetings that will follow, the will of the Church and the will of God will become clearer and more focused. On the threshold of Convention, Council and the Presiding Bishop focused in on the central and vital role of Christian education to the mission of the Church. At this first meeting of the new triennium, armed with an innovative mandate for Christian education, Council and the Church are being asked to tackle another fundamental enablement of mission -- communication; telling each other and the world what we believe and how we are setting about the task of accomplishing it.
The Presiding Bishop has set Council and the Church the challenge of creating a new communication strategy for a new world and a newly revitalized sense of mission.
Council finished its time in New York, tired, but excited by doing new things in a new may. In his Address from the Chair, the Presiding Bishop actually began Council by anticipating what the mood of Council would be at the end of their deliberations:
"May we say that we, the Church, God's people, are not only smiling and waving at one another, we are beginning to build those structures that allow us to see, feel, know, and share the grace of God."
