Executive Council Addresses Financial Shortfalls for National Church
Episcopal News Service. November 9, 1995 [95-1289]
(ENS) At the cost of extensive cuts in the national church program, and with help of higher-than-expected income in some areas, the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church overcame the hurdle of lower diocesan pledges to approve balanced budgets for 1995 and 1996.
Meeting in Birmingham, Alabama, October 30-November 3, council members also highlighted the issue of racism with a visit to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, spoke out on women's ordination, and spent a day wrestling with questions of their authority and role. And as they continued to address the embezzlement of $2.2 million by former treasurer Ellen Cooke, they heard reports of civil action filed against Cooke, and they elected a new treasurer.
Council faced a $1.9 million shortfall in the 1995 budget after diocesan covenants of support for the national budget were lower than originally projected when the 1994 General Convention set the triennium budget. But administrators joined forces to identify nearly $950,000 in cuts, which, combined with healthier income in other areas, brought the $41.6 million budget back in line.
"I am confident that we will come pretty close to even, and may even have a surplus of $300,000 going into 1996," reported Robert Brown, interim treasurer.
Brown warned, however, that any surplus in the 1995 budget is threatened by the costs -- estimated at between $200,000 and $500,000 -- of the upcoming heresy trial of Bishop Walter Righter, charged with ordaining a non-celibate homosexual. The council's administration and finance committee assigned that cost to a contingency line in the budget, but discussed assessing all dioceses, or the dioceses of those 10 bishops who brought the presentment against Righter.
"I think people in the pew need to know that someone has to pay for this," observed Ginger Paul of the Diocese of Western Louisiana.
While most dioceses have not yet made their commitments for the 1996 budget, the total should be about the same, and "might even be a little higher," said Bishop Don Wimberly of Lexington, chair of council's administration and finance commitment. Even so, the council still needed to approve more extensive trimming -- about $1.5 million -- to the larger 1996 budget.
The majority of the budget cuts -- more than $600,000 in 1995 and more than $750,000 in 1996 -- came at the expense of a wide range of programs. But if cuts had to be made, noted Senior Executive for Program Diane Porter, at least the cutting process was more inclusive than in past years when former treasurer Cooke closely controlled most financial decisions. Cuts also were made in both the section of the budget that covers General Convention and related committees and offices, and the corporate section covering most administrative and financial expenses.
"This was the first time in my experience of working on the budget that I felt a part of the team," Porter said. "It was such a change in attitude." She noted that it is impossible to cut more than $600,000 from the program budget "without having it be painful," but said, "it was helpful to have colleagues share in your pain. It was a great psychic victory."
In cutting, Porter noted, administrators tried to balance the pain from year to year of the triennium. "You have to look at all three years as a whole," she said. "Where we took cuts in '95, we kept them at full funding in '96." Further balancing, she said, will happen in 1997.
For 1995, many of the cuts also came in areas in which programs were still in planning stages and so "had not spent all of their money," she said. While no staff cuts are projected, the 1996 budget includes no salary increases for staff, she said.
Even in their reduced forms, both budgets still depend on strong diocesan support, Porter said. "The balancing of this budget really depends on the follow-through of the dioceses to pay their pledges in 1995, and on maintaining that support in 1996."
Following an often emotional debate, the council voted to join the church's bishops in endorsing a recommendation that the canons on ordination of women be enforced throughout the church (see separate article). While women's ordination was approved in 1976, bishops in four dioceses currently do not ordain women or license them to serve, claiming that do so would violate their consciences.
Despite a move to simply receive a report from the committee that was charged with developing a way to fully implement the canon, the council took the further step of expressing its "sense and mind in support" of the committee's majority report. At its recent meeting in Portland, the House of Bishops adopted a similar "mind of the house" resolution calling for the canon to be mandatory in all dioceses.
The actual changes to the canonical language recommended by the committee must wait for the 1997 General Convention, but the two votes give a clear indication that the changes will be approved.
The council also elected Stephen Duggan, a retired partner of the Arthur Andersen financial consulting firm, as the church's new treasurer (see separate article). He was appointed as well by Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning and House of Deputies president Pam Chinnis to be treasurer of General Convention.
Duggan, who spent 33 years with Arthur Andersen, was the unanimous choice of the search committee that received more than 200 applications for the job, reported Bishop Don Wimberly of Lexington.
Browning also announced that civil legal action has been started in Washington, D.C. to attach $60,000 found in a bank account belonging to Cooke and her husband, Nicholas, and in Virginia, where the Cookes live, to regain any additional funds as restitution for the theft (see separate article).
While the council learned that the church will receive the full $1 million bond from the company that insured the church against embezzlement, no decision was made about the use of that money. Initially, Brown said, the money will be used to replenish trust funds tapped in the embezzlement. More specific recommendations should be made by the treasurer's office at the council's next meeting in February, Wimberly said.
Struggling to get a better grasp of their role as trustees for the church in the wake of Cooke's embezzlement, council members devoted a day to examining their responsibilities as church leaders with the guidance of Katherine Tyler Scott, director of Trustee Leadership Development in Indianapolis, and the Rev. Dr. James Lemler, a consultant with the organization.
By addressing the over-arching question of "what does it mean to hold something in trust," the day's exercises helped identify the "impediments that exist in the way we're functioning," said John Harrison of Pennsylvania.
Concerned that the council has acted as a "rubber stamp" in the past, Tim Wittlinger of Michigan said the day focused on questions of authority -- what authority the council has and how it can best exercise it. "Many times in non-profits there's some sort of impediment against boards asking hard questions," he said. "It can seem as though you don't trust the other members."
Small groups of council members have been charged with developing recommendations for improving communication between council committees, clarifying relationships between the council and national church staff, and addressing other concerns.
A visit to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute drew council members through the local history of the civil rights movement, which fought some of its harshest battles on the streets of Birmingham. The city was often called "Bombingham" for the number of bombs used against civil rights workers.
After viewing the museum, "I wanted to cry a little bit, I wanted to repent," said Browning. "And I wanted to call this church to repent." A balancing image, he said, was offered by the figure of Martin Luther King, prominent in the museum's displays and memorialized with a statue in the park across the street. "Given all that stuff, all that bitterness and hatred, here was a person had a vision for wholeness," Browning said. "You can not find anywhere in his writing where he was not talking about equality."
Browning stressed similar themes of community with diversity in his opening address as he noted that an upcoming series of visits to dioceses by council members can be "a sacramental witness to our interconnectedness and to the fact that our life together makes each of us different." (Text in Newsfeatures) A follow-up to a series of visits made in 1993, the visits will challenge the council members to articulate the "vision of interconnectedness" in new ways, he said. "We must do a better job of describing the fruit of the vine of which we are all branches. We have to get so clear that people really can smell the grapes, so they can taste the wine."
Chinnis, in her opening address, noted that the recent meeting of interim bodies in Minneapolis was an experiment in "a more collaborative style of ministry based on personal contacts, networking, and a non-hierarchical, cooperative approach." (Text in Newsfeatures) More than 30 committees and commissions that normally meet separately, held independent meetings, but at the same time and in the same place with joint plenary sessions.
The joint meeting also assisted the commission on structure in assessing how committees might be combined or streamlined, she said. "I thank God that the Episcopal Church is facing boldly into the challenge of structural renewal in anticipation of anew millennium, despite the fears and resistance such a process inevitably elicits," she said.