Steve Waring
03/04/2007
Executive Council devoted the majority of the public portion of its March 2-4 meeting in Portland, Ore., to ‘mission’, postponing a formal responses to both the Feb. 19 primates’ communiqué and to a proposed Anglican Covenant which was released during the recent meeting of senior Anglican leaders.
“We are conscious that this is the first meeting of a major deliberative body of the church in the wake of the primates’ meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania,” the council stated in a letter. “We are in the process of discerning what is means to be members of a global and multicultural Anglican Communion, autonomous yet interdependent, diverse yet living a common life as a family of churches.”
Council authorized the presiding officers (the Presiding Bishop and the president of the House of Deputies) to appoint a work group “to consider the role, responsibilities and potential response of the Executive Council to the issues raised by the primates’ communiqué,” stated resolution EC-008. The task force, which is to be chaired by Bonnie Anderson, president of the House of Deputies, is to prepare a report in time for the June 2007 Executive Council meeting in Parsippany, N.J.
The task force on the proposed Anglican Covenant will work with the Church’s representatives to the Anglican Consultative Council and report back in time for the October 2007 Executive Council meeting.
By April 15, that task force will prepare a text to the covenant which “explains the implications of each section,” states a memorandum. The text and the draft covenant will be distributed for comment “specifically to the following: the House of Bishops, the deputies to General Convention, and the standing committees of each diocese.” Comments must be received by June 9.
“This report will become The Episcopal Church’s official response to the Covenant Design Group by the Jan. 1, 2008 deadline,” the memorandum states. “This committee will be appointed by the presiding officers and will be broadly representative of the many constituencies and voices of our diverse Church.”
This was the first full legislative session of the new triennium for Executive Council and by canon, the council was required to address a projected $3.8 million deficit caused primarily by a combination of lower than expected pledge payments from dioceses and higher than anticipated legal expenses due to expected property litigation and Title IV disciplinary cases.
To address the deficit, council approved Resolution AF-21, which called for increasing the investment income payout ratio from 5 percent to 5.5 percent and taking an amount not to exceed $2.3 million from short term reserves for 2007 only. The approved resolution also called for establishment of a task force “to look at steps and strategies necessary to achieve a balanced budget in 2008 and 2009” without increasing the payout ratio or drawing down reserves. The task force is also authorized to “develop strategies for increasing participation and accountability by dioceses that are not fully meeting their commitment to budget for the Episcopal Church.”
At a closing press conference, Josephine Hicks, chair of the Administration and Finance Committee, said the task force would probably not be seeking enforcement powers, but rather ways to contact those dioceses and engage them in conversation about the ways in which their lack of participation harms the ability of the church to complete its mission plans.
The language used in a resolution approved on seminary funding will be changed in response to a question during the press conference. Resolution CIM-002 states “that each congregation shall give annually at least 1 percent of their net disposable budgeted income to one or more of the [Episcopal] seminaries of the Church” and “that each ecclesiastical authority inform every congregation under its jurisdiction of this policy.”
Terry Roberts, chair of the Congregations in Ministry Committee, said the language would be changed to encourage rather than compel compliance. The resolution, she said, was in response to Resolution D014 from General Convention last summer and council had not intended to infringe on the autonomy of dioceses.
Council also designated $924,000 as seed money for a malaria project in support of Millennium Development Goals. Resolution EC-006 calls for the funds to be dispersed to Episcopal Relief and Development, which will contribute $76,000 to make an even $1 million seed fund. Individuals and congregations will be encouraged to contribute an additional $2 million.
The $2 million additional funds raised will be allocated to Nets for Life, a partnership for malaria prevention in Africa. The remaining $1 million will be allocated to initiatives in the Caribbean and Latin America, “focusing on public health issues, including but not necessarily limited to malaria and priorities defined by Jubilee Centers, ERD and partners in the region.”
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