“You might be greeting Christmas this year with the awe of the shepherds or the wariness of the Magi,” Rowe said. “Either way, the Gospel reminds us that Jesus came both to experience all of the joy, uncertainty, and brokenness of our humanity, and to bring God’s kingdom near.”

Rowe also drew Episcopalians attention to three ministries supporting “the most vulnerable among us” and encouraged donations to the three, Episcopal Migration Ministries, the Good Friday Offering and Episcopal Relief & Development.

The following is Rowe’s full Christmas message.

Dear people of God in The Episcopal Church,

If you imagine yourself as a character in the Gospel Nativity readings, you’ll soon realize that the first Christmas was not about staying home by a warm hearth with chestnuts roasting and stockings hanging. Everyone in these passages is on the move, mostly without warning and against their will. Joseph and Mary are summoned from Nazareth to Bethlehem for a census. Shepherds, at the behest of an angel, leave their sheep in the fields to see what all the fuss is about. And the three Magi, my favorites, are just sitting there minding their own kingdoms when a star intrudes on their lives and leads them on an unplanned and uncomfortable trip far away from home.

The Anglican poet T.S. Eliot wrote a poem about that arduous journey from the perspective of one of the Magi, recounting, among other things, the difficulty of getting camels to do as they are told. The three kings’ encounter with the newborn son of God was hard, disruptive, and unsettling. And when they returned home—by a different road to elude capture by Herod—it no longer felt like home. In Eliot’s retelling, the first Christmas turned the Magis’ lives upside down, and they had mixed feelings about the whole experience.

You might be greeting Christmas this year with the awe of the shepherds or the wariness of the Magi. Either way, the Gospel reminds us that Jesus came both to experience all of the joy, uncertainty, and brokenness of our humanity, and to bring God’s kingdom near. The birth of the Christ Child heralds a new reality in which the last shall be first, the hungry will be fed, and the stranger among us shall be welcomed as a beloved child of God.

This Christmas, I hope that you will join me in proclaiming these good tidings by supporting the most vulnerable among us with a donation to one of these Episcopal Church ministries:

Episcopal Migration Ministries, which works with dioceses and ministry networks to serve migrants and protect their rights.

Good Friday Offering for the Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East, which supports lifesaving ministry in Gaza and across the Holy Land.

Episcopal Relief & Development, which works for lasting change in communities affected by injustice, poverty, disaster, and climate change.

I am grateful to be on the journey of faith with you. May God bless you and all those you love this Christmas and always.

The Most Rev. Sean W. Rowe
Presiding Bishop
The Episcopal Church

[Episcopal News Service] Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe preached Dec. 7 at New York’s Trinity Church, describing the Gospel story of John the Baptist as a surprisingly appropriate set-up for the seasonal anticipation of the coming of Christ.

“No [better] way to get into that Christmas spirit than hearing about broods of vipers and chaff and unquenchable fire,” Rowe said with a smile, eliciting chuckles from the congregation. John the Baptist is “like the one relative” who is willing to tell “inconvenient truth” at the family’s dinner over his “locust casserole.”

But John the Baptist also was following his ministry in the wilderness and calling for repentance at “a good time to be a prophet,” Rowe said, when there was much for the people to complain about.

“The kingdom of God was appealing in a way that the world was not,” Rowe said, drawing connections to today’s troubled times.

“The wheat and the chaff grow together. None of us are entirely good or entirely bad,” Rowe said. “But the love of God — and this is the gift of judgment — the love of God is so bright, the love of God burns so strong, that when judgment comes it is about the chaff in all of us that will burn away, and all that will be left of us is what is of the kingdom, what is of God, what is of love.”

Its aim is to help congregations in the diocese, as well as churches and dioceses elsewhere, mark the annual Break the Silence Sunday, which was designated by General Convention in 2022 as Nov. 25 or the closest subsequent Sunday. This year it will be observed on Nov. 30, which also is the first Sunday of Advent.

“Our Gospel commitment calls us to stand with those who have suffered violence and to ensure that it has no place in our homes, churches and communities,” Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe said in a letter that is part of the toolkit. “Gender-based violence is a particular epidemic, and each of us has a responsibility to become educated on its prevalence – and to play a role in healing its harms and disrupting its generational cycles.”

Rowe was among the bishops who supported the General Convention resolution designating this observance.

The kit includes a variety of worship resources, including items to assist those who will be preaching that day, as well as a liturgy for a “Eucharist of Healing, Hope and Liberation” and additional collects.

A letter from New York Bishop Matthew Heyd said Break the Silence Sunday provides “holy space to confront the pain caused by gender-based violence.” He noted that as followers of Jesus, “we are called to lift the veil of silence, to listen deeply, to stand beside survivors in compassion, and to act with courage in our churches and communities.”

He added, “Healing begins when we listen; transformation begins when we act.”

Rowe said he hopes people across The Episcopal Church will use the educational and liturgical resources in the toolkit “and encourage those in your circles to do the same.”

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe speaks Oct. 20 in the opening morning session of Executive Council, meeting at Kanuga in Hendersonville, North Carolina. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

[Episcopal News Service – Hendersonville, North Carolina] Executive Council, The Episcopal Church’s interim governing body, is meeting here Oct. 20-21 at a time of growing political turmoil in the United States and seemingly intractable violence abroad, from Gaza to Ukraine.

“The world does not need a polite church. It needs a brave church,” the Rev. Nancy Frausto, the chaplain to Executive Council, said in her Morning Prayer sermon on the meeting’s opening morning.

Frausto alluded to the Oct. 18 “No Kings” protests across the United States opposing the Trump administration’s tilt toward authoritarianism. She called on council members to help lead a “gospel movement” against injustice – nonpartisan, but prophetic in its words and actions.

“We are full of passion. We have a lot of good intentions. We have righteous statements. But sometimes we lack the structure and strategy to sustain a gospel movement,” Frausto said. “We know how to speak prophetic words in the moment, but do we know how to build prophetic systems for the long haul? We have spirit, but do we have direction? That’s where y’all come in.”

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe expanded on Frausto’s call for action by highlighting some of the ways Episcopalians are making a difference in their communities, starting with the Diocese of Western North Carolina, which is hosting this Executive Council meeting at Kanuga, an Episcopal camp and conference center.

The region is still recovering a year later from flooding and storm damage caused by Hurricane Helene, which also impacted Kanuga. Rowe spoke of visiting the Ashville-based diocese last month to participate in its Eucharist marking one year since the hurricane, a time to celebrate the region’s resilience.

“The diocese has been making a profound witness to God’s love by providing housing support, household goods, food, medical expenses, relief from rental debt, home repairs, and programs that help people return to work – all while experiencing grief, disillusion and the whole range of other emotions that come during and after a disaster,” Rowe said.

“Being here in Western North Carolina also prompts me to reflect on The Episcopal Church’s response to the increasingly desperate political situation in the United States, which has occupied an enormous amount of our time and energy in the last year.”

Rowe singled out the many Episcopal congregations and ministries across the United States serving Latino communities who now feel threatened by the Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement of immigration laws and assertion of power by executive order. Some of those enforcement actions reportedly have involved military-style raids, prolonged detentions and disputed claims of legal authority to carry out President Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportations.

“As we seek to be strategic with our support for humane and just immigration policy and our ministry with immigrants, we are taking our cues from bishops and other leaders in our dioceses on the southern border and in other communities with large immigrant populations,” Rowe said. “One thing they often ask us is not to issue statements full of outrage and rhetoric that draws attention to their programs.”

Rowe continued that he and other churchwide leaders are taking a similar approach to a very different crisis, in the Middle East. Rowe has been in contact with Jerusalem Archbishop Hosam Naoum, whose Anglican province includes Gaza, and assured him that Episcopalians will “prioritize the needs of the church there and seek to be strategic in our support.”

Israel and Hamas recently agreed to a ceasefire after two years of war that started with Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Israeli communities near Gaza’s border. Israeli bombardment of the Palestinian territory is blamed for leveling much of its infrastructure, killing more than 60,000 Palestinians and leaving many of the territory’s 2 million Palestinian homeless.

“Our choice to limit public statements about Gaza is not an indication that we are ignoring the crisis,” Rowe said. “I am – all of us are – just horrified by what we know of the violence, the human rights abuses, the destruction visited upon Gaza, and I want to do everything we can to help.”

The Episcopal Church can help, he said, by working through its partners in the Anglican Communion, including Naoum, and by offering financial support through the American Friends of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem and The Episcopal Church’s Good Friday Offering.

House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris addresses Executive Council on Oct. 20 at a meeting held at Kanuga in Hendersonville, North Carolina.

Executive Council is the church’s governing body between triennial meetings of General Convention. It is responsible for managing the churchwide budget, adopting new policy statements as needed and providing oversight for the work of the program and ministry staff that reports to the presiding bishop.

The presiding bishop chairs Executive Council, and the House of Deputies president serves as its vice chair. Its 38 other voting members are a mix of bishops, other clergy and lay leaders. Twenty are elected by General Convention to staggered six-year terms, or 10 new members every three years. The Episcopal Church’s nine provinces elect the other 18 to six-year terms, also staggered.

It typically meets three times a year. The dates and location of its next meeting have not yet been announced.

House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris also alluded to anxiety over current events in her opening remarks. “We meet in this holy place at a time when the world feels unsteady,” she said.

Ayala Harris listed a range of concerns, from wars and the threat of political violence in the U.S. to declining public trust in institutions and even divisions within global Anglican bodies, after the conservative Anglican network GAFCON announced last week it was engineering a split from the Anglican Communion.

“Our call remains the same: We are to stay anchored to the gospel, not to take each organizational shift in fear, but to lead with clarity, accountability and faithfulness,” Ayala Harris said. “We are called to steadiness, to model what it looks like to lead with courage, to govern with integrity and to stay anchored in the gospel when the ground beneath us moves.”

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.

The Rev. Elyse Gustafson had accused Howard of LGBTQ+ discrimination in a case that summarized broader complaints about how he had treated gay and lesbian clergy in the Jacksonville-based diocese, which he’d led for nearly 20 years. A separate, unrelated complaint had accused Howard of a series of financial improprieties during his tenure.

“The church had a chance to do something important. We had a chance to hear the truth,” Gustafson wrote. “The presiding bishop chose not to do so. It was his choice. I believe it was the wrong one.”

Florida Bishop John Howard stepped down in October 2023 after reaching the church’s mandatory retirement age of 72. Photo: Diocese of Florida

Rowe announced Oct. 1 that he had reached an accord with Howard to end those cases without disciplinary action and without Howard admitting any wrongdoing, though he later asked Rowe to remove him from ministry as a bishop and Episcopal clergyperson. Rowe said he had concluded that proceeding to hearings, which had been scheduled for Oct. 27 and Nov. 10, would have subjected the diocese to more pain and unnecessary cost. Instead, he said he hoped the diocese would “continue the extraordinary progress you have been making in fostering unity, transparency and shared governance.”

Gustafson said she strongly disagrees with that decision, which ends efforts by critics of Howard’s leadership to hold him accountable under the church’s Title IV canons on clergy discipline. The accord between Rowe and Howard was approved by the Disciplinary Board for Bishops.

Gustafson expressed particular shock that the decision was made so close to Howard’s hearings, saying she and several other witnesses were prepared to testify against the bishop.

“Now we are left to the same confusion, distrust, and shame that we had before, characteristics that always, always embolden those willing to abuse power while leaving people like me without recourse or protection. Only it is worse now because I no longer have Title IV as an option. The disappointment is suffocating, and it is quickly and predictably evolving into fear.”

A church spokesperson, when asked for comment on the reaction, said Rowe sent Gustafson a letter Oct. 2 apologizing to her on behalf of the church and “acknowledging that she has borne an outsized share of the harm inflicted by an unhealthy past diocesan culture–and intimidation by a bishop who failed to acknowledge the equality and belovedness of LGBTQ+ people.”

Howard stepped down in October 2023, after reaching the church’s mandatory clergy retirement age of 72. The two Title IV cases against him were first revealed publicly in June 2024.

The Diocese of Florida’s Camp Weed & Cerveny Conference Center in Live Oak, Florida. Photo: Camp Weed

The Episcopal Church’s Title IV disciplinary canons apply to all clergy, though cases involving bishops follow a separate process from those at the diocesan level. Early on, Rowe had been in conversation with Howard on a possible accord, but in February 2025, Rowe announced that the cases would proceed to a hearing panel, marking a more public phase of the process.

“As the hearing panel processes have gained momentum, the pain of these last several years has been compounded by the human and financial toll of preparing for them,” Rowe said in his Oct. 1 letter to the diocese. “Even as the costs have mounted, it has become increasingly clear that any restrictions imposed by a hearing panel would have had little practical effect.”

Because Howard had reached the church’s retirement age, he was “unlikely ever to have sought or to have been granted leave to exercise active episcopal ministry again,” Rowe said.

Gustafson, however, argued in her response that it would have served a purpose to allow complainants and other witnesses to present evidence and testimony at a hearing. “None of that will happen now,” she said. “The loss takes my breath away. It would have helped us. It would have helped any future bishop of the Diocese of Florida. Light and air would have done us so much good.”

The Consultation, a network of progressive Episcopal groups, also responded to Rowe’s decision by saying the individuals harmed and the wider church “deserve to understand what took place.”

The church spokesperson said Rowe, in his letter to Gustafson, invited her and “anyone else in the diocese who would find it healing” to “participate in a time of public story sharing.”

“He is committed to ensuring that her story and those of other LGBTQ+ people who have been harmed can be heard by the entire church in a forum that is not subject to the adversarial nature of a disciplinary proceeding,” the spokesperson said in written comments that did not specify when or where such a forum might be convened.

“Bishop Rowe has pledged that the church will make a substantial contribution to the diocese’s ongoing efforts toward healthier governance, greater accountability in financial matters, increased transparency, and full inclusion in matters of human sexuality.”

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.

Onlookers in Kerrville, Texas, look down July 6 over the damage along the Guadalupe River. Photo: Associated Press

[Episcopal News Service] Episcopal leaders are calling for prayers and donations to assist relief efforts in central Texas after flooding there killed more than 80 people. Most of the victims were in Kerr County, including 27 children and adults at Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian summer camp. Several Episcopalians have been identified among the flood victims.

The worst of the flooding from the rain-swollen Guadalupe River occurred in the San Antonio-based Diocese of West Texas, where Bishop David Read traveled to St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Kerrville on July 6 to support the congregation and its clergy.

“[Our] hearts go out to you all, to you all who are grieving and those of you who are waiting and those of you who have lost homes or businesses or livelihoods or lifestyles, to parents who just want to hold your kids really, really close right now,” Read said. “The Diocese of West Texas is with you in the midst of all that’s going on.”

The diocese has launched a donation webpage to receive financial contributions to support relief efforts. Donations also can be made to the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country.

One of Camp Mystic’s young victims, 9-year-old Lila Bonner, was remembered July 6 at a prayer service held by her home parish, Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Dallas. More than 600 people attended, according to The New York Times, many of whom had generational connections to the camp, located about an 80-mile drive northwest of San Antonio.

“This service is meant to be that safe, calm space where we come together to be reminded of God’s presence,” the Rev. Christopher Girata, Saint Michael and All Angels’ rector, said in opening remarks quoted by the Times.

The deadly disaster began unfolding early July 4 when a slow-moving storm brought heavy downpours to the region, dropping as much as 15 inches of rain on parts of Kerr County and causing the Guadalupe River to rise quickly by 22 feet, according to San Antonio Express-News.

The deadliest flooding hit Kerr County, where at least 68 people were reported dead, including 28 children. Officials said at least 41 others statewide were still missing as of early July 7, according to ABC News.

“We are living through the most devastating days here in the Hill Country,” the Rev. Bert Baetz, rector of St. Peter’s in Kerrville, said July 5 in a message to his congregation, shared to Facebook.  “We have been brought to our knees and deeply hurt by the loss of life. … I continue to pray for and care for our extended family, which is you. Also, keep praying boldly for all of our loved ones and those yet to be found.”

Support already is pouring in from Episcopalians across Texas and churchwide. Read said he had spoken with Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe, who had offered prayers on behalf of The Episcopal Church. Representatives with Episcopal Relief & Development have been in contact with local leaders to help coordinate their response.

“My prayers are with the thousands of people impacted by the flooding in Texas, and with our congregations who have lost cherished members and leaders,” Rowe said in a written statement to Episcopal News Service for this story. “As a parent and longtime camp counselor, I grieve especially with the parents and camp communities now facing unfathomable loss, and I pray God will comfort them and surround them with the support they need. In addition to your prayers, please consider donating to the fund set up by the Episcopal Diocese of West Texas to support flood relief efforts.”

Texas Bishop Andrew Doyle, whose Houston-based diocese borders the Diocese of West Texas, also issued a message calling for an outpouring of financial assistance.

“Our West Texas family is hurting this morning especially along the Guadalupe and across Kerr County,” Doyle said in a July 4 post to Facebook. “We have been through fires, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes in our diocese. We know they are in the midst of the flood as we speak. Right now, they need our prayers, and our own parishioners with kiddos at camp out there need to know they are not alone.”

The Diocese of Texas followed by pointing its members to a donation page to support the Diocese of West Texas.

The impact of the catastrophe in Texas extends far beyond diocesan or even state boundaries. Southeast Florida Bishop Peter Eaton issued a message July 6 to his Miami-based diocese revealing that Episcopalians from Fort Lauderdale are among the victims. Bill and Alyson Hardin and their daughter, Josephine, were at a family home in western Kerr County, when the home was swept away. Alyson and Josephine Hardin are missing and presumed dead.

“Alyson has been serving as the senior warden at All Saints [Episcopal Church] and has been a significant leader in our diocese for many years, most especially as an effective and committed diocesan trustee of the University of the South, where Josephine was an undergraduate,” Eaton said.

“This is an unfathomable loss for the Hardin family, for All Saints and for our diocese. Please keep everyone in your ongoing prayers.”

The Diocese of West Texas also operates a camp, Camp Capers, near the banks of the Guadalupe River in Kendall County, but it was not affected by the flooding. It is a member of Episcopal Camps & Conference Centers, whose Executive Director Jess Elfring-Roberts issued a statement of support for Camp Mystic and its families.

“In the wake of the devastating floods in Texas’ Hill Country, our hearts are breaking,” Elfring-Roberts said. “We are profoundly aware that in our community, all camp is family. When one camp suffers, we all do. When one camp cries out, we all bend to listen. The connections formed in this network of camps are sacred, enduring, and now grieving.”

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.

[Episcopal News Service – Linthicum Heights, Maryland] The Episcopal Church Archives would move to a new permanent location at a church property in the Diocese of Atlanta under a plan authorized June 24 by Executive Council, the church’s interim governing body.

The resolution adopted by Executive Council directs church leaders to conduct final negotiations to purchase and redevelop the 3.5-acre property in Oakwood, Georgia, formerly St. Gabriel’s Episcopal Church, which closed in October 2023. Documents and artifacts detailing centuries’ worth of Episcopal Church history are preserved by the Archives, which currently occupy a leased warehouse space in Austin, Texas.

“We are hopeful at the prospect of making St. Gabriel’s the future home for The Episcopal Church Archives,” Chief Financial Officer Christopher Lacovara told Episcopal News Service. “We plan to approach negotiations balancing market realities with our responsibility for stewardship of church resources and the need to preserve our shared stories.”

The Archives vote occurred on the final day of Executive Council’s June 23-25 meeting here at the Maritime Conference Center in suburban Baltimore. Presentations and council business this week also included updates from church leaders on the ongoing churchwide staff realignment, the future of Episcopal Migration Ministries, upgrades to the church’s financial management systems and the work of Episcopal Relief & Development.

“We’re in the midst of a serious reallocation of resources to invest in mission … so that we can be heard [by the world] and our very powerful witness can be most effectively carried out,” Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe said June 24 in his formal report to Executive Council on the realignment and other changes since he took office last fall.

In addition to endorsing the Archives plan, council voted this week to finalize the elevation of the church’s Navajo Nation mission to the new Missionary Diocese of Navajoland by accepting the new diocese’s constitution.

And council elected two new Episcopal members to the Anglican Consultative Council: Puerto Rico Bishop Rafael Morales Maldonado and Diocese of New York lay leader Yvonne O’Neal. They will join the Rev. Ranjit Mathews of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut on the ACC, one of the Anglican Communion’s four Instruments of Communion. The three Episcopal members will participate with members from the other 41 Anglican provinces around the world at the next ACC meeting, scheduled for summer 2026 and hosted by the Church of Ireland.

Executive Council also paid tribute to the Ven. Stannard Baker, a member and deacon from the Diocese of Vermont who died of an apparent heart attack overnight after participating online June 23 in the meeting’s first day. On June 25, council voted for a resolution named in Baker’s honor that backs the creation of a working group to improve churchwide support for deacons. Council concluded its work by approving a courtesy resolution remembering Baker and standing for a moment of silence before Rowe offered a final prayer.

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe gives a report to Executive Council on June 24 at the Maritime Conference Center in suburban Baltimore, Maryland. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

Executive Council is the church’s governing body between triennial meetings of General Convention. It is responsible for managing the churchwide budget, adopting new policy statements as needed and providing oversight for the work of the program and ministry staff that reports to the presiding bishop.

The presiding bishop chairs Executive Council, and the House of Deputies president serves as its vice chair. Its 38 other voting members are a mix of bishops, other clergy and lay leaders. Twenty are elected by General Convention to staggered six-year terms, or 10 new members every three years. The Episcopal Church’s nine provinces elect the other 18 to six-year terms, also staggered.

Its next meeting is in October at Kanuga, the Episcopal conference center in the Diocese of Western North Carolina.

The Archives vote was Executive Council’s central action on its final day of this meeting, following a presentation in closed session about financial considerations and other details related to the Diocese of Atlanta site. Selecting a new location brings the church a major step closer to concluding its nearly 20-year effort to find a new home for The Episcopal Church Archives.

General Convention passed a resolution in 2006 initiating efforts to relocate the Archives, and in 2009, The Episcopal Church purchased a parking lot across the street from St. David’s Episcopal Church in Austin, intending to develop part of the lot for the Archives. In the subsequent decade, the value of real estate in Austin surged, and in late 2018, the church chose to sell the undeveloped lot, realizing a net investment return of several million dollars.

The Archives have been without a long-term home since 2021, when they moved out of space they had occupied for 60 years at the Seminary of the Southwest. The church had been keeping about 6,500 cubic feet of material on the third floor of the seminary’s Booher Library, including letters, diaries, photographs, motion pictures, plans, maps, certificates of ordination, journals of every diocese, various periodicals and magazines, church newspapers, paintings and parish histories. An overflow of additional archival materials was kept in rented storage at three offsite warehouses.

Instead of building a new facility, Archives staff oversaw renovations of a rented 10,000-square-foot former furniture store in Austin to include a lunchroom, bathrooms, a shipment receiving area and an archival reading room. That facility helped address storage constraints but was never seen as a permanent solution.

In January 2024, Executive Council authorized negotiations for a potential long-term lease of space at the DeKoven Center in Racine, Wisconsin. The DeKoven Center, with an 11-acre campus overlooking Lake Michigan about a half hour south of Milwaukee, originally was founded by Episcopalians in 1852 as Racine College under Bishop Jackson Kemper. Today, it is operated by a nonprofit of the same name as a retreat center and a popular site for weddings and other events.

When Executive Council discussed that plan again in April 2024, however, members concluded the meeting without finalizing a lease agreement, and church leaders instead began researching a broader range of potential sites for consideration.

Several options were presented to Executive Council at its meeting this week, though the Diocese of Atlanta site was the only recommendation, receiving unanimous backing of the Archives Advisory Committee and two committees of Executive Council. The final council vote also was unanimous.

“We concluded that [the DeKoven Center] site was too expensive, did not have room to grow and would not have been owned and controlled by the church since occupancy would have been subject to a long-term lease,” the committees said in their explanatory text attached to the resolution.

“The site in the Diocese of Atlanta offers more benefits at a lower cost than other sites, with the significant advantage of a reasonable purchase price so that the church owns and controls it indefinitely. … The new Archives facility shall be constructed to incorporate nationally recognized and designated professional standards.”

The DeKoven Center responded with a statement calling the decision “a deep disappointment” while taking issue with Executive Council’s description of the center’s site and negotiations. “The original proposal more than doubled the current archival capacity, with assurances for additional campus space and flexible, cost-conscious buildout options. At no time did DFMS express a requirement for ownership.”

“While disappointed, The DeKoven Center acknowledges the importance of the Episcopal Church Archives securing a permanent home and offers congratulations on this milestone,” the center said in its statement. “However, the center laments that the Archives will not benefit from the unique offerings of The DeKoven campus — tranquil surroundings, historic Episcopal character, spiritual and missional alignment, and a deeply rooted tradition of hospitality.”

The Executive Council resolution did not specify the estimated purchase price for the property nor what it would cost to redevelop the site to house the Archives. Lacovara, the church’s chief financial officer, said church leaders are still considering whether it would be most appropriate to renovate and expand existing structures on the property or pursue new construction for the Archives.

Chief Finance Officer Christopher Lacovara on June 23 makes his first presentation to Executive Council since he was appointed to the church’s top finance job in March. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

[Episcopal News Service – Linthicum Heights, Maryland] The Episcopal Church must remain committed to Christian witness in increasingly troubling times, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe said June 23 in his opening remarks to Executive Council, and the church’s new chief financial officer outlined accounting upgrades to help bolster the church in that mission.

Rowe opened this June 23-25 meeting by inviting prayers for the Middle East amid recent attacks between Israel and Iran and the June 22 U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear sites. He said he was in contact with Anglican Archbishop Hosam Naoum of the Diocese of Jerusalem, who asked Episcopalians to be peacemakers in the face of his region’s continuing conflict.

“Please continue to pray for all God’s people in those places,” Rowe said.

The presiding bishop also lamented political divisions and recent violence in the United States, where a Minnesota lawmaker and husband were assassinated this month and where the Episcopal cathedral in Utah offered shelter for protesters when gunfire broke out during a rally.

“I do not need to tell you that these are challenging times for the church we serve and God’s people in our communities,” Rowe told the council members, who were gathered online and in person at the Maritime Conference Center in suburban Baltimore. “Many of our dioceses and congregations are responding to unprecedented need, feeding people who are hungry, comforting those who are afraid, struggling to find new models for ministries and to hold onto hope for the future of the church.”

He acknowledged the fine line that he and other church leaders must walk in speaking out on national and global issues, with some people calling on the church to respond more publicly to the day’s issues and others accusing the church of meddling too much in politics.

The church’s first allegiance, Rowe said, is not to world leaders or political parties. Though Episcopalians are not of one mind politically, “we are all followers of the risen Christ.”

“We can resist the urge to give ourselves over to the excesses of one party or another, or one country or another,” he said. “We’re a living laboratory for how to build community with the risen Christ at the center. … When we are at our best, we can make a powerful witness to the world through our unity.”

House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris also alluded to contemporary issues, tensions and challenges in her opening remarks.

“The global disruptions we are witnessing are not abstract. They have names, faces and sacred dignity,” she said while sharing the story of a transgender teenager named Finn who was troubled by the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing states to ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.

“He challenged me to bear witness to trans joy,” Ayala Harris said, and she invoked a resolution adopted in 2022 by the 80th General Convention affirming that people of all ages should have access to gender-affirming care.

“To every transgender person hearing or reading these worlds: I see you. I love you,” Ayala Harris said. “You are wonderfully made in the image of God, crafted in sacred dignity. You are not a mistake.”

Executive Council is the church’s governing body between the triennial meetings of General Convention. It is responsible for managing the churchwide budget, adopting new policy statements as needed and providing oversight for the work of the program and ministry staff that reports to the presiding bishop.

The presiding bishop chairs Executive Council, and the House of Deputies president serves as its vice chair. Its 38 other voting members are a mix of bishops, other clergy and lay leaders. Twenty are elected by General Convention to staggered six-year terms – or 10 new members every three years. The Episcopal Church’s nine provinces elect the other 18 to six-year terms, also staggered.

Executive Council typically meets three times a year. The three-day meeting this week is its first since Rowe announced in February a series of layoffs and retirements as part of a major churchwide staff realignment partly intended to achieve personnel cost reductions requested by General Convention.

Some of the most significant staff changes occurred in the Finance Office, where longtime Chief Financial Officer Kurt Barnes announced plans to retire once the church hired his replacement. He continues to advise Executive Council as the church’s elected treasurer.

In March, Rowe and Ayala Harris nominated and Executive Council appointed Christopher Lacovara, a longtime Episcopalian with decades of financial management experience, as the new chief financial officer. On June 23 he gave his first presentation to Executive Council.

“We are stewards of the church’s resources in a frankly very challenging environment,” Lacovara said. “We still have to take what we have and to maximize what’s available, to maximize ministry.”

Overall, the church remains in a stable financial position, with revenues and expenses for 2025 so far mostly tracking the $46 million budgeted, Lacovara said. The downsizing of churchwide staff that started in February will begin realizing long-term cost savings in the second half of the year.

Lacovara noted that the church’s administrative costs and other non-program expenses total 44% of its budget, significantly higher than the commonly accepted goal in the nonprofit sector of under 25% for those expenses. Some of the church’s administrative costs relate to its canonical structure, particularly its governance functions mandated by General Convention, Lacovara said, though he told Executive Council that one of his top objectives will be to find ways to increase the share of the church’s spending on its ministry priorities.

“Our goal, at least our financial goal, should be to plow every dollar we can into service,” he said.

One crucial step will be to improve the church’s financial management systems and accounting, from largely manual operations currently to more automated functions handled by customizable software, making it easier for both program staff and the Finance Office to do their jobs, he said.

“There are computer systems that have been doing that for quite a while,” Lacovara said, citing the church’s expense reimbursement process as one example. “The goal is that this is going to free up a lot of time for our staff … rather than having to devote so much time to the paper [trail].”

Newer financial management systems will allow the church to produce digital dashboards to provide information and regular reports for review by departments, Executive Council and the wider church, ensuring greater transparency about how closely operations are in line with budget expectations.

Lacovara also said he and other church leaders are applying greater scrutiny to the costs and benefits of maintaining the Episcopal Church Center at 815 Second Avenue in New York, New York. With the staff restructuring, the church needs much less office space than it once did, and the building is running an annual deficit of $2.5 million, with expensive improvements needed.

“The status quo is not attractive,” he said. That doesn’t necessarily mean it is time for the church to sell the building, he said, though he expected some changes will be necessary, such as renting more of the building’s space to outside tenants to help offset costs.

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.

After federal agents conducted immigration enforcement raids in Los Angeles on June 6, protesters clashed with law enforcement in parts of the city over the weekend. Trump, against the wishes of California leaders, ordered the California National Guard to deploy thousands of soldiers to assist. His administration also has deployed Marines to the city to secure federal properties. California leaders have sued the Trump administration to reverse the decision to send in troops.

Rowe’s letter, titled “Acting Faithfully in Troubling Times,” calls such military deployments “a dangerous turn” in President Donald Trump’s attacks on his political opponents and his administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown. He also amplified a statement issued June 10 by the bishops of California’s six Episcopal dioceses.

Trump also has faced criticism for a separate policy, restricting travel to the United States from 19 countries. Rowe, in his letter, said he had written to Anglican leaders in those countries expressing his concern about Trump’s new travel ban.

“At its best, our church is capable of moral clarity and resolute commitment to justice. I believe we can bring those strengths to bear on this gathering storm.”

The following is the full text of Rowe’s letter.

Dear people of God in The Episcopal Church:

I am writing to you from Geneva, where I am meeting with global partners at the World Council of Churches and the United Nations Refugee Agency. As we have discussed how our institutions might act faithfully and boldly in these turbulent times, I have been reflecting on how we Episcopalians can respond to what is unfolding around us as followers of the Risen Christ whose first allegiance is to the kingdom of God, not to any nation or political party.

The events of the last several days lend urgency to this spiritual challenge. Earlier this week, President Trump’s executive order banning or restricting travel from 19 countries went into effect. This order impacts countries that are home to dioceses of The Episcopal Church and many of our Anglican Communion partners, and I have written to the bishops and primates in those countries to express our concern.

The unwarranted deployment of the National Guard and U.S. Marine Corps on the streets of Los Angeles also signals a dangerous turn. As the bishops of California have written, these military deployments risk escalating the confrontations unnecessarily and set a dangerous precedent for future deployments that heighten tensions rather than resolve them. As Christians committed to strive for justice and peace among all people, we know that there is a better way.

What we are witnessing is the kind of distortion that arises when institutions like the military and the State Department are turned on the people they were meant to protect. These mainstays of the federal government, designed to safeguard civil society and promote peace and stability, are now being weaponized for political advantage.

The violence on television is not our only risk. We are also seeing federal budget proposals that would shift resources from the poor to the wealthy; due process being denied to immigrants; and the defunding of essential public health, social service, and foreign aid programs that have long fulfilled the Gospel mandate to care for the vulnerable, children, and those who are hungry and sick.

With all of this in mind, we are finding ways to respond as Christians to what we see happening around us. We are exploring options to support litigation challenging the travel ban on the ground of religious freedom; advocating for federal spending that safeguards the welfare of the most vulnerable; caring for immigrants and refugees in our congregations and communities; and standing in solidarity with other faith groups. In short, we are practicing institutional resistance rooted not in partisan allegiance, but in Christian conviction.

At its best, our church is capable of moral clarity and resolute commitment to justice. I believe we can bring those strengths to bear on this gathering storm. Churches like ours, protected by the First Amendment and practiced in galvanizing people of goodwill, may be some of the last institutions capable of resisting the injustice now being promulgated. That is not a role we sought—but it is one we are called to.

In Geneva, I have been reminded that we are part of a global communion of hope in the Risen Christ. We do not stand alone as we live by our baptismal promises: to persevere in resisting evil, to strive for justice and peace among all people, and to respect the dignity of every human being. In these troubling times, may we find courage and resilience in our identity as members of the Body of Christ.

Yours in Christ,

The Most Rev. Sean Rowe
Presiding Bishop
The Episcopal Church

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe spoke about church leadership in a time of change during a June 3 virtual meeting of the Gathering of Leaders, a group of Episcopal clergy and lay leaders who share experiences and resources through networking events year-round. Photo: Screenshot

[Episcopal News Service] Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe spoke about church leadership in a time of change during a June 3 virtual meeting of the Gathering of Leaders, a group of Episcopal clergy and lay leaders who share experiences and resources through networking events year-round.

“I wish there was a little more sight involved in the processes [of change], but Jesus set it up a bit differently, and our faith requires us to step out and, I think, normalize the risk of failure,” said Rowe, a former Gathering of Leaders board member. “I think changing our behavior around the ways in which we experiment and change and treat each other in those processes will make all the difference.”

Since the beginning of this year, Rowe has been working on realigning The Episcopal Church. The long-term goal is to help maintain its relevance in a rapidly evolving secular world while continuing its mission for evangelism and compassionately responding to contemporary global challenges, such as the rise in global authoritarianism. 

“If we take seriously the work that we’re called to do as the risen body of Christ in the world, we have to be grounded in the practices that will help us do that,” Rowe said. “We talk about collaboration a lot as a church, but what gets rewarded typically is individual achievement, so we often have competing commitments … we’ve got to be able to hold the missional wager as the highest and most important – the idea of making more disciples, of helping people to grow in the depth of their spirituality as the number one goal.”

Rowe said the Episcopal Church Center staff is working with the Gathering of Leaders on a pilot program that will help develop and support leaders in all church settings.

Founded in 2006 by former Texas Bishop Claude Payne, the Gathering of Leaders is a Christ-oriented source of empowerment and support for church leaders, particularly during times of change, according to the Rev. Jemonde Taylor, rector of St. Ambrose Episcopal Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, and co-chair of the Gathering of Leaders’ board. Most members are clergy, but lay membership is also growing. The leaders typically meet a few times a year for retreats centered around hopefulness, peer-to-peer learning, networking, community building and evangelism.

“We know with [Rowe’s] degree in systems and organizations that it just makes sense for him to be speaking about leadership in a time of change,” Taylor told Episcopal News Service in advance of the virtual gathering. “I haven’t heard [Rowe] articulate this, but I can also imagine that being in the Gathering of Leaders had an impact on him in the same way, because one of Bishop Payne’s visions was all about leadership in a time of change.”

During the virtual gathering, several former and current board members were recognized for their longtime service, including Payne; retired Mississippi Bishop Duncan Gray III, former board chair; Diane Pollard, a lay board member who serves in the House of Deputies representing the Diocese of New York; and board member Scott Bader-Saye, dean and president of the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas.

“We’re all called to serve and offer our gifts, and it’s been a joy through over 60 years of ordained ministry to be encouraging and to try to follow Christ and to look at possibilities, explore ways,” Payne said.

Other members of the Gathering of Leaders who were honored were former director Mary Parmer; former executive director Haley Bankey; former database and program manager Elizabeth Brauza-Hughes; and the Rev. Alicia Hager, rector of Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Hastings, Michigan, and the Gathering of Leaders’ former community and communications curator.

“It is my privilege, my pleasure and my honor to have worked with each of you and to be able to say on behalf of the board and on behalf of the community of the Gathering of Leaders, thank you from the bottom of our hearts, every one of you. You rock,” the Rev. Emily Mellott, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Moorestown, New Jersey, and co-chair of the Gathering of Leaders, told all who were recognized for their services.

During the meeting’s closing prayer and blessing, former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry said he “thanks God” for the Gathering of Leaders and for Payne’s and Rowe’s leadership in The Episcopal Church.

As for leading in a time of change, “we are in a time of transition, and maybe that’s always the case, but it is fitting that we are in Ascensiontide – between the ascension of our Lord into heaven and the coming of the Holy Spirit,” Curry said. “Maybe we are always in that in-between time.”

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.