Timothy Gee, an Executive Council member from the Diocese of El Camino Real and chair of the council’s Finance Committee, begins the council’s budget discussion Dec. 11 in an online meeting.

[Episcopal News Service] Executive Council, The Episcopal Church’s governing body between meetings of General Convention, met online Dec. 11 and adopted a $45 million budget for 2026 that includes about $3.5 million in personnel savings compared to previous years while spending about $1.5 million on new initiatives led by Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe, mostly to support dioceses.

Those new initiatives were possible “without making any cuts to any of the programs that were funded in the triennial budget,” Chief Financial Officer Chris Lacovara said in presenting the 2026 budget. It represents a single year of churchwide revenues and expenses as part of the 2025-27 budget plan adopted by the 81st General Convention in 2024.

Most of the church’s revenue comes from the payments it collects in assessments on diocesan income, or an estimated $30 million in 2026, according to Lacovara’s presentation. He also noted that the total budget figures for 2026 are mostly unchanged from the 2025 totals.

A public link to the detailed budget was not available before the council’s vote or by the time of this story’s publication, but it will be added to the story once it is posted by church leaders.

Before the council’s vote, members posed numerous questions on a wide range of topics, including a pending shift to more online meetings, assessment waivers granted to a handful of dioceses, changes to services the church provides to Episcopal Relief & Development, the churchwide response to increased federal immigration enforcement and future spending on creation care initiatives.

The budget also anticipates the closure of Saint Augustine’s University, a historically Black university that has received the church’s financial support in the past but faces the possible loss of its accreditation and dwindling student enrollment. Lacovara said if the university remains open this year, the church will find a way to maintain existing financial support.

The vote occurred despite some members raising concerns that they had not be provided with a complete document with itemized budget lines. The Rev. Molly James, the church’s interim General Convention executive officer, acknowledged there had been “a discrepancy in the files” that, when fixed, produced 60 additional pages for the council to review.

Some called for a postponement of the vote, but House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris warned that doing so could risk missing the church’s deadline for an adopted budget by the end of this year. Rowe echoed that warning.

The budget passed, with 88% in favor. An exact vote total was not provided.

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 in person three times a year. No future meeting dates or locations have been posted to the General Convention Office’s website, though Rowe mentioned during the Dec. 11 online meeting he expected council to gather next in February for online sessions, with a longer in-person meeting to follow in June.

“In prayer and heartbreak, with conviction and peace, I have resigned from the Executive Council of The Episcopal Church. I refuse to belong to any space that asks me to betray truth or silence my integrity,” Montes said in her Facebook post on Oct. 23, two days after the council’s last meeting concluded. She later forwarded to Episcopal News Service the resignation letter she sent to the church’s presiding officers by email.

“This most recent meeting was, for me, when the hummingbird stopped returning to the flower,” she told the presiding officers. The meeting was held Oct. 20-21 at Kanuga, an Episcopal conference center and camp in the Diocese of Western North Carolina. Montes did not attend in person but participated via Zoom.

Montes also had filed a complaint this year against Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe under the church’s Title IV disciplinary canons for clergy, citing a verbal altercation that occurred in June 2025 during a break at that month’s Executive Council meeting. Churchwide authorities have since concluded that case with a “pastoral response.”

Sandra Montes, an Executive Council member, participates in a liturgy at General Convention in June 2024.

Montes had clashed several times with churchwide leaders, particularly over her concerns they were privileging white perspectives, dismissive of LGBTQ+ experiences and insufficiently attentive to Spanish translations of church materials. Montes, who is pansexual, had served on Executive Council since 2022, when she was elected by General Convention. Her term was to run through 2027.

“October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. I must also name spiritual and institutional violence,” she said in her Facebook post about resigning from Executive Council. “I’ve been reminded that love without safety is not love, and faith without truth is not faith. I can no longer keep going back to be hurt, hoping the cycle has ended.”

She did not elaborate there on the reasons for her resignation, but in her resignation letter she singled out a verbal exchange Oct. 20 when she was one of several Executive Council members who confronted Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe on the church’s process for handling a previous vacancy on Executive Council.

As council was voting that morning on nominees to replace the Ven. Stannard Baker, a member from Vermont who died in June, Joe McDaniel asked why he, as a member of council’s Nominating Advisory Committee, had not been consulted about the criteria for choosing someone to fill Baker’s seat.

McDaniel, a member from the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast who is Black, was participating via Zoom. “It doesn’t make sense to appoint a committee with people of color and not empower them to proceed with exercising that power,” McDaniel said. “That is a manifestation of white supremacy, and I just wanted to point that out.”

Sandra Montes is the dean of chapel at Union Theological Seminary in New York, New York. Photo: Ron Hester

Rowe noted that McDaniel’s committee, though it could have been consulted, has an advisory role in such nominations, which are made by a different body, Executive Council’s Executive Committee. Rowe then asked Executive Council to proceed with voting, but Montes spoke up to voice her own concerns.

“Our member just called out white supremacy and nothing was mentioned about that,” she said. “It is awful that this could happen, and nothing was said about that statement.”

Rowe then paused to say his intention was “not to ignore it but to clarify the process.” He acknowledged that there are “many dynamics at play, and I apologize for those,” and he then asked a chaplain to say a prayer before moving on.

Montes, in her resignation letter, noted Rowe’s “visible defensiveness” in responding to questions from people of color on the council. “I urge someone on the presiding bishop’s team to review the video of Monday morning’s incident. This should not become another moment smoothed over by calls for ‘grace.’”

Members of Executive Council, the church’s governing body between the triennial meetings of General Convention, have engaged in a number of pointed debates in recent years on a range of issues, from the process for filling canonical staff positions to a divisive leadership election in the House of Deputies. Montes has been among the more vocal members to raise alarm at what she has identified as the church’s white-centric structures, including during former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry’s tenure.

Tensions between Rowe and Montes began rising even before he took office as presiding bishop on Nov. 1, 2024. During an Oct. 31 Executive Council orientation session led by Rowe, Montes objected to the quality of the church’s Spanish translations.

“I have seen since my very first meeting that Spanish is not treated as respectfully as English is,” Montes said at the time. “We have had, over and over, mistranslated – items that are not translated fully or that are not translated well.”

Rowe responded by affirming that Executive Council will be provided with translations, adding, “probably we’ll never meet your standards, Sandra.” Montes objected to what she called Rowe’s “very condescending” and “really patronizing” response. After a brief back and forth, Rowe apologized for his choice of words.

Little has been said publicly about the June 2025 incident between Rowe and Montes that prompted her Title IV complaint. It occurred at Executive Council’s in-person meeting at the Maritime Conference Center in suburban Baltimore, Maryland. Montes filed her complaint the following month, according to confirmation provided by Rowe’s office.

On June 25, the last day of the council meeting, Montes posted to Facebook, “I was told today: ‘If you want to remain on this board, you need to learn how to act in a board.’”

Montes, in an interview for this story, said during a break she had approached Rowe with a concern and he began yelling at her before she could state her question. “He’s never raised his voice to me like that before,” she said, noting that the exchange happened in front of staff and other council members. “I felt belittled.”

Indianapolis Bishop Jennifer Baskerville-Borrows, as vice president of the House of Bishops, consulted with the Title IV reference panel and “referred the matter for a facilitated conversation to explore a restorative covenant,” Rowe said in a written statement to Episcopal News Service.

“In August, Dr. Montes and I met at a neutral site in New York City for a daylong conversation with a bi-lingual facilitator,” Rowe said. “We each had the support people we requested attend with us. The facilitated conversation did not produce a restorative covenant, and the matter was referred back to the reference panel. The reference panel then concluded the matter with pastoral response.”

Montes told ENS she had asked Rowe for a clear apology but did not receive one.

In her resignation letter, Montes had hoped to be a voice for justice and inclusion on the council but “have rarely felt that I had true comrades in the struggle.”

“It hurts so much to write these words, but I am giving up,” she said, “not on the Gospel, not on justice, but on trying to survive inside a space that continues to wound me and that is now led by someone who publicly berated me, violently and aggressively taunted me, and has told me that people fear me and agree with him.”

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

The 82nd General Convention is scheduled for July 3-8, 2027, at the Phoenix Convention Center in Arizona. Photo: Phoenix Convention Center

[Episcopal News Service – Hendersonville, North Carolina] Churchwide leaders got a first look Oct. 21 at a vision of what The Episcopal Church’s General Convention soon could become.

When the churchwide governing body meets next in 2027 in Phoenix, Arizona, mornings would be devoted solely to worship and formation. Legislative sessions, held only in the afternoons, would benefit from better coordination of the hundreds of resolutions considered every year by bishops and deputies. Evenings would be reserved for “joyful fellowship,” and the weeklong meeting would “harness the capacity of all the leaders who gather” and “send then home empowered and inspired.”

Those were some of the ideas generated by the General Convention Reinvention Steering Committee, which was formed by Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe and House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris to consider new ways of planning for and gathering at General Convention every three years.

The Rev. Scott Gunn, who co-chairs the steering committee with Minnesota Bishop Craig Loya, presented an overview of the committee’s work and its vision to Executive Council at its Oct. 20-21 meeting at Kanuga, an Episcopal conference center and camp south of Asheville, North Carolina.

“If we can do this and make some of these changes and increase our transparency and our formation time, we can build trust in our church,” said Gunn, executive director of Forward Movement, who joined Executive Council via Zoom. “And we can do all of this without getting rid of our cherished governance and our polity, the sacred work that General Convention does.”

General Convention, typically held in a different host city every three years, is The Episcopal Church’s largest churchwide gathering and functions as a hub for fellowship, networking, social events and church governance. The bicameral convention divides its authority between the House of Deputies and House of Bishops.

In 2024, General Convention passed Resolution D022 to ask church leaders to launch a study and report back to the 82nd General Convention with recommendations on how to convene future meetings. The presiding officers formed the Reinvention Steering Committee to work with the Joint Standing Committee on Planning and Arrangements on plans for the 82nd General Convention, to be held July 3-8, 2027, at the Phoenix Convention Center.

The six-day convention will be shorter than the church’s historical norm but longer than the pandemic-shortened four-day gathering in 2022, held in Baltimore, Maryland. Last year, when bishops and deputies gathered in Louisville, Kentucky, for the church’s 81st General Convention, it also convened for six business days.

Executive Council is the church’s governing body between meetings of General Convention. Gunn, in his presentation to Executive Council, explained that his committee’s task was to study the church’s current practices and propose a vision for General Convention’s future, leaving it to other church leaders to decide on and finalize the details.

He also assured Executive Council his committee is confident that General Convention’s legislative sessions, which previously have extended to all hours of the day, could be limited to afternoons while still getting all necessary work done.

“The legislation geeks – and I say that lovingly – who have looked at this believe we can get our work done with our current rules in the afternoons and have this vision of the schedule,” Gunn said.

The Rev. Scott Gunn, co-chair of the General Convention Reinvention Steering Committee, appears via Zoom before Executive Council on Oct. 21. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

The reason for limiting legislative sessions to afternoons would be to give more time for the experiences that many Episcopalians say can be lost in the shuffle of General Convention business, particularly worship, formation, deliberation, discernment and fellowship.

“We want to rebalance our time,” Gunn said. For example, future morning plenary sessions at General Convention might involve Bible studies and small group conversations. Bishops and deputies would have more time to break bread together and learn from each other, “and just share the joy of being followers of Christ together.”

How to make that possible is still being worked out, but Gunn presented several of the committee’s suggestions, grouped by improvements to pre-convention planning, changes that can be implemented at the coming General Convention and longer-term structural reforms that could require constitutional or canonical changes.

Gunn started by sharing a snapshot of the legislative process as it now exists. Of the 300 or so resolutions considered by the 81st General Convention last year, 170 of them were proposed by interim bodies and 80 by deputies. Three-fourths of all resolutions are considered “substantive,” as opposed to resolutions related to the dispatch process or “privilege” resolutions, typically honoring groups or individuals.

The General Convention Reinvention Steering Committee proposes breaking down all resolutions into four types and replacing the current A-B-C-D labeling system based on the resolutions’ proposers with new labels that match the four types: resolutions changing the church’s governing documents (GC), measures relating to liturgy and music (LM), those that issue directives to interim bodies (DI) and “common discernment” resolutions expressing the church’s positions on various issues (CD).

A slide presented by the Rev. Scott Gunn to Executive Council on Oct. 21 shows the breakdown of resolutions from the last General Convention into four categories.

The committee then is proposing a series of reforms that would help streamline the legislative process leading up to the in-person meeting:

• Require resolutions to be submitted through a template to ensure the correct format.
• Gather interim bodies for a pre-convention consultation, while encouraging them to consolidate similar resolutions.
• Implement a resolution review process to suggest text refinements before resolutions are officially proposed.
• Develop training for drafting and considering resolutions.
• Standardize the legislative committees’ online hearing schedule so it is easier to plan for observing and testifying on resolutions.
• Add the ability for committees to report information on their deliberations, so the public can see how they decided whether to modify, recommend or reject resolutions.

General Convention also could improve the flow of legislative business without sacrificing deliberation by consolidating resolutions before floor debate. Gunn’s committee suggests the General Convention Dispatch of Business Committees could be empowered to consolidate duplicative resolutions, and each legislative committee would be encouraged to do the same. Most of the proposed constitutional and canonical changes, for example, could be taken up together, and liturgy and worship resolutions could be grouped together by type, such as calendar changes.

Gunn also presented two proposals that would amplify the General Convention’s work to the wider church after each triennial meeting concludes and bishops and deputies return to their dioceses.

The first would be – Gunn noted the name is negotiable – a “Book of Common Discernment.” It would collect all discernment statements adopted by past General Conventions, and after each subsequent General Convention, newly adopted statements would be added, creating “a living thematic theological resource” for the church.

The second proposal would group all resolutions enacting new churchwide directives into three strategic directives: governance, worship and mission/justice. They would be outlined in a way similar to the churchwide budget, so the full breadth of each directive category could be easily understood.

Executive Council was generally receptive to the proposals, though some members posed questions and raised concerns about how they would be implemented and the potential burden on those responsible for implementation. Heidi Kim, from the Diocese of Minnesota, said she feared the committees on Dispatch of Business would be expected to work even harder so others would have more time for fellowship.

“It sounds like a lot of work to consolidate all of those resolutions,” Kim said.

Katie Sherrod of the Diocese of Texas asked who would be responsible for overseeing the so-called Book of Common Discernment. Rowe acknowledged there is no answer yet to that question.

Dianne Audrick Smith of the Diocese of Ohio echoed some of the other sentiments.

“I encourage you to think about the people power in general that will be needed to make this happen, because we are still a personal relational church,” she said. She also encouraged church leaders to keep General Convention’s history and tradition in mind as they plan changes to the gathering.

“General Convention is not an isolated thing. It’s part of a continuum,” Smith said, and it is important to plan for following through after General Convention “so that we’re really doing the full job.”

Rowe and Ayala Harris, who serve respectively as Executive Council’s chair and vice-chair, said they and other church leaders have not yet taken any steps to put these proposals into action, but they welcomed the work of the General Convention Reinvention Steering Committee in advising the church on possible ways forward.

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

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.

[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.

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe speaks Feb. 17 to the Executive Council committee that is studying the position of General Convention executive officer. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

[Episcopal News Service] The realignment plan for churchwide operations that Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe unveiled last week was primarily focused on reorienting and, in some cases, phasing out departments and staff positions as a part of Rowe’s vision of an Episcopal Church that better serves its dioceses.

At the same time, another level of church governance remains in a prolonged state of transition: the church’s canonical leadership team.

The Episcopal Church is incorporated in the state of New York as the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, or the DFMS. Episcopal Church Canons and the DFMS’ Constitution specify at least five individuals serve as the institution’s officers, starting with the presiding bishop and the House of Deputies president.

The other three positions named as officers are the church’s chief financial officer, its chief operating officer and the secretary of Executive Council. In recent years, the secretary role has been held by the executive officer of General Convention, who also has served as secretary of convention. All of those positions are now in transition.

Kurt Barnes, the church’s current chief financial officer, announced in December that he plans to retire after 21 years. He agreed to remain on staff while the presiding officers – Rowe and House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris – recruit and nominate Barnes’ successor. The canons give Executive Council the authority to appoint the presiding officers’ nominee.

“We have had a quite tremendously diverse pool of applicants for the position,” Rowe told Executive Council on Feb. 19, the final day of the governing body’s three-day meeting last week.

In consultation with current and former Executive Council members, Rowe said he and Ayala Harris have narrowed the field to four finalists. After picking their nominee, they expect to call a special meeting of Executive Council in March for an approval vote.

A day after council’s meeting, on Feb. 20, Rowe issued a letter to the church summarizing a series of staff cuts, including 14 layoffs, as well as department reorganizations and changes to certain staff’s titles as he carries out the first phase of the realignment. One of the positions affected was chief operating officer.

The church’s last permanent chief operations officer was the Rev. Geoffrey Smith, a deacon who retired at the end of 2022. Then-Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and Ayala Harris selected Jane Cisluycis, a former Executive Council member, as their nominee to replace Smith, but when some members of Executive Council objected to the recruitment process, Curry and Ayala Harris agreed to change Cisluycis’ title to acting COO. Executive Council, though still divided over the nomination, approved Cisluycis in February 2023.

In his Feb. 20 letter, Rowe stated, “our realignment process has indicated that, at this time, we do not need to fill the role of chief operating officer.” Instead, Cisluycis will remain on staff with the new title of senior director of operations, Rowe said. Cisluycis will retain most of the former responsibilities of the COO, including information technology, human resources, archives, and building services.

Rowe did not say when, if ever, the COO position would be filled again, as outlined in the canons – which also leaves vacant one of the officer positions mandated by the DFMS Constitution.

The canons say, “upon joint nomination by the Chair and the Vice-Chair [the two presiding officers], the Council shall appoint a Chief Operating Officer who shall serve at the pleasure of, and report and be accountable to, the Chair [the presiding bishop].”

As for the Executive Council secretary, permanently filling that position is complicated by the fact that, in the past, the role of secretary has been filled by the person serving as executive officer of General Convention.

General Convention’s last executive officer, the Rev. Michael Barlowe, retired at the end of the summer 2024 after 11 years in that office. During the ongoing transition, Barlowe’s former deputy, the Rev. Molly James, was named by Curry and Ayala Harris as interim executive officer, and for now, James also is filling Barlowe’s former role of Executive Council secretary.

Barlowe, as head of the General Convention Office, had been the central churchwide official responsible for the administration of church governance. The General Convention Office’s duties have included negotiating contracts for venues and accommodations at each General Convention, coordinating the meetings of all the church’s interim governing bodies, receiving and tallying parochial report data from dioceses and congregations, facilitating the consent process for bishop elections, and ensuring the church has the technology needed to achieve all those goals.

Initially, Curry and Ayala Harris announced a timeline for replacing Barlowe that would have culminated in the presiding officers presenting a nominee for Executive Council’s approval this month. That timeline no longer pertains.

Rowe was elected the 28th presiding bishop in June 2024 and took office Nov. 1, and one of his first actions as presiding bishop was to propose a new committee structure for Executive Council, including the creation of a committee “to examine the role, function and canonical structure of the position of the executive officer of General Convention.”

That newly formed committee, led by Katie Sherrod of the Diocese of Texas, produced a four-page report that was presented and discussed by Executive Council when it met last week in suburban Baltimore, Maryland.

“The vacancy in the position of Executive Officer has afforded an opportunity to provide clarity for the church in the search for the right person for that role,” the report says.  “It is challenging to understand because it always has been entangled with the canonical positions of the Secretary of the House of Deputies, the Secretary of the General Convention, and the other offices held, ex officio, by the Secretary of the General Convention.”

The role, if it were a painting, “would be by Picasso during his Cubism period,” the committee added.

The committee suggested three possible paths to pursue: Separate the duties of secretary and executive officer, completely integrate the duties of the two positions or consider whether some but not all duties of secretary should be turned over to the executive officer.

“Our goal is to provide clarity for a position that has grown over the years into its present complicated confusing state,” the report says. “Anyone interested in this job deserves to know exactly what they are getting into.”

Some of the executive officer’s responsibilities are specified by The Episcopal Church Canons, so any changes to those canonical roles would need to be approved by General Convention, which meets next in 2027 in Phoenix, Arizona.

Rowe discussed the report with committee members when they met Feb. 17. He described the executive officer position and the General Convention Office more broadly as evolving over time to “an island, or maybe a peninsula” that functions largely independent of the rest of the churchwide structures.

One of his primary concerns, he said, is to ensure clear and proper accountability for the executive officer role. Most churchwide departments report to the presiding bishop, but once the executive officer is nominated and appointed, canons specify the position reports only to Executive Council.

“It has to have some supervision, and it needs to be subordinate to the two officers and the council somehow,” Rowe said. “I don’t think we need an independent third officer. … It breeds a lack of clarity in the structure.”

Ayala Harris, who also attended the committee meeting, agreed with Rowe. One option, she affirmed, would be to change the canons so the executive officer reported to the two presiding officers rather than the 38 members of Executive Council.

Annette Buchanan, a council member from New Jersey, countered that if accountability is the concern, there may be better ways for Executive Council to provide oversight for the work of the executive officer without changing the current reporting structure. “That piece to me is fixable,” she said.

Sherrod summarized the committee’s discussions in her presentation to the full council on Feb. 19. She acknowledged that no permanent changes can be made before General Convention meets next, though council may not need to leave the position vacant for two years to begin making changes.

“It may be that the best way to make a new job description effective immediately … is to use a letter of agreement with the chosen candidate that clearly outlines expectations, roles and responsibilities,” she said.

Another committee member, Louisa McKellaston, later told Episcopal News Service in a phone interview that now is “a really good time to look at these more top tier positions.”

McKellaston, a lay member from the Diocese of Chicago, said the church has the opportunity to refocus these top leadership roles and then fill them “in a way that reflects the current reality and needs of The Episcopal Church while also making sure that the essential work gets done.”

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

Members of Executive Council participate Feb. 18 in a brainstorming activity on their oversight priorities for the coming churchwide staff realignment. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

[Episcopal News Service – Linthicum Heights, Maryland] Executive Council has talked of a “strategic adaptive realignment” of The Episcopal Church’s operations at least as far back as June 2023. This week, the council got its first substantive look at how those changes will be implemented under the new leadership of Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe.

Dioceses will be offered greater support in responding to Title IV clergy disciplinary complaints, Rowe told Executive Council at its meeting this week. He also aims to help dioceses conduct more effective and timely bishop searches. The church’s Office of Communication will assist locally with digital evangelism and, as needed, with crisis communications. A team of church leaders will begin rethinking how best to convene General Convention, the church’s triennial gathering and its primary governing body.

And under the realignment, various churchwide departments will be “unified” into two divisions, one focused on racial, social and environmental justice programs and the other coordinating the church’s witness to the wider world – with both divisions prioritizing support for the work of dioceses and congregations.

“We’re investing in creating a more unified structure for this work,” Rowe told Executive Council during its morning session Feb. 18. “The Episcopal Church has a unique opportunity and a voice in this particular time, but it has to be strategic and streamlined, carefully planned.”

Executive Council met here Feb. 17-19 at the Maritime Conference Center in suburban Baltimore, with some members participating remotely via Zoom. As presiding bishop, Rowe chairs Executive Council, while House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris serves as vice chair.

Rowe was joined in the Feb. 18 presentation by representatives from Compass, a consulting firm that was hired to help develop and facilitate a realignment plan. It has spent the past four months surveying the churchwide staff, department heads, the House of Bishops and Executive Council to collect and analyze the data that now is informing the planned changes.

Rowe and other churchwide leaders did not reveal yet what those changes will mean for individual church employees, though the presentation’s outlines and summaries suggest The Episcopal Church could be poised to transform significantly how it coordinates program, operations and ministry at all levels of the denomination.

On Title IV, for example, Rowe suggested that the church could expand capacity at the local level by assisting with documentation, procedural advice and training, as well as making experienced intake officers and investigators available to serve multiple dioceses interested in that option. Rowe also would like to help dioceses reduce the time it takes to fill vacant bishop positions, from a current average of about 22 months.

On justice issues, the church’s unified departments would establish regional working groups, so dioceses can collaborate and share best practices. And many small dioceses with minimal staffing “are in need of hands-on help with communications, particular in times of crisis,” Rowe said, such as natural disasters, mass shootings and other catastrophes.

House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris poses for a photo with Chief Financial Officer Kurt Barnes after she presented Barnes with her President’s Service Award on Feb. 19, the final day of Executive Council’s meeting in suburban Baltimore, Maryland. Photo: Louisa McKellaston, courtesy of Julia Ayala Harris

Executive Council, as the church’s governing body between meetings of General Convention, 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.

In addition to the chair and vice chair, it has 38 other voting members, 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, and in the past, its meetings have been hosted by different dioceses around the church. The last meeting, in November 2024, was held in New Brunswick, New Jersey. In response to budget constraints, however, council is scheduled to meet again in June at the Maritime Conference Center, which has long been a frequent meeting venue for the church’s other interim bodies because of its accessible location and cost savings.

Lay member Tivaun Cooper of the Diocese of New York proposed a resolution that would recommit Executive Council to traveling to different dioceses for its meetings. The Rev. Molly James, the interim General Convention executive officer, advised that such a plan could increase the cost of each meeting by $50,000.

Cooper’s resolution was postponed until June so it could be studied further. “We like the general, overall idea, if we can afford it,” said Lawrence Hitt II, a lay member from Colorado who chairs Executive Council’s Governance & Operations Committee.

The rest of the agenda for this week’s meeting was light on action items, though council members voted Feb. 19 to forgive about $2.7 million in debt accrued by the Diocese of South Carolina after a 2012 schism. They also approved the creation of a subcommittee on deaf and disability inclusion, in response to a resolution adopted by the 81st General Convention.

On council’s final day, Rowe also announced that four finalists had been identified in the search for a successor to Chief Financial Officer Kurt Barnes, who is retiring after 21 years in that top leadership position. Rowe and Ayala Harris expect to have a nominee to submit for Executive Council’s approval at a special meeting in March.

Executive Council showered Barnes with applause after Ayala Harris presented him with her President’s Service Award, which she said was given in recognition of his “unwavering commitment to the financial health of The Episcopal Church. His impact will be felt for generations to come.”

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe speaks Feb. 17 during an Executive Council committee meeting at the Maritime Conference Center in Linthicum Heights, Maryland. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

Structural changes ‘to serve and comfort and transform God’s people’

Rowe had invited Compass in November to present its initial findings to Executive Council, and this week’s meeting built on those initial deliberations as the presiding bishop prepared church leaders for the coming changes. He and his team indicated that they intended to set more clearly defined priorities and encourage greater collaboration between departments and with dioceses.

“We must remember that our job, as the board of The Episcopal Church, is to lead an institutional structure that has tremendous power to serve and comfort and transform God’s people in congregations and ministries in all the countries we serve,” Rowe said in his opening remarks on Feb. 17.

Rowe’s mandate for change originates in a June 2023 resolution adopted by Executive Council, which set aside about $3 million in unspent funds from the previous triennium to study changes to churchwide structures. It specifically directed the two presiding officers “to conduct strategic adaptive realignment of our institutional structures through such tools as an audit of current Episcopal Church staff and Executive Council responsibilities and an analysis of our work as a granting institution.”

In a separate but related action, the 81st General Convention, meeting in June 2024, adopted a churchwide budget plan for 2025-27 that called for a “staff restructuring” that would save about $3.5 million over three years. It gave no specifics other than suggesting those savings could be achieved through “attrition, restructuring and other reductions TBD by management.”

Also at that General Convention, bishops and deputies elected and confirmed Rowe as the church’s 28th presiding bishop. His nine-year term began Nov. 1, though he began laying the groundwork for a realignment in the months before taking office.

The requested reduction in personnel costs is the equivalent of about 5% of the $76 million that the church budgeted for staff in 2025-27 out of $143 million in total spending. General Convention also anticipated the church would start the triennium with the equivalent of 142.5 full-time positions. That number does not reflect the series of staffing changes that Rowe announced in early November immediately after taking office, and it is not yet clear how many total positions will remain after the realignment.

Three of the top leaders on the staff of the former presiding bishop, the Rt. Rev. Michael Curry, chose to step down by end of 2024: the Rev. Stephanie Spellers, who served nine years as the presiding bishop’s canon for evangelism, reconciliation and creation care; Bishop Todd Ousley, who had served since 2017 as head of the Office of Pastoral Development; and the Rev. Ann Hallisey, who had served for the previous year as canon to the presiding bishop for ministry within The Episcopal Church.

When Rowe announced those departures, he also said three others would be joining his staff: Vanessa Butler, as executive coordinator to the presiding bishop; the Rev. Lester Mackenzie as chief of mission program; and Rebecca Wilson as chief of strategy. During the transition, several senior churchwide employees announced plans to retire, and in early February, Rowe offered additional retirement-eligible employees voluntary retirement packages if they wished to conclude their service to the church.

At the same time, Rowe and his team continued to work with Compass to develop a staff realignment plan, based partly on the feedback they had received from department heads and employees.

Some of the more senior staff told Compass that they recalled “a lot of trauma from past institutional failures,” Korryn Williamson of Compass said in her portion of the Feb. 18 presentation. “But there was a really strong desire for change.”

Williamson said Compass identified several systemic challenges that the realignment aimed to address. Rather than hoarding information, staff would be encouraged to collaborate more across departments and with other stakeholders. Rather than struggle with low expectations for their work, they would be encouraged to take “generative risks in decision-making.” Rather than avoiding difficult conversations, supervisors would emphasize mutual accountability. And rather than passing “judgement and blame,” employees would be encouraged to demonstrate “ownership, empathy and maturity.”

The presentation prompted some Executive Council members to question which root problems were being identified, and they shared concerns about Compass’ precision in describing current staff accountability.

Annette Buchanan, a lay member from New Jersey, said that in her experience, churchwide employees have been “very clear on what their priorities were.”

“Are we saying individually we were expecting them to have their own priorities?” Buchanan asked. “There’s a top-down role and there’s a bottom-up role.”

Williamson responded then when some employees were surveyed about their roles in the organization, “it wasn’t clear how one person’s priorities tied to their peers.”

Heidi Kim from Minnesota also spoke up, noting that she previously worked on the churchwide staff, as racial reconciliation officer for five years until 2019. “As somebody who served on the presiding bishop’s staff, I’m feeling a certain kind of way” after hearing Compass’ staff appraisal, she said.

Kim wondered whether the challenges facing the staff had been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, causing greater physical disconnection. “I am really a big fan of my former colleagues who are currently serving on the staff, and I know in a big transition there’s always anxiety,” she said.

Williamson underscored that most staff expressed unwavering commitment to the church’s mission. “There was strong passion, strong drive – and people’s gifts … weren’t fully being utilized because there wasn’t a structure in place for them to showcase their gifts,” she said.

Hitt, the member from Colorado, echoed some of the other comments and advised caution with how the realignment will be presented to the wider church. “We do feel that it’s really important that any messaging that goes out from Executive Council should not be in any way blaming or shaming staff,” he said. “There have been a lot of staff that have done wonderful work.”

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

South Carolina Bishop Ruth Woodliff-Stanley speaks via Zoom to members of Executive Council on Feb. 17 as they meet in Linthicum Heights, Maryland. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

[Episcopal News Service – Linthicum Heights, Maryland] Executive Council is poised to forgive about $2.7 million in debt that the Diocese of South Carolina accrued after a 2012 diocesan split, in which theologically conservative church leaders led a large group of Episcopalians to leave the church.

After that split, The Episcopal Church had responded in part by lending money to the remaining Episcopal diocese and its congregations as they fought a decade-long legal battle to retain possession of their historic properties. Those court cases were largely resolved in the Episcopal diocese’s favor in 2022. Since then, some congregations have moved back into their historic churches, and the diocese has pursued church planting efforts in other communities.

On Feb. 17, South Carolina Bishop Ruth Woodliff-Stanley appeared on Zoom to address two committees of Executive Council, which is meeting here at the Maritime Conference Center. Woodliff-Stanley emphasized that South Carolina is one of The Episcopal Church’s original nine dioceses, dating to 1785, and now with the court fight resolved, Episcopalians in South Carolina are focused on rebuilding congregations and growing ministries in their communities.

“We could not have done what we had to do without the church being with us. And we are now asking you to be with us in this season of rebuilding,” Woodliff-Stanley said.

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe spoke briefly to the committees, arguing strongly in favor of forgiving the diocese’s outstanding church loan. “I am in complete support,” Rowe said, adding that acting on the proposal was about more than forgiveness of past debts. “I believe this would be, on our part, an investment in the mission of that diocese.”

Executive Council’s committees on Finance and Governance & Operations voted unanimously to advance the proposal, to which Woodliff-Stanley responded, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

The measure will proceed to likely approval by the full Executive Council on Feb. 19, the final day of this meeting.

The Charleston-based Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina once counted as many as 78 worshipping communities across the southeastern half of the state, including along the Atlantic Coast. Parochial report data show that the diocese’s baptized membership topped 29,000 in 2011, the year before the diocesan schism.

Churchwide theological and doctrinal disputes, especially related to full LGBTQ+ inclusion in the church and lingering objections to women’s ordination, had been simmering for years. After the 2003 consecration of the church’s first openly gay bishop, the talk of schism led to lawsuits in dioceses across the United States where some leaders sought to break from The Episcopal Church while keeping control of Episcopal churches.

South Carolina was one of five dioceses upended by schism. The others were Fort Worth in north-central Texas, Pittsburgh in southwestern Pennsylvania, Quincy in northern Illinois, and San Joaquin in central California.

In October 2009, a majority of delegates at a special South Carolina diocesan convention voted to authorize the bishop and standing committee to begin the process of disassociating from The Episcopal Church over General Convention resolutions that endorsed greater LGBTQ+ inclusion in the life of the church. South Carolina leaders accelerated their plans to leave the church in 2012 after General Convention approved rites for blessing same-sex unions.

After the split, Episcopal membership in the remaining Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina dropped below 6,400 across 22 continuing parishes and missions, but Episcopalians in South Carolina found ways to continue worshipping and serving their communities amid a series of legal victories and setbacks in the church property lawsuit.

Now, with that legal battle behind it, the diocese can devote more of its time and resources to ministry priorities, including addressing racial justice issues and the prevalence of extreme poverty in the state, Woodliff-Stanley said. She also highlighted the early success of Church of the Messiah, a storefront church plant in Myrtle Beach that is looking to the diocese for help in establishing a more permanent worship space.

The Episcopal Church has forgiven the debt of a diocese in a similar situation at least once before. The Diocese of San Joaquin was approved for about $5 million in debt forgiveness in 2017, the same year that the diocese installed its first diocesan bishop since its own schism in 2006.

Michael Glass, chancellor for House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris, also served as chancellor of the Diocese of San Joaquin during its fight to retain diocesan properties after a schism. He spoke Feb. 17 in favor of granting South Carolina’s request, a gesture that also will reassure the wider church. If other dioceses face similar upheaval, they will know “we’ll back you up,” Glass said. “It’s really important that message get out there.”

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

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe on Feb. 17 gives his opening remarks at a meeting of Executive Council held at the Maritime Conference Center in Linthicum Heights, Maryland. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

[Episcopal News Service – Linthicum Heights, Maryland] Executive Council has convened here Feb. 17-19 for its first meeting since the inauguration of President Donald Trump – a political earthquake that Episcopal leaders say has shaken many of the communities the church serves, but not the church’s commitment to serving them.

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe and House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris, in their opening remarks Feb. 17, did not reference Trump by name but alluded, mostly in general terms, to the sharp shift in many federal policies during the first month since his return to office.

“We are weathering what has proven to be a hard season for us and for the people that we serve, for sure. Many of us are afraid and looking to the church to provide a sense of safety and moral witness,” Rowe said. “As the political landscape of the United States becomes even more confusing and harder to navigate, we are being called to make decisions here in this place that are firmly rooted in the kingdom of God.”

Rowe then repeated a theme that has become common in his public addresses since the inauguration: The people marginalized by society and by our political leaders are at the center of God’s kingdom. In his remarks to Executive Council, he again singled out “migrants, transgender people, the poor and vulnerable.”

In God’s kingdom, “they are not reviled and scapegoated. … They are the bearers of salvation,” Rowe said. “If we believe this to be true, where does that leave us as a church? Where does that lead us as a church?”

Ayala Harris cited a recent lawsuit as one example of the church actively responding to the needs Christ calls on his followers to meet. The Episcopal Church last week joined more than two dozen ecumenical and interfaith partners in suing the Trump administration over policy changes giving immigration agents greater flexibility to conduct enforcement actions in houses of worship and other “sensitive” places.

“This is not about politics. It’s about embodying Christ’s radical hospitality in our very structures and policies,” Ayala Harris said. “The Gospel compels us to welcome the stranger, to care for the vulnerable and to ensure that all who seek spiritual sanctuary can do so freely. And my friends, if we fail to lead with courage, we risk not just stagnation but irrelevance.”

Executive Council is The Episcopal Church’s governing and oversight body between meetings of General Convention and typically meets in person three times a year. Its last gathering, in November, occurred days after both Rowe’s installation as the church’s 28th presiding bishop and Trump’s election as president. The current meeting is being held in suburban Baltimore at the Maritime Conference Center, a frequent venue for Episcopal Church governance meetings.

Executive Council’s initial agenda for this meeting was light on action items – the board spent most of its first morning in a training on emotional intelligence and effective interpersonal relations – though some of its upcoming sessions, both open and closed, will touch on Trump’s suspension of the federal refugee resettlement program, committee work and church leaders’ ongoing recruitment of a new executive officer for General Convention and a chief finance officer for the church. 

On Feb. 18, representatives from Compass, a contractor hired to survey and analyze the churchwide staffing structure, will present their latest findings and recommendations to council members, and on Feb. 19, Rowe is scheduled to offer more details in a closed session about efforts he is spearheading for a “structural realignment” of churchwide operations to better serve the needs of dioceses and congregations. The first phase of those plans won’t be unveiled publicly until after this meeting.

Ongoing tensions among some council members also surfaced again briefly during the morning session Feb. 17 on emotional intelligence session, which was led by three representatives from the consultant Visions Inc. Sandra Teresa Soledad Montes Vela, a lay Executive Council member from the Diocese of Texas, raised concerns about the way Visions had framed discussion, suggesting that it was based in a white-centric understanding of emotion and communication.

“This is completely different to people of the global majority to LGBTQIA+ people. And when we show up as ourselves … we are seen differently than who we are,” said Montes Vela, who is pansexual. “Do you want me to be, like, OK, I need to learn my emotions so I don’t show that I’m angry or that I don’t show that I’m scared? That’s what this seems like to me.”

Another member, Thomas Chu of the Diocese of Long Island, who is gay, rose to object to Montes Vela’s generalizing about all people of color and LGBTQ+ people.

“I’m feeling mad, sad and scared,” Chu said, referencing some of the emotions listed on a Visions graphic. “Sandra, you can speak what you’re saying. But I’m an LGBTQIA+ person, a person of color. I feel very differently from you. And I accept what you said, but please don’t represent us. … This is [about] process – it’s not about what you said, it’s about how you said it, and you had an impact on me right now.”

Executive Council is chaired by Rowe, as presiding bishop, and Ayala Harris is vice chair. It has 38 other voting members, 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.

Ayala Harris, in her opening remarks, underscored the importance of Executive Council in upholding the church’s faith values, especially in today’s world.

“Our decisions here ripple through the life of every diocese, every congregation, every seeker who is looking to The Episcopal Church right now as a beacon of radical welcome and transformative love,” she said.

“As we make decisions about resource allocation and policy, we directly influence the capacity of our congregations to serve their communities, whether that’s supporting a food panty in Appalachia, sustaining a ministry with immigrant families in Los Angeles or enabling a small parish in Puerto Rico to rebuild after a natural disaster.”

Rowe, too, emphasized the critical role that the church plays, through Executive Council’s work, in responding to the challenges of the day.

“We live in a world in which the enemy is bound and determined to keep us separated and sow division among us,” Rowe said, but Christians belong to God and “can find the face of Christ in one another.”

“We must remember that our job as the board of The Episcopal Church is to lead an institutional structure that has tremendous power to serve and comfort and transform God’s people and congregations and ministries in all the countries we serve.”

He continued that, although there are times when it is appropriate to “speak with one voice” to world leaders who fail to uphold Christ values, the greater power of the church is not in making “a barrage of statements” reacting to all the news of the day. “Instead, our power lies in a churchwide structure rooted in Christ and in the kingdom principles that can make a strong and effective witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ,” he said.

“Friends, we are leading this church we love through uncharted waters, and I do not pretend that it is easy, or that it will be simple. I only know that we are here to do the work that God has given us to do. We must do it faithfully and with love for one another and for the Lord we serve.”

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