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[ENS] Executive Council responds to Windsor Report,


From "Matthew Davies" <mdavies@mail.epicom.org>
Date Fri, 4 Mar 2005 13:51:33 -0500

Monday, February 14, 2005

Executive Council responds to Windsor Report, affirms budget increase in
diocesan giving

ENS 021405-1

[ENS] -- Seeking to "listen to and learn from other provinces in the
Anglican Communion," the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church
adjourned
its February 11-14 meeting in Austin, Texas, after responding to the
international Windsor Report and affirming a $49.6 million 2005 budget
reflecting a 3.7% increase in funding from dioceses.

Additional actions addressed U.S. Social Security reform, anti-racism
initiatives, and international nuclear disarmament, among other issues
(see
resolution texts to follow online).

"The Executive Council has begun its part in the consultative processes
called for by the Windsor Report," the Council states in a document
titled
"Our Commitment to Partnership in the Gospel: A Word to the Church"
(full
text online at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_58408_ENG_HTM.htm ).
"We
urge all of the Episcopal Church to join us in this process of
considering
the report and growing in communion with each other and with the whole
Anglican Communion."

Adopted by the 38-member elected Council, the statement cites the "need
to
listen to and learn from other provinces in the Anglican Communion" and
encourages the "Communion-wide study of human sexuality recommended by
Lambeth Conferences since 1978."

The Council's statement precedes the February 21-25 meeting in Ireland
of
the Primates, or leading archbishops, of the 38 provinces of the
Anglican
Communion, which includes 77 million members in 164 countries.

The Primates called for the Windsor Report -- issued last October after
an
international panel's yearlong study -- in order to assess factors of
communion, or interrelationships, among Anglicans, especially amid
deeply
held differences of opinion. The report followed the ordination in New
Hampshire of a bishop who is in a committed relationship with a person
of
the same sex, and the introduction of rites to bless same-gender unions
in
the Anglican Church of Canada's Diocese of New Westminster.

The statement echoes a similar document adopted in January by the House
of
Bishops of the 2.3 million-member U.S.-based Episcopal Church (see text
online at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_56787_ENG_HTM.htm ). The
Episcopal Church's Presiding Bishop, Frank T. Griswold, told the Council
that both statements will be very helpful in providing "context and
clarity"
as he confers with his fellow Primates in their meeting next week. While
such meetings are closed to visitors and media, it is expected that the
Primates will issue their own statement following their consultation.

The Windsor Report will next be addressed by the international Anglican
Consultative Council meeting in June in England, and by the U.S. bishops
at
their regular meeting in March.

Fiscal forecast stable

In other business, the Council affirmed a $49.6 million budget for 2005;
this budget reflects diocesan giving that is expected to increase by 3.7
percent above 2004 levels.

Total fiscal commitments from among the church's 112 dioceses, which are
mostly domestic, are budgeted at more than $28.5 million for 2005,
according
to Episcopal Church treasurer N. Kurt Barnes. This figure is up from
some
$27.4 million budgeted for 2004.

As of November 30, nearly $22.8 million of the 2004 budgeted diocesan
income
had been received. Barnes said that he expects that the budgetary target
will be met or exceeded when diocesan contributions received in December
2004 and early 2005 are recorded.

Diocesan giving in 2003 exceeded budget expectations for that year,
Barnes
noted. He said income from diocesan giving in 2003 totaled $31,210,974,
some
$2.1 million more than the $29,092,049 budgeted by the Council for that
year. These figures stand in contrast with forecasts that diocesan
giving
would be reduced by the New Hampshire election and related issue the
same
year.

For 2004, three of the Episcopal Church's 112 dioceses -- Dallas,
Pittsburgh, and Springfield (Illinois) -- pledged zero to the national
budget in protest of the New Hampshire election and General Convention
actions, but Episcopalians in those regions sent a total of $66,157
through
non-diocesan channels to fund the budget for churchwide mission, Barnes
said. To date, in addition to 2004 budgeted contributions, more than
$180,000 has been received from at least 26 dioceses.

In approving a budget for 2004, the Executive Council had previously
reduced
spending by approximately 5 percent anticipating a decline in diocesan
income from $29 million in 2003 to $27.4 million in 2004 due to reaction
to
General Convention decisions, and the impact of significant economic
down-turns throughout the nation.

The 2005 budget specifies that within accounts held for national or
churchwide ministry, "investment income is projected to decline in 2005
by
$65,000 relative to 2004 due principally to lower-than-anticipated
interest
rates earned on short-term fixed-income investments, economic justice
loans,
and operating cash."

Estimated diocesan giving is confirmed at $27.4 million in 2004, $28.4
million in 2005, and $29.6 million in 2006. The 2004-2006 figures are
part
of the three-year budget approved by the churchwide General Convention.
Each
diocese is asked to give 21-percent of its total diocesan income
annually to
the churchwide budget, which funds mission programs ranging from global
Anglican relations, to national communication and advertising,
evangelism,
clergy development, and support for planting new congregations.

Episcopalians churchwide give more than $2 billion annually to fund
local,
diocesan and national mission. According to statistical analysis, the
collective endowment across the church is the highest of any U.S.
mainline
denomination, and the average parish pledge increased in 2003 to some
$1,700
per year contributed by individual or family donations.

Austin parish hosts four-day meeting

Additional resolutions adopted by the Council will be reported and
posted
on-line. Additional measures include endorsement of Christian Churches
Together, a new ecumenical organization; recommendation that the
parochial
report be adjusted to include age, gender and ethnicity of parishioners;
and
new steps for securing mission funding.

The Council's anti-racism recommendations include a memorandum to
dioceses
reminding them to comply with General Convention's 2003 resolution
mandating
that training be completed in dioceses, church agencies, seminaries, and
national boards and commissions by 2006.

Council actions reflect the study and deliberation of its four standing
committees: Administration and Finance, chaired by Russell Palmore of
Virginia; Congregations in Ministry, chaired by the Rev. Cynthia Black
of
Western Michigan; International Concerns, chaired by Bishop Catherine
Roskam
of New York; and National Concerns, chaired by the Rev. Kwasi Thornell
of
Washington, D.C.

The Council meeting was chaired by the Presiding Bishop, assisted by the
Council's vice-president, the Very Rev. George L.W. Werner, president of
the
General Convention's House of Deputies.

Guest presenters included Palestinian Anglican priest Naim Ateek; Duncan
Bayne, member of the committee charged to revise the Episcopal Church's
Title IV on professional standards; Janet Chisholm, Episcopal Peace
Fellowship's national coordinator for non-violence training; Dr. Kirk
Hadaway, the Episcopal Church's director of research; Bishop Michael
Ingham
of the Canadian Diocese of New Westminster; the Rev. Dr. William Sachs,
director of research for the Episcopal Church Foundation; and
Christopher
Wilkins, representing the Via Media USA network.

Hosted at the historic 156-year-old St. David's Episcopal Church in
Austin,
the Council meeting included tributes to outgoing Secretary of
Convention
Rosemari Sullivan, who has begun a new ministry at the Virginia
Theological
Seminary, and to Sandra Swan, who will retire in May as president of
Episcopal Relief and Development, a non-profit agency that has to date
raised more than $3 million in emergency funds for the South Asia
tsunami
disaster.

The Council will next meet in June in Louisville, Kentucky.

-- This story is reported by Matthew Davies, Jan Nunley, and Bob
Williams.

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