wfn.org | [ENS] Executive Council meeting will address budgets,

["Matthew Davies" <mdavies@episcopalchurch.org>]

Monday, December 19, 2005

Executive Council meeting will address budgets, Convention reports

Iowa diocese to host gathering January 8-12 in Des Moines

By Mary Frances Schjonberg

ENS 121905-1

[ENS] Completing its report to General Convention and acting on Episcopal
Church budgets top the agenda for the next meeting of the Executive
Council of the Episcopal Church.

The council will gather at the Hotel Fort Des Moines in Des Moines,
Iowa, January 8-12.

The council's time in Des Moines will include dinner on January 11 with
Iowa's Bishop Alan Scarfe and members of the diocese. The council's
meetings normally include time with the hosting diocese.

Scarfe said having the Executive Council in his diocese is exciting. "It
gives opportunities, especially with the open sessions, to see the
[Episcopal] Church at work which, for some people, is to see their money
at work," Scarfe said.

He said the clergy and people of the diocese "greatly appreciate" the
chance to spend time with the Presiding Bishop.

"We also look forward to the opportunity to share our own life. We
have some innovative approaches to ministry organization in Iowa,"
Scarfe said. "We seek to emphasize teams at every level including
the episcopate. It places emphasis on the motion of ministry being
multi-layered."

Scarfe said Iowa's most recent diocesan convention focused on the
diocese's extensive mission outreach. "Our understanding of mission
is that we are an episcopate-centered expression of how Christ makes
disciples, focused on his call to share His love for neighbor and enemy
alike, with a special eye and heart on those who may never pay us back
but who always remind us of the greatness of the creation of God in
which we so undeservedly find ourselves," he said.

The church's 2006 budget will hold the council's attention for part
of the meeting. The council will also act on its draft version of
the church budget for the 2007-2009 triennium. Once approved by the
council, that version goes to the General Convention's Program, Finance
and Budget committee for further refinement. The budget is eventually
approved by both the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops during
the convention's next meeting in June in Columbus, Ohio.

The draft budget "really still is a working document as it leaves council
and is open to amendment at the will of the Convention," said the Rev.
Dr.  Gregory Straub, executive officer of the General Convention. The
version gives the convention a "running start" at preparing a final
budget for the next triennium.

Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold, who chairs the council, has said that
council members are called upon to look at the budget not just as a set
of numbers but as the embodiment of a theology of mission. He said that
each program funded in the budget must be looked at in terms of it does
further the church's efforts to be a healing agent in the world and an
agent of reconciliation.

The Very Rev. George Werner, president of the House of Deputies, said
the council and the church have been moving in this direction for more
than a decade.

"My hope is that we will really have a budget that is strongly driven
by mission, strongly driven by mission opportunities and strongly driven
by the desperate needs in our world and in our church," he said.

The council's report to General Convention, which will be published in the
upcoming Blue Book compilation of the reports of the church's committees,
commissions, agencies and boards, will be a summary of the progress it
has made on the work given to it by the previous General Convention.

Among the many reports that the council will hear during its Des Moines
meeting will be one on the Episcopal Church's commitment to the United
Nations Millennium Development Goals "which seem to have caught fire in
the church," said Straub.

Other reports will come from Bishop Suffragan Catherine Roskam of New
York and the work of the International Anglican Women's Network. Werner
had high praise for the network, saying it gives him more hope than any
other international activity he's aware of. "I really think the women
are on the right track," he said.

There will also be an update from the Rev. Canon Stephen Lane of the
Diocese of Rochester about the Episcopal Church's on-going relationship
with the Anglican Church of Canada. Lane is the Council's liaison with the
Canadian Church. The council will also hear from the church's chancellor
David Beers about canonical matters, according the Straub.

The Executive Council carries out programs and policies adopted by the
General Convention and oversees the ministry and mission of the Church.
The council is comprised of 20 members elected by General Convention
(four bishops, four priests or deacons and 12 laypersons) and 18 members
elected by provincial synods.

-- The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is national correspondent for the
Episcopal News Service.

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