wfn.org | Episcopalians: A progress report from the Presiding Bishop

[dmack@episcopalchurch.org]

February 22, 2002

2002-045

Episcopalians: A progress report from the Presiding Bishop

The following report was read to the Executive Council, meeting 
in San Antonio,  during a plenary session February 22, 2002

Since the beginning of this triennium I have been working with 
the Management Team on a strategic thinking process. A broad 
segment of the staff has also been invited into this process, 
and that work is ongoing. Our efforts to date have produced 
specific actions that reflect our thinking on how we will best 
deploy staff resources over the next five years.

The work of the staff must be in response to the General 
Convention and the mission energies of the broader church.  We 
now see our work falling within five general areas: 
congregational growth and development; leadership development; 
faith formation and spiritual development; justice and peace; 
Anglican, ecumenical and interfaith partnerships. We are 
devoting day-long staff meetings to each of these areas, and are 
part way through the process of thinking about how we can best 
be organized to do this work.  We see ourselves in more fluid 
task groupings around the five areas, and thus are working on 
strengthened collaboration among staff. As well, we have 
developed a new staff alignment where the Management Team meets 
twice monthly with programmatic heads. These gatherings have 
been enormously productive. 

Our work has already informed several decisions that have 
great import on how we do our work.  The Rev. Charles Fulton has 
been named Director of Congregational Development.  Effective 
March 1, the Rev. Canon Benjamin Musoke-Lubega will take up his 
duties as Partnership Officer for Africa.  Also on March 1, 
Douglas Fenton will join our staff as Staff Officer for Young 
Adult and Higher Education Ministries.  These decisions 
strengthen our work in areas of great opportunity that demand 
our attention. 

The decision late last year to put on temporary hold the 
search for a person to be responsible for ministries by and for 
women was also based on our ongoing look at how we are 
organized.  It was impossible to place that work within any of 
our existing departments because it is threaded through all we 
do, finding a place in each of the five general areas of our 
work.  We will establish a Womens Ministry Office with the 
Director part of our group of programmatic heads, working 
collaboratively across our system with accountability to Sonia 
Francis, the Assistant to the Presiding Bishop for Program. A 
new job description is being formulated, and a search process 
will be re-engaged very soon. 

We have come to a new place with regard to ethnic ministries. 
In a church free of the sin of racism and the other isms, 
there would be no need for a focus upon particular ethnic groups 
and identities because the church, in all its variations, would 
reflect the fullness of Christ and the face of Christ, and be 
transformed by the multiplicity of languages, races, and the 
cultural particularities incarnate in the members of Christs 
risen body.  But we have not yet become who we are called to be. 
Given that, it has become clear that our best energies in 
seeking to serve the ethnic communities need to be focused on 
congregational development and clergy recruitment.  This is in 
line with the vision of 20/20, the mission energies around the 
church, and the demographics of our nation.

Accordingly, we are expanding and revisioning our ethnic 
ministries and creating a new grouping to be called Ethnic 
Congregational Development.  The Director will also be part of 
our group of programmatic heads.  A job description for that 
position is in the final stages of preparation. The communities 
we are focusing on are African American, Asian-American, 
Hispanic, and Native American.  The job descriptions in each of 
these areas will be refocused on this emerging priority of 
growing and planting congregations. Clearly, this effort 
requires close collaboration with other staff, firstly 
Congregational Development.

I think it is fair to say that the strongest components of 
the work of the Ethnic desks, as they have been called over the 
years, have been networking and advocacy.  This was necessary 
and proper and has borne fruit in healthy networks.  And, 
advocacy  having to do with the inclusion and dignity of all 
persons  is foundational to engaging Gods project of 
reconciliation.  This work will continue and the staff in Ethnic 
Congregational Development will work in close collaboration with 
those staff whose assignment is advocacy and public policy work, 
that is the Peace and Justice cluster, including the Office of 
Government Relations.  As well, we know that advocacy is 
strongly articulated through the local congregations, as we can 
see from the ever-increasing effectiveness of Jubilee 
Ministries. 

I am keenly aware that there is a personnel aspect to these 
decisions.  I met on Wednesday with those persons whose 
assignments as they have known them are ending.  

These are individuals who have dedicated themselves over the 
years to a faithful ministry and who have been flexible through 
this time of discernment and transition. Sonia Francis will 
continue in conversation with them on an individual basis.  With 
regard to the timetable, our first task is to complete the job 
description and recruit the Director.

The Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold

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