The Task Force for Re-imagining the Episcopal Church (TREC) is meeting in Baltimore to assess where the project is and what needs to be done. Episcopal News Service reports on the meeting:
Katy George, [said] many task force members have expressed the feeling that “we’d like to step it up and really make sure that we are producing something fantastic.” … “our holistic vision for how we’re hoping that the church moves in a new direction as a networked facilitator actually, as opposed to a corporation.”
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[Presenting the responses to date Franken and Leng noted] Few of the task force members have answered the four online questions, according to a show of hands. And not all who have facilitated groups who used the engagement kit have supplied the results to the task force….
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[but] When Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania Bishop Sean Rowe used the process during a diocesan convention, “I couldn’t get people to stop talking,” he said.
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One question in the process asks “what do you think is the one thing The Church should hold on to and the one thing it could let go?” Delano, who was ill and could not be at the meeting, reported that the “hold on to” responses “were overwhelming about the spiritual side” of the Episcopal Church and the “let go” responses “were overwhelming about administration and governance.”
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In fact, [George] said, very little money overall is spent on governance and administration and “actually all the mission is being done elsewhere.”
“So, what I see is that we have a small process and we’re cranking out too little product with it because we’re not engaging and empowering the whole church,” she said. “So, our job is not about ‘let’s cut down process;’ it’s ‘let’s re-imagine the process to make bigger product.’”
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The group met privately during the afternoon of Dec. 6 and was scheduled to begin discussing possible proposals and to hear from a subcommittee on the constitutional and canonical implications of any of those proposals. TREC’s half-day session on Dec. 7 will be open. During that session, George said, the group will decide its next steps, including how to begin to draft its report to the church. The task force expects to issue a statement to the church about this meeting early in the week of Dec. 8, Loya told Episcopal News Service.