As the most recent TREC paper continues to settle into people’s consciousness, reactions continue to pour in. We’ve rounded up several for your reading pleasure:
First up is Fr. Keith Voet, blogging at Young Curmudgeon Priest. He directly addresses concerns that some of the TREC proposals would ‘disempower the laity’ raised here at the Cafe, and refutes them.
Next, Tom Ferguson blogs at Crusty Old Dean.
COD thoroughly reviews the TREC paper, noting several places where the details of the proposed changes are worryingly scarce (i.e. only a few sentences are given to the budget).
However, he has cautious approval for changes like the proposal for reduced size of Convention deputations, and restricted voting in the House of Bishops…assuming Convention consents.
Along similar lines, the Rev. Susan Snook has been examining the budget side of things, and also has questions about some of TREC’s proposals. She’s writing a three-post series on her blog here .
In it, she points out that General Convention is hardly the most expensive item in the DMFS budget, and there are a variety of ways to streamline the governance of the church (addressing provinces, merging smaller dioceses, etc) that TREC doesn’t seem to have addressed as of yet.
The Rev. Scott Gunn, director of Forward Movement, also offers his thoughts over at Seven Whole Days. On the whole, he opines in favor of the report, especially the streamlining of Committees, Commissions, Agencys, and Boards (the dreaded CCABs.)—the better to free them to serve the entire church.
Finally, the Rev. Adam Trambley weighs in, at The Black Giraffe . Among other things, he specifically draws attention to the proposal to allow legislative committees to begin their work prior to General Convention, which would speed up the process considerably.
What other reactions are out there? Whose voice have we missed? Who have you been reading on this?