Executive Council members consider how church (and the governance of the Episcopal Church specifically) must change:
Questions of how church must change continue to challenge Executive Council members
The Episcopal Church’s Executive Council began its three-day meeting here Feb. 16 considering how the church must change to serve a changing world, and the effectiveness of how the Church Center staff has been reconfigured to begin addressing that change.
House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson used part of her opening comments to say that “our society is changing both demographically and economically, the size and resource base of our Church is changing and the world is changing through climate change, population change, technology and a host of other factors.” The church, she said, must respond in ways that are “rooted in our core values as Episcopalians and that includes the gifts of all the people of God in our church.”
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Episcopal Church Center Chief Operating Officer Linda Watt . . . began by saying that a human resources consultant hired by the Episcopal Church Center (located at 815 Second Avenue in New York) in 2006 “reported his impression that we were a place of broken wings where the primary focus was placed upon caring for individual staff members and less attention was paid to the work those individual staff members were accomplishing.”
She said that “this inward focus was troubling” to Jefferts Schori, who was just beginning her term, and who “also recognized that there were dangers inherent in a staff that consisted in considerable part of individuals whose working style was fundamentally isolated in silos.”
“Many mission staff considered themselves to be in charge of an area – to be the expert – individually in control of events and budget and information,” Watt continued. “Bishops and others in leadership positions around the church expressed annoyance and even hostility toward 815, and some staff members exhibited some patronizing attitudes. There was really very little accountability on how money was spent, or if events had to take place or if goals were met, if indeed goals were set.”