UPDATE: today’s report below:
Episcopal News Service reports on the Executive Council meeting in Maryland. The current council is seeking to avoid the experiences of the last triennium when the council suffered from lack of timely information and data as well as unclear communications in formulating the current budget:
The Episcopal Church’s Executive Council began its three-day meeting here by examining a process to formulate a proposed budget for the 2016-2018 triennium.
The Rev. Canon Charles LaFond, council member from New Hampshire, led his colleagues in a 75-minute exercise that included silence, prayer and 12-minute blocks of table conversation. Council members changed tables for each conversation session so as to encourage a broad discussion as they were asked to consider two questions: “Where does God seem to be leading our church, and what are our hopes and dreams for the future [and] what actions and ministries would help us to realize those hopes and dreams?” and “What is the appropriate role of the churchwide structure (as opposed to diocesan or local structures) in empowering these ministries and actions?”
You can follow the meeting on Twitter at #excoun
Executive Council explores a new method of meeting and working “The Art of Hosting”. Look for it at the next TEC meeting near you. You heard it here first!
It has been announced that the next General Convention will be held June 25 – July 3 of 2015 in Salt Lake City, Utah.
UPDATE:
February 26: Church Executives recommend Church Center remain in New York
The church’s denominational offices would remain at the Episcopal Church Center in New York if the Executive Council accepts a recommendation it received Feb. 26 from a group of Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society executives.
Of four main scenarios analyzed, “God’s mission of reconciliation is best furthered” by remaining at 815 Second Ave. in Manhattan and consolidating DMFS (sic) operations at the church center to free up even more space to rent to outside tenants than the 3.5 floors that are currently leased out, a report to council says. This choice would be “in the organization’s best interests financially, both in terms of budget effect and for long-term investment purposes,” according to the report.
In other plenary business Feb. 26, council:
* authorized a $250,000 line of credit for the Episcopal Church in South Carolina.
* heard a recap of the 15th meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council meeting late last year in Auckland, New Zealand by Josephine Hicks, the lay member of the Episcopal Church’s delegation. Hicks’ three-meeting term ended with the Auckland meeting.
* received an update on earthquake recovery in the Diocese of Haiti.