Episcopal Life Online reports that Executive Council, meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico, proposed mission priorities for the 2010-2012 triennium.
Executive Council Resolution 017 proposes five priorities to guide the work of PB&F [General Convention’s Joint Standing Committee on Program, Budget and Finance]:
* Doing Justice and Alleviating Poverty;
* Claiming Our Identity;
* Growing Congregations;
* Strengthening Governance and Foundations for Mission; and
* Promoting Anglican Partnerships.
Proposing the mission priorities is part of an on-going process that culminates in the General Convention passing a budget for the upcoming triennium. Council proposes a triennial budget PB&F, which presents a triennial budget for General Convention’s approval. The process for developing a budget to propose to the 76th General Convention, which meets in July 2009 in Anaheim, California, is significantly different that that used for previous budgets.
The budget priorities Council approved June 15 arose from a process begun at the Council’s March 2007 meeting in Portland, Oregon, when Resolution AF020 called for a task force to evaluate Council’s role and participation in the process of preparing a proposed triennial budget and recommend ways for Council’s four standing committees to have “meaningful input into the process.”
Based on that task force’s suggestions, Council passed Resolution AF031 in June 2007 calling for a budget committee to oversee Council’s preparation of a proposed budget. The resolution also called for each Council standing committee to “assess the needs and opportunities facing the ministry areas under that Committee’s oversight” and “to identify the key goals and mission priorities for such ministry areas for the 2010-2012 Triennium.” That work is what resulted in Resolution EC017.
Budget Committee chair Josephine Hicks told Council that the next step is for the Church Center’s management team to gather budget proposals based on these priorities from Church Center staff and the church’s committees, commissions, agencies and boards (CCABs).
PB&F chair Pan Adams, who sits in on Council’s Administration and Finance Committee meetings, told ENS that the entire process is aimed at developing a proposed 2010-2012 budget that “expresses the mission of the church.”
“What we’re trying to do is show the church how the dollars spent directly effect the people in the pews,” she said.
Adams also said that the process will allow Episcopalians to comment on the budget at key points leading up and including the budget hearings in Anaheim.
Read the rest here.