The Executive Council of the Episcopal Church is holding its final meeting of the Triennium this week in Maine. Most of the work they will do will be focused on preparing for this summer’s General Convention. Episcopal Life reports on the first day’s activities.
Of particular interest is the way that the Presiding Bishop characterized the mood at the Primate’s meeting in Alexandria earlier this year:
“The Presiding Bishop also told Council that the recent meeting of primates — leaders of the Anglican Communion’s provinces — featured a ‘shift in not just tone, but emphasis and focus’ to concern about mission and the difficulties facing people in Zimbabwe and the Sudan. Discussions at the meeting also showed ‘evidence of room for conscientious dissent on each of the three moratoria and I think that represents some significant movement.’
‘There are some hopeful signs of movement around the communion,’ Jefferts Schori said. ‘I think our challenge is going to be how to encourage our own members to recognize that we’re interested in having a diversity of opinion in this church and that there is room for those who dissent with decisions of General Convention and those who feel pushed to one end of the spectrum.
‘One of our biggest challenges is the fact that conservative members of this church now feel that they are on the extreme right end where they used to be closer to the middle. That’s a perception, but it’s a real perception [that] causes significant amount of distress and reactivity.'”
Additionally Executive Council heard reports on the work of relocating and housing the Archives of the Episcopal Church, how Episcopal Relief and Development is growing at an “exponential rate” and a report from the Mission Funding Initiative Director, The Rev. Susan McCone. McCone reports that she believes that it is still possible to raise large sums of money for national church projects even in a difficult economic climate.
Read the full article here.