At his blog, Father T. Listens to the World, the Rev. Terry Martin writes about the staff cuts at the Episcopal Church center and to the evangelism budget in particular:
A drastically reduced budget has been approved by General Convention. Among the cuts are various programs at the Episcopal Church Center.
I’m sorry to have to inform you that the entire Evangelism program, including my position [Program Officer for Evangelism and Congregational Life], has been eliminated from the budget.
Other program officer positions eliminated include Worship and Spirituality, Women’s Ministries and Lay Ministry.
All together, 37 positions at the Episcopal Church Center have been cut. No explanation has been offered as to why these programs were chosen for elimination.
One of the most frustrating things about this unexpected development was that it follows right on the heels of the positive time I spent last week with the Evangelism Legislative Committee as they carefully crafted various resolutions. There were plans in place to host evangelism events with our ecumenical partners, create an innovative evangelism “toolkit,” and develop training programs for evangelists, among other things. All these resolutions passed both Houses. I was quite enthusiastic about those proposals. But now, since the entire Evangelism program is gone, I’m afraid there will be no one to implement those excellent ideas. How sad.
So, after eleven brief months, I’ll be moving on.
Read it all. Father T. is also known in the blogosphere as Father Jake.