Is the Presiding Bishop looking to do a "Juan Williams" on the Executive Council?

from BabyBlueOnline by BabyBlue

UPDATE FROM ENS: Here is the report of today's work from the Executive Council meeting - click here. What is rather fascinating is the difference between the ENS report and the official "message" from the Executive Council. It doesn't even sound like the same meetings. It sounds like all sunshine and light reading the Executive Council "message," but here is what ENS is reporting:

During the course of the discussion during the FFM committee sessions on Oct. 24, Episcopal Church Treasurer Kurt Barnes reported that the Mission Funding Office, created by General Convention in 2003 and chartered by Executive Council in February 2005, has received$355,000 in "actual cash through the door." Its initial fund-raising goal was $250 million and has grown to nearly $375 million as other projects were assigned to the office, according to conversations during the committee's sessions. The General Convention-adopted budget for 2010-2012 allocated the office (in lines 185-196 here) $1.5 million in operating expenses.

The approved 2011 budget also includes payments of $1.1 million in interest and $1.2 million in principal towards a $37 million loan used for Church Center renovations authorized by council in 2004 and completed in 2007.

By way of a related resolution proposed by FFM, the council approved borrowing of up to $60 million to refinance $46.1 million in debt that comes due at the end of this year. The $37 million renovation loan makes up the bulk of that amount. In addition, close to $10 million was spent on property in Austin, Texas, as a potential site for relocating the Archives of the Episcopal Church. The resolution said that the borrowing authority is also meant "to provide continuing working capital and liquidity."

The resolution requires that any refinancing agreements include a mandatory repayment schedule for the $37 million at a fixed interest rate. FFM chair Del Glover told his committee earlier in the meeting that because of past budget decisions, only about $500,000 of the principal has been paid off.

"To the extent that we are not paying debt, we are borrowing money to do the ministry of the church," he said.

The resolution calls for mortgaging the Episcopal Church Center in Manhattan and securing the rest of the borrowing with unrestricted endowment assets. The current debt is in the form of a line of credit.

Finances for Ministry initially discussed the borrowing authority during an Oct. 23 session that grew somewhat heated when Barnes objected to Glover having appointed a subcommittee to look into the refinancing possibilities and the borrowing philosophies behind them. Barnes said he was told that the subcommittee was to be a council of advice for him, but said "the council of advice never invited my opinion, so I don't feel it's a council of advice.

He said that the subcommittee's report did not take into account the work that he and Margareth Crosnier de Bellaistre, the church's director of investment management and banking, had been doing for many months to explore refinancing options and solicit proposals from lenders. "It acts as if we've been asleep," Barnes said of the report.

"The way it was approached, my staff and I absolutely felt that our intelligence or ability was always being challenged," Barnes said. "We give 10 hours a day to this church and then we have other people who say, 'but you don't know what you're doing.' That's our problem and if we have misread it, then I am sorry.

Glover said that the finance office staff had misread the subcommittee's intent. He said the group, made up of former members of the Joint Audit Committee of Executive Council and the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society and those with expertise in the area, was in fact offering advice and contacts, not implementing policy. He said the need for the subcommittee grew out of the audit committee's concern about the level of debt the church has and about the payment coming due at the end of the year.

Read the rest here - it isn't pretty. Bishop Schori points to something wrong in the system but doesn't seem able to take responsibility for her own lack of leadership. Now they are going to mortgage 815. And still we don't know how much is being spent on litigation.

In an interesting development, the Executive Council is suddenly abandoning the embryonic shadow diocese being created in the Diocese of South Carolina. Instead, Jim Simons is going to take Mark Lawrence to lunch and swap stories over old times, metaphorically speaking. "There are canonical limits to how her (the Presiding Bishop) office and the Executive Council can intervene. So much for more lawsuits - fascinating! In fact, Bishop Schori told Jim Simons that "the more bridges we can build, the better."

In addition - without comment - the Executive Council "Adopt a revised whistleblower policy for DFMS employees (GAM008)." What's up with that? What is the story here? What exactly is going on? And why release the sunshine and roses "message" that seems to bear no connection to what actually took place at the Executive Council. From that message they spent most of the time eating and looking at the foliage.

EARLIER:


Anglican Curmudgeon digs deep and asks some good questions in his post today. The Executive Council of The Episcopal Church is meeting in Salt Lake City and the Presiding Bishop's remarks were indeed - at best - peculiar. Just exactly who or what is she talking about? Is she indeed talking about the Executive Council itself - it does seem as though she is calling into question the role of The Executive Council. ENS reports:

[The Presiding Bishop] urged the council to claim its "rightful function" to help the whole church focus on the "big-picture, long-distance view, not just bean-counting."

"The budget needs to be managed, personnel need to be treated justly; that's not our primary focus, those are vehicles for mission," she said. "We do have the capacity to think bigger and more strategically for life in the future."

But is it not the focus of the Executive Council to provide oversight to the budget and be the governing authority of General Convention between conventions? What is this phrase of "committing suicide by governance" she is throwing in the direction of the very body that is charged with oversight? Is she attempting to distract the Executive Council away from their duties and charge? ENS writes:

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori challenged the Episcopal Church's Executive CouncilOct. 24 to avoid "committing suicide by governance."

Jefferts Schori said that the council and the church face a "life-or-death decision," describing life as "a renewed and continually renewing focus on mission" and death as "an appeal to old ways and to internal focus" which devotes ever-greater resources to the institution and its internal conflicts.

ENS also writes:

"However, I think we're in some danger of committing suicide by governance by focusing internally rather than externally," she said. "Dying organisms pay most attention to survival. Our Haiti initiative is a positive counter-force to that. It's an example of what's possible when we turn outward rather than inward."

But isn't that the responsibility of the Executive Council - to provide oversight to the internal workings of the church? What is happening inward - especially with the call of major cuts in the budget, so much so that the budget cuts of General Convention 2009 (which were saved for last and were intensely painful to the staff) are not enough and more cuts will be done. There is a call to raise money for Haiti (how does $10 million sound?) as if to be a diversion to what appears to be serious issues in the internal governing of The Episcopal Church.

And who is raising concerns that would cause such language as "committing suicide by governance?"

ENS reports:

Jefferts Schori said, there is what she called "a sometimes rather adversarial attitude" in the council that is the result of "confusion about roles."

"Sometimes committees try to do the work of staff," she said. "Council sometimes forgets that its job is about policy-making and accountability, and we live with the challenge of having 40 people challenged to make decisions together. There's a reason why Jesus called 12 disciples, it's a manageable group for conversation."

One did not know that governing councils need to be small enough so that they can be managed. Managed by whom?

The Audit committee also met in executive session and discussed the retention of a law firm to deal with issues raised by the audit. A report should be made at this council now underway. But what are the results of the audit? And what issues are so severe that that a law firm (and its costs) is being retained?

ENS reports that the Executive Council:

met in executive session to receive an audit committee report. At their June 16-18 meeting, the council also met in executive session and later approved a request (via Resolution FFM022) from the Joint Audit Committee of Executive Council and the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society to retention McDermott Will & Emery as outside legal counsel to assist in the evaluation of employment and personnel practices and provide an update to council at this meeting.

What issues would warrant the retention of yet another law firm?

And speaking of legal costs - why do we still not have an official accounting of all the costs associated with pursuing a litigation strategy against dissent, as opposed to allowing individual dioceses to pursue less expensive and less draconian methods of negotiation? Anglican Curmudgeon estimates that the legal costs are $21.65 million so far - enough to take care of Haiti two times over with some cash to spare.

Read more of Curmudgeon's analysis here. As we also attempted to decipher the Presiding Bishop's remarks, it does seem clear that that she is questioning some kind of internal dissent within Executive Council (and not just of course within the ranks of what are now the Anglican Church in North America dioceses and parishes), but within the Executive Council. Is she looking for a more "manageable" group of people (say, like the so-called Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion which has also lost substantial members for it's attempts at "managing conversation")? What of a public accountability to the litigation costs - one does wonder whether these questions are finally being raised within Executive Council itself as they face cutting the budget even more than was done at General Convention? What of the Presiding Bishop's remarks about "bean counting," when such oversight is the distinct responsibility of Executive Council? Who will count the beans if they don't?

It is not wise to rock a boat when it's name may be the Titanic.

Does this not seem like a strategic game (euphemistically called "mission") where outwardly a manageable group projects to the outside world that all is well and no one is afraid? Does this sound familiar? What if internal questions are indeed being raised and individuals serving on the Executive Council do admit to serious concern that the current trajectory of this particular denomination is in a spiral downwards? Why the silence on the mounting litigation costs?

Is there not a concern that one will be shown the door one way or the other if such questions are raised - and hence the odd remarks from the Presiding Bishop - (that they are unmanageable, that they are committing "governance suicide") and in doing so will they not too as be shown - one way or the other - the door as one particular journalist was this past week at NPR?

Read the Anglican Curmudgeon here and the ENS report here and here.