The Episcopal Diocese of South Dakota

The above photo is Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe speaks Feb. 17 during an Executive Council committee meeting at the Maritime Conference Center in Linthicum Heights, Maryland. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service

[Episcopal News Service – Linthicum Heights, Maryland] Executive Council has talked of a “strategic adaptive realignment” of The Episcopal Church’s operations at least as far back as June 2023. This week, the council got its first substantive look at how those changes will be implemented under the new leadership of Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe.

Dioceses will be offered greater support in responding to Title IV clergy disciplinary complaints, Rowe told Executive Council at its meeting this week. He also aims to help dioceses conduct more effective and timely bishop searches. The church’s Office of Communication will assist locally with digital evangelism and, as needed, with crisis communications. A team of church leaders will begin rethinking how best to convene General Convention, the church’s triennial gathering and its primary governing body.

And under the realignment, various churchwide departments will be “unified” into two divisions, one focused on racial, social and environmental justice programs and the other coordinating the church’s witness to the wider world – with both divisions prioritizing support for the work of dioceses and congregations.

“We’re investing in creating a more unified structure for this work,” Rowe told Executive Council during its morning session Feb. 18. “The Episcopal Church has a unique opportunity and a voice in this particular time, but it has to be strategic and streamlined, carefully planned.”

Executive Council met here Feb. 17-19 at the Maritime Conference Center in suburban Baltimore, with some members participating remotely via Zoom. As presiding bishop, Rowe chairs Executive Council, while House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris serves as vice chair.

Rowe was joined in the Feb. 18 presentation by representatives from Compass, a consulting firm that was hired to help develop and facilitate a realignment plan. It has spent the past four months surveying the churchwide staff, department heads, the House of Bishops and Executive Council to collect and analyze the data that now is informing the planned changes.

Rowe and other churchwide leaders did not reveal yet what those changes will mean for individual church employees, though the presentation’s outlines and summaries suggest The Episcopal Church could be poised to transform significantly how it coordinates program, operations and ministry at all levels of the denomination.

On Title IV, for example, Rowe suggested that the church could expand capacity at the local level by assisting with documentation, procedural advice and training, as well as making experienced intake officers and investigators available to serve multiple dioceses interested in that option. Rowe also would like to help dioceses reduce the time it takes to fill vacant bishop positions, from a current average of about 22 months.

On justice issues, the church’s unified departments would establish regional working groups, so dioceses can collaborate and share best practices. And many small dioceses with minimal staffing “are in need of hands-on help with communications, particular in times of crisis,” Rowe said, such as natural disasters, mass shootings and other catastrophes.

Executive Council, as the church’s governing body between meetings of General Convention, is responsible for managing the churchwide budget, adopting new policy statements as needed and providing oversight for the work of the program and ministry staff that reports to the presiding bishop.

In addition to the chair and vice chair, it has 38 other voting members, a mix of bishops, other clergy and lay leaders. Twenty are elected by General Convention to staggered six-year terms – or 10 new members every three years. The Episcopal Church’s nine provinces elect the other 18 to six-year terms, also staggered.

Executive Council typically meets three times a year, and in the past, its meetings have been hosted by different dioceses around the church. The last meeting, in November 2024, was held in New Brunswick, New Jersey. In response to budget constraints, however, council is scheduled to meet again in June at the Maritime Conference Center, which has long been a frequent meeting venue for the church’s other interim bodies because of its accessible location and cost savings.

Lay member Tivaun Cooper of the Diocese of New York proposed a resolution that would recommit Executive Council to traveling to different dioceses for its meetings. The Rev. Molly James, the interim General Convention executive officer, advised that such a plan could increase the cost of each meeting by $50,000.

Cooper’s resolution was postponed until June so it could be studied further. “We like the general, overall idea, if we can afford it,” said Lawrence Hitt II, a lay member from Colorado who chairs Executive Council’s Governance & Operations Committee.

The rest of the agenda for this week’s meeting was light on action items, though council members voted Feb. 19 to forgive about $2.7 million in debt accrued by the Diocese of South Carolina after a 2012 schism. They also approved the creation of a subcommittee on deaf and disability inclusion, in response to a resolution adopted by the 81st General Convention.

On council’s final day, Rowe also announced that four finalists had been identified in the search for a successor to Chief Financial Officer Kurt Barnes, who is retiring after 21 years in that top leadership position. Rowe and Ayala Harris expect to have a nominee to submit for Executive Council’s approval at a special meeting in March.

Executive Council showered Barnes with applause after Ayala Harris presented him with her President’s Service Award, which she said was given in recognition of his “unwavering commitment to the financial health of The Episcopal Church. His impact will be felt for generations to come.”

Structural changes ‘to serve and comfort and transform God’s people’

Rowe had invited Compass in November to present its initial findings to Executive Council, and this week’s meeting built on those initial deliberations as the presiding bishop prepared church leaders for the coming changes. He and his team indicated that they intended to set more clearly defined priorities and encourage greater collaboration between departments and with dioceses.

“We must remember that our job, as the board of The Episcopal Church, is to lead an institutional structure that has tremendous power to serve and comfort and transform God’s people in congregations and ministries in all the countries we serve,” Rowe said in his opening remarks on Feb. 17.

Rowe’s mandate for change originates in a June 2023 resolution adopted by Executive Council, which set aside about $3 million in unspent funds from the previous triennium to study changes to churchwide structures. It specifically directed the two presiding officers “to conduct strategic adaptive realignment of our institutional structures through such tools as an audit of current Episcopal Church staff and Executive Council responsibilities and an analysis of our work as a granting institution.”

In a separate but related action, the 81st General Convention, meeting in June 2024, adopted a churchwide budget plan for 2025-27 that called for a “staff restructuring” that would save about $3.5 million over three years. It gave no specifics other than suggesting those savings could be achieved through “attrition, restructuring and other reductions TBD by management.”

Also at that General Convention, bishops and deputies elected and confirmed Rowe as the church’s 28th presiding bishop. His nine-year term began Nov. 1, though he began laying the groundwork for a realignment in the months before taking office.

The requested reduction in personnel costs is the equivalent of about 5% of the $76 million that the church budgeted for staff in 2025-27 out of $143 million in total spending. General Convention also anticipated the church would start the triennium with the equivalent of 142.5 full-time positions. That number does not reflect the series of staffing changes that Rowe announced in early November immediately after taking office, and it is not yet clear how many total positions will remain after the realignment.

Three of the top leaders on the staff of the former presiding bishop, the Rt. Rev. Michael Curry, chose to step down by end of 2024: the Rev. Stephanie Spellers, who served nine years as the presiding bishop’s canon for evangelism, reconciliation and creation care; Bishop Todd Ousley, who had served since 2017 as head of the Office of Pastoral Development; and the Rev. Ann Hallisey, who had served for the previous year as canon to the presiding bishop for ministry within The Episcopal Church.

When Rowe announced those departures, he also said three others would be joining his staff: Vanessa Butler, as executive coordinator to the presiding bishop; the Rev. Lester Mackenzie as chief of mission program; and Rebecca Wilson as chief of strategy. During the transition, several senior churchwide employees announced plans to retire, and in early February, Rowe offered additional retirement-eligible employees voluntary retirement packages if they wished to conclude their service to the church.

At the same time, Rowe and his team continued to work with Compass to develop a staff realignment plan, based partly on the feedback they had received from department heads and employees.

Some of the more senior staff told Compass that they recalled “a lot of trauma from past institutional failures,” Korryn Williamson of Compass said in her portion of the Feb. 18 presentation. “But there was a really strong desire for change.”

Williamson said Compass identified several systemic challenges that the realignment aimed to address. Rather than hoarding information, staff would be encouraged to collaborate more across departments and with other stakeholders. Rather than struggle with low expectations for their work, they would be encouraged to take “generative risks in decision-making.” Rather than avoiding difficult conversations, supervisors would emphasize mutual accountability. And rather than passing “judgement and blame,” employees would be encouraged to demonstrate “ownership, empathy and maturity.”

The presentation prompted some Executive Council members to question which root problems were being identified, and they shared concerns about Compass’ precision in describing current staff accountability.

Annette Buchanan, a lay member from New Jersey, said that in her experience, churchwide employees have been “very clear on what their priorities were.”

“Are we saying individually we were expecting them to have their own priorities?” Buchanan asked. “There’s a top-down role and there’s a bottom-up role.”

Williamson responded then when some employees were surveyed about their roles in the organization, “it wasn’t clear how one person’s priorities tied to their peers.”

Heidi Kim from Minnesota also spoke up, noting that she previously worked on the churchwide staff, as racial reconciliation officer for five years until 2019. “As somebody who served on the presiding bishop’s staff, I’m feeling a certain kind of way” after hearing Compass’ staff appraisal, she said.

Kim wondered whether the challenges facing the staff had been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, causing greater physical disconnection. “I am really a big fan of my former colleagues who are currently serving on the staff, and I know in a big transition there’s always anxiety,” she said.

Williamson underscored that most staff expressed unwavering commitment to the church’s mission. “There was strong passion, strong drive – and people’s gifts … weren’t fully being utilized because there wasn’t a structure in place for them to showcase their gifts,” she said.

Hitt, the member from Colorado, echoed some of the other comments and advised caution with how the realignment will be presented to the wider church. “We do feel that it’s really important that any messaging that goes out from Executive Council should not be in any way blaming or shaming staff,” he said. “There have been a lot of staff that have done wonderful work.”

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.