Following last week's announcement about Episcopal church staff realignment, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe provides further insight into the vision behind the changes underway. The following is the video transcript from Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe.
On the day I was elected presiding bishop in June 2024, I told the General Convention:
It’s time to reorient our churchwide structures—budgets and staffs—to support dioceses and congregations on the ground where ministry happens. To build on what dioceses and diocesan partnerships already do better than the churchwide structure, to use churchwide resources to strengthen those ministries.
We must reform our structure and governance so that our essential polity, in which laypeople, clergy, and bishops—all of us together—share authority, doesn’t collapse under its own weight.
It’s been about four months since I took office, and I want to tell you a little bit more about the progress we’re making toward this goal.
First of all, I want to tell you something about the vision we’re moving. I believe that The Episcopal Church has the capacity to be a strong, adaptive church that communicates and embodies the depth of Christian spirituality and works toward our vision of God’s kingdom by supporting ministry on the ground in dioceses.
Our spiritual tradition tells us that God is calling us into an ever-deepening relationship with God and Jesus Christ and with our fellow human beings. This spiritual wisdom is essential to our ability to lead through the seismic structural, demographic, and institutional changes that lie ahead for The Episcopal Church. It is also one of our greatest gifts to the world, and I believe one of the things that gives us the ability to reach new people in our congregations and communities.
Strengthening our institution matters because it is the means by which we ensure that The Episcopal Church can make a strong and effective witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We need to become one church, one church in Jesus Christ.
Now, we lack the capacity in too many places. We have committed leaders who are eager to participate more effectively in God’s mission across the church, in all orders of ministry; we hear and see that leaders are ready for a season of significant change in how we work toward our vision of God’s kingdom.
But over the course of the last generation, the landscape of The Episcopal Church has shifted dramatically. The increasing secularization of the United States, open access to information, increasing speed of change, internal and external culture wars, and a variety of other variables contribute to this shift.
The result is that the church, which has for centuries been accustomed to a place of privilege, is struggling to redefine its engagement in God’s mission.
I believe that by understanding that we are one church in Jesus Christ, we can strengthen the institution to support the congregations and institutions where ministry is taking place—in places where faithful Episcopalians gather day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, to worship God, to celebrate, to mourn, and to care for God’s people.
That’s the vision driving the realignment of the church center staff that’s now underway.
As you know, this realignment was directed by the Executive Council in 2023 and incorporated in the 2025-2027 General Convention budget and requires us to reduce staff by $3.6 million over the course of a triennium.
Our goal with the realignment, however, is not solely financial. By identifying priorities for our work as a staff and restructuring the staff to support dioceses more fully, we believe that we can help The Episcopal Church make an even stronger and more effective witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
To realize this vision, we will have to change some of our core staff priorities significantly. In some areas, we will pivot to focusing on investing in strong diocesan programs and initiatives and making them available to the entire church. In other areas, we’ll be trying some experiments to see what might work in today’s church, learning from what we try, and building on what succeeds.
On any journey, there are hard stretches and easy paths, and I’m glad we’re traveling this road together.
May God bless you now and always.