The First Mark of Mission

If you had asked me after the 2009 General Convention what I thought of the church’s chances of surviving more than another 50 years, I would have sighed deeply and asked you to pray for a miracle.  If you had asked me the same question after the 2012 General Convention, I would have said that maybe, just maybe, a miracle is starting to occur.

The Omnibus Resolution on Restructuring was a truly hopeful development, passing both houses unanimously, to great rejoicing.  But if restructuring is only about creating a different framework to contain the same arguments, it’s not going to take us where we need to go.  What we need in the church is a reawakening. 

At Convention, I saw movements beginning to spring up, often among younger clergy and lay people, eager to jump start evangelism and mission in our church.  The Acts 8 Moment was one; Episcopal Evangelism Network is a second.  But these are movements on the fringes – do we have a hope of bringing them to the center?

I think we do, for the most prosaic of reasons: the budget.  Unlike the disaster of the 2009 budget, the disaster of the 2012 budget led to … wait for it … new hope.  Each of the Five Marks of Mission received a pool of money to pay for new mission initiatives. 

My special area of interest is the First Mark of Mission (on which all the others depend, according to the official statement on the Anglican Communion website):  To proclaim the good news of the kingdom.  This Mark could be interpreted in a number of ways, but it assuredly includes ministries of evangelism.  The budget allocated $2 million over three years to this Mark, which is intended to include:

• The “Mission Enterprise Zones” of Resolution A073
• Church Planting
• Funding for the Latino/Hispanic Strategic Plan which was passed with overwhelming support in 2009

The budget left it to Executive Council to decide how the money was to be allocated.  At the invitation of Bishop Stacy Sauls, I attended a gathering last week of church leaders who were convened to advise Church Center management in creating a proposal to bring to the Executive Council meeting in October.  The meeting included:

• Two members of Executive Council (Stephanie Cheney and me);
• Three former or new members of Program, Budget, and Finance (Bishop Alan Scarfe, Frank Logue, and Victoria Heard);
• Five members of Church Center staff (Bishop Stacy Sauls, Sam McDonald, Tom Brackett, Kirk Hadaway, and Anthony Guillen);
• Five current or former church planters (Victoria Heard, Frank Logue, Stephanie Spellers, Lang Lowrey, and me – some of us fall into two categories);
• A representative from the church planting office of the ELCA (Mary Frances).

The group was clear that it was Executive Council’s job to decide how to allocate the funds, and this group was simply there to advise management on a proposal to bring to Executive Council. 

I don’t want to go into details about the proposal we came up with, partly because Executive Council might decide to go in a different direction, and partly because we left a few issues unresolved (to be addressed via email).  However, here are some highlights of our gathering:

• Frank Logue and I led Acts 8-type Bible study and prayer sessions the two days we gathered.  The whole gathering was thereby framed in the Acts 8 paradigm – we are in a new era of the church, being scattered somewhat fearfully into unfamiliar territory, yet finding new ways to proclaim the gospel to new people.

• A short discussion of the difference between the three categories of ministry the money covers:

• Mission Enterprise Zones are diocesan-level ministries with underserved populations, e.g., people in cultures and ethnicities under-represented in The Episcopal Church, youth and young adults, low-income people, etc.
  A073 provided up to $20,000 for such projects (the diocese has to provide matching funds).  The group felt very strongly that these ministries should lead to the creation of a worshiping community (e.g., these are not soup kitchens, though soup kitchens may be involved).

• Church plants are new worshiping communities that are intended to be permanent and (eventually) self-sustaining.  They could receive grants of amounts to be determined by Executive Council.  The group felt that grants of up to $100,000 per project would be reasonable over a three-year period.  The diocese would have to match the funds.

• Latino-Hispanic ministries could fall into either category above, and might have some special provisions.
  

• Since the budget passed by General Convention is not clear about how to allocate the $2 million between the three purposes (Mission Enterprise Zones, church planting, and Latino/Hispanic ministries), we are suggesting that it is best not to arbitrarily divide the money between these three categories.  Our hope is that the grants committee, whoever that turns out to be, would have discretion to determine which projects to fund (with carefully determined criteria).

• We got great help and counsel from Mary Frances, the ELCA representative.  They are light-years ahead of us on church planting, and the funds they allocate make ours pale in comparison.  They are willing to advise and possibly even partner with us on some projects. 

• A small thing that was of some personal interest to me: I really enjoyed getting to know Bishop Alan Scarfe.  He told some inspiring stories of mission during his young-adult days in England and Romania.  He also said that he had never been in a room with church planters before, and he found it very inspiring.  What a revelation!  I guess we church planters are unusual creatures, at that.  But I wonder how it’s different to be in a room with us!

We spent some time “dreaming” about how to start a movement in the church.  One of the fears we share is that there just won’t be enough novel and exciting projects out there to fund, which have sufficient diocesan buy-in to provide matching funds.  We didn’t figure out this question – how to start a missional movement.  Acts 8 folks: what do you think?  How do we start the church dreaming?  How do we midwife a new missional movement in the church?  How do we respond to our Acts 8 Moment? 

Standing in the Presence

In the sanctuary of Church of the Nativity, Scottsdale, where I serve, one of our most cherished items is our icon of the Annunciation.  This is a true icon, written by Laura Fisher Smith, a noted iconographer (as well as the wife of +Kirk Smith, our diocesan bishop).

This Annunciation is different from most traditional depictions of this event, because we don't see the angel. We see Mary, a simple peasant girl, at the moment when the angel comes to her.  Eyes closed, hands uplifted in an attitude of prayer, we see her experiencing God's call to her.

Laura created this icon after a great deal of prayer, and after she and I had discussed our vision for this Annunciation icon.  We made the conscious decision not to depict the angel Gabriel, for who can really say what an angel looks like?  Surely all the gold and halos in the world cannot depict the sheer power and terror of standing in the presence of an angel.

But if we cannot imagine the appearance of an angel, surely we can imagine what a human being looks like who is open to the news an angel brings.  Mary, in our icon, is praying, open, humble.  She seems to be bathed in light from above.  She is preparing herself to say, "Let it be with me according to your word."

I thought of this icon last week as our diocesan clergy attended a seminar on preaching as spiritual direction.  Our keynote speaker, Kay Northcutt, has written a book called Kindling Desire for God: Preaching as Spiritual Direction, in which she says that the true task of the preacher is not to explain, counsel, or entertain, but to act as spiritual director to the congregation.  In this role, we should help people who are yearning for God's presence to begin to experience it.

Northcutt says that in our over-busy world, people are hungry for an experience of God.  How do we provide that in worship?  How do we help our congregations to learn spiritual disciplines that will open their hearts and minds to God's voice?    I interpreted Kay's model of the preacher as spiritual director as meaning that in preaching, we help people to ask questions about real-life experience like, where is God in this?  How is God calling to me right here and now?  The preacher then becomes the one who teaches spiritual disciplines to open our minds and hearts, and who calls the congregation to a life of noticing God's presence and handiwork.

In our Acts 8 gatherings at General Convention, I think that many of us experienced an openness to God's presence, through Bible study, prayer, and dreaming together about what the church could be.  Now that we are home, how can we call our congregations and our church into a practice of openness to God's presence?  How can each of us act as spiritual directors to a yearning world?

Restructuring and Reawakening

I've been fairly silent since returning home from General Convention - partly because I came home, did my laundry, and headed out the next day on my family vacation.  We made it as far as St. Petersburg, Russia, this year - here's a photo for you:

This is the interior of the Church of the Savior on the Spilled Blood in St. Petersburg.  We got there as a service was going on in a side chapel: incense burning, heavenly chant by the choir, priest arrayed in vestments of finest gold, people gathered, standing, silently bowing and crossing themselves and lighting candles as the service went on.  Of course the church in Russia was nearly dead during the Soviet years: 1,000 churches in St. Petersburg at the time of the czars had been reduced to about 5 or 6 still open by 1990.  Other church buildings were demolished, or turned into warehouses, military training facilities, or even (in one case) an indoor swimming pool.  Now, the church is coming back to life.  Five hundred churches are now open in the city, and in each one we entered (on weekdays), there were worshipers gathered for the Divine Liturgy in progress.  Christ is risen, indeed.

Which brings me to wonder why we are so concerned about the future of our church.  Amidst great anxiety about declining numbers and tight finances, The Episcopal Church gathered in General Convention this summer.  It was my second Convention, and after my first, in 2009, I wasn't sure I would return.  The anxiety, conflict, and stuck-ness seemed hopeless.  We made some good decisions, but seemed unable to address the vital issue of how to reverse, or event confront, the church's decline.

This year was different.  Not only did we address the issues before us, we did it with excitement and a sense of positive vision and hope for the future.  We created Enterprise Zones to encourage evangelism with new populations.  We agreed to move our church headquarters away from 815 Second Avenue.  We created a Task Force for Restructuring the Church.

Like many people, I hope that "restructuring" is about more than, well, restructuring.  I hope this is not just another organizational quick-fix that changes a few lines of authority and re-draws our church's flow chart.  I hope that instead, this "restructuring" becomes a reawakening.  I hope that we pray together, discuss together, gain insights from people not otherwise heard, and learn from each other.  I hope we follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  I hope this becomes a new beginning for our church, the start of an explosion of new energy, new ideas, and new people.

In the meantime, I have been elected, along with 37 other people, to serve on Executive Council, our church's Board of Directors.  Members of Executive Council recently received a request to write a one-page introduction and name what we see as the three top priorities for us to address this triennium.  We also were invited to ask any questions we have about how Executive Council works.

The biggest question I have about how Executive Council works is, how should we interact with the Task Force on Restructuring?  (By the way, if you haven't yet applied to serve on the Task Force, the deadline is Thursday, Aug. 23, and the application is here.)  Even though the Task Force is given the challenge of addressing big-picture restructuring issues, without being subordinate to Executive Council or other current leadership structures, I hope that there will be good communication between the two groups.  And I think there are certain tasks which are vital for Executive Council to address right away - tasks that are either inherently part of Council's job, or were given to Council by General Convention.

Here are the priorities I came up with.  Of course these reflect my personal interests and biases.  And since I'm new to Executive Council, and we're all new to this era of restructuring, I may have missed something important.

• Find ways to support creative evangelism and church growth at the local level, such as Mission Enterprise Zones, with special priority given to emerging populations, youth and young adults, and non-English-speaking populations.
• Move the corporate headquarters away from 815 2^nd Ave., find a new headquarters location, and address the related question of how to responsibly leverage 815 as a real estate asset, whether by sale, lease, or other means.
• Revamp Executive Council’s budgeting and financial oversight process and engage in a top-to-bottom review of Church Center costs, including a personnel review.  I support aligning the budget with the Marks of Mission.  Budgeting should be an ongoing process, with wide input, that continually tracks how our financial expenditures are supporting our stated mission priorities.  It should be led by Executive Council, with significant ongoing input from staff, with careful monitoring to ensure that information released to the public actually matches decisions made. 

Those are my thoughts and priorities for Executive Council.  What are yours?  I'd be interested to hear them in the comments.  

These are important issues to discuss.  But - I want to be clear.  The most vital thing for us to discover is, how is the Holy Spirit leading us into a new era?  Difficult times have beset the church from the very beginning, and the Holy Spirit has always led us into new possibilities we never would have imagined on our own.  Read Acts Chapter 8 if you have any doubts about this.  (And check out the Acts 8 Moment's website too.)  Or, if you still doubt that a declining church can be reawakened, maybe this photo will inspire you, the exterior of the Church of the Savior on the Spilled Blood in St. Petersburg.  The refurbishing is almost complete.  The smell of incense fills the air.  The sound of heavenly chanting fills the hearts of the worshipers who gather to pray and hope and share the Eucharist together.  

Christ is risen, indeed.  Alleluia.  

The Acts 8 Moment: Where Do We Go From Here?

The Episcopal Church is a gigantic ship, and surely turning this ship will be a monumental task. Yet a deeply hopeful General Convention created a mandate for change in passing the Structure resolution, providing my favorite moment of the whole Convention. As the vote was taken, the House of Deputies resounded with a hearty "aye" – and not a single "no." Of one accord, every person present - nearly 900 people - agreed to form a Task Force that would lead a process of change. Then we stood in a standing ovation, cheering and clapping, and joined together in singing the hymn, "Sing a New Church Into Being."

The Structure resolution was a good one: carefully drafted, taking the input of many into account, providing for an independent group that will not be supervised or sabotaged by current leadership structures that will want to protect their own standing and their natural inclination to say, “But we’ve always done it that way before!” This group is accountable only to the 2015 General Convention.

Yet my worry is this: the 2015 General Convention will find itself deeply resisting change. The hopeful moment is now, because none of us have seen the change that will be proposed. What happens when this hope-filled task force brings back specifics? We took two votes in the House of Deputies that make me worry that the specifics will bring out forces who want to maintain the status quo. We turned down a proposal to reduce the number of Standing Commissions to two. And we voted to increase the length of General Convention – one of the structures that will be carefully looked at for potential to change – back to 10 days from 8. 

Admittedly, some people voted against eliminating Standing Commissions because they want to see these changes proposed as part of a coordinated Task Force plan. There is wisdom in this. But the natural inclination of any system is to protect itself, and I am concerned that when it comes to the next Convention, we will not show imagination about singing a new church into being.  I am concerned that we will see exactly what you would expect of a big ship: a reluctance to change and a determination, when a new course is offered, to continue plowing steadily ahead.

So where does the Acts 8 Moment come in? In Acts chapter 8, the Holy Spirit drove the disciples out of their comfortable headquarters in Jerusalem, to strange places where they baptized people, like an Ethiopian eunuch, who they probably assumed weren't even qualified to be part of the Kingdom of God. Getting thrown out of Jerusalem transformed the church from a small apocalyptic Jewish sect, waiting for the end times in Jerusalem, into a missionary movement that proclaimed the word to people of all nations and races. You and I are Christians because the church experienced this moment of change.

Today's church needs a similar transformation: it needs the guidance of the Holy Spirit if we are going to move into a new era of change.  The change we need is not simply a matter of changing our structures to save money.  The change we need is to follow the Holy Spirit’s leading into a new apostolic era – where we find ourselves flung out of our comfortable structures and ways of being the church, away from our secure, familiar Jerusalems, into places where we learn to proclaim the gospel in ways we had never imagined.  

We need to start praying for, experiencing, and leading an Acts 8 Moment for The Episcopal Church.

At our gathering on July 11, we talked about hopes for the church – hopes that we will learn to proclaim the gospel wherever we are, in whatever difficult circumstances; hopes that this moment of change will not be lost; hopes that new generations will come to know Jesus through us; hopes that the Holy Spirit will guide us into the changes we need to make.  We believe that the Acts 8 Moment has a place in leading the church in the direction it needs to go, by providing prayer and spiritual guidance that parallels the work of the Structure Task Force, and by holding our church’s leadership to account in advocating for change. 

So, where do we go from here?  Some of our ideas include:

• Bringing the Acts 8 movement of prayer and discernment to the local level, to our parishes, to diocesan and regional gatherings.
• Creating ways to be accountable to each other through online interactions, regular communications, agreed-upon prayer times, etc. 
• Providing resources for a churchwide study of the Book of Acts, that transformational book of the Bible that describes God’s hope for the church and the way the church reaches new people.
• Creating a blogger network where we can share all our ideas.
• Staying involved with the Task Force on Restructuring, praying, getting the grassroots involved, making sure our ideas are heard.
• Making sure we have accountability and community with each other.
• Bringing the Acts 8 renewal movement into parishes, since true change comes from people, not from structures.
• Building an interactive website that has everything we need for the journey, with interactivity and a way for people to communicate with each other.
• Tweet chats at designated times.
• Naming a time of day when we all commit to pray for this initiative, such as 5:08 p.m. (Acts is the 5^th book of the New Testament, so 5:08).
• Building a network of diocesan representatives who could start local gatherings. 
• Meeting face to face to create a Benedictine Rule of Life together (we are considering a conference/meetup in October or November).
• Including some kind of engagement with our communities. 

We have begun the work with our first website, at http://www.acts8moment.org/.  (Thanks to Frank Logue for putting it together!)  Check it out and write in with your suggestions.  Let us know what your ideas are for Acts 8, and what you are feeling called to do and lead. 

Most of all, start praying.  With prayer, discernment, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I believe we truly can turn this ship in a new direction, full of hope and possibility.  

The Acts 8 Moment: A Call to Prayer and Action

What time is it?  It's 2012, but it's not the end of the world!  Instead, it is a time of transition in the church, a time to listen for the voice of the Holy Spirit, a time to go where God says to go.  It's a time for action, but first and primarily, it's a time for prayer, conversation and discernment.  Together with Scott Gunn and Tom Ferguson, I am hoping to start a new conversation at General Convention.  Come and join us to think, pray and dream!  Read more at the bottom of this post.  We would like to open up a space for the Holy Spirit, because ...


This is an Acts 8 Moment.  


It’s a dark time for the church.  Social forces have impacted believers so that it’s not clear how the community of faith can continue.  The institutions that have held the church together are breaking apart, and people are scattered, unsure of their next step, uncertain that the gospel will survive into the next generation.

The Episcopal Church in 2012?  No – the Followers of The Way in Jerusalem, 40 A.D.  Acts Chapter 8 has the story.  A persecution has broken out against the followers of Jesus.  In Jerusalem, the apostles have created an organization, with assigned roles and delegation of responsibilities to deacons and others.  It seems to work, until Stephen speaks out of turn, insisting that the older Temple organization is not necessary.  Stephen gets killed as a result, and a persecution begins.  The fledgling institution is destroyed and scattered, and no one knows what to do.

No one, that is, except the Holy Spirit.  Where human plans have failed, God is doing something new.  It turns out that the very persecution that scatters the believers and destroys their institutions now becomes the seed of new life in unexpected places.  The Twelve had assumed that the main life of the church would always continue in Jerusalem, headquartered in the Temple.  But the Spirit flung the church out into new and frightening places:  Samaria and the road to Gaza and a place called Azotus.  Simon the Magi and an Ethiopian eunuch become Christians.  Baptism happens in a puddle of water alongside a road, instead of in a carefully planned liturgical ceremony.  What will God think of next?

Here in The Episcopal Church, we are not in any danger of being martyred as Stephen was.  But our anxiety over a changing world and a changing role for the church has created a transition point for us, as it did for the church in Jerusalem so long ago.  Our institutions are no longer useful in the same way they once were, society around us often seems hostile to our mission, and we’re not sure what’s coming or how the church can survive into the next generation.  We are being scattered, flung headlong into a new world.

This sounds like a job for the Holy Spirit.  Where human plans fail, God may truly be planning a new thing, something that none of us anticipated.  And the new thing that is coming may well be the very thing that brings life where we least expect to find it.  We may find ourselves in our own symbolic Samaria, on the road to Gaza, or in Azotus, reaching new people in new ways with the good news of God’s grace to us in Jesus. 

The Episcopal Church in 2012 is in an Acts 8 Moment.

Where Should We Go From Here?

As we approach General Convention, we seem to be consumed with questions of “restructuring” and the budget and how we will organize our institutions in the years to come.  I’ve been paying a lot of attention to some of these questions myself.

But I don’t think our structure or our finances or even our decline in membership is what we should be focused on. 

I think we need to focus on what the Holy Spirit is doing. 

How do we do that?

>  First, don’t make any hasty decisions.  In 2009, we restructured by slashing the budget.  No long-term strategic thinking went into what line items were slashed, even though those cuts resulted in long-term changes in how we did our mission.  PB&F was faced with an impossible task, and they did what they could. 

But restructuring by budget-cutting is not a healthy way to run any organization.  Let’s pass a transition budget that does some responsible and sensible cuts, but gives us the time we need to seek out the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

>  Next, don’t deceive ourselves that changing the way General Convention operates, or the place the Church Center does its work, or way we create our budget, or any other organizational fix, is going to get us where we need to be.  Those might be good things to do, but they’re not going to put us on the road to Gaza.  Restructuring our organization isn’t the answer to our problems.

>  Then, allow some space for the Holy Spirit to do its work.  Philip listened, and the angel of the Lord told him to go out to the Gaza Road.  We need to listen too. 

The Episcopal Church in the 21^st century is not in a restructuring moment – we’re in an Acts 8 moment.  Let's open up a process of prayer and discernment that allows people across the church to pray together, to study the Bible together, to dream together about what the church could be.  Let's put everything out on the table, including our dearest structures.  The disciples learned that they didn’t become Christians in Jerusalem – they had to move to Antioch.  Everything has to be open to change, and we have to be ready to listen. 

>  And let's make sure that the group that is coordinating this churchwide discernment process IS open to change.  Yes, we should listen to the voices of experienced folks who have worked on Structure and Executive Council and 815 and other positions of leadership.  But if we are truly going to change, then we can’t depend on our current leadership structures to initiate that change.  We need outsiders to lead us into a new era.  We need Gen Xers and Millennials.  We need people in minority groups.  We need people who understand technology.  We need evangelists and teachers.  We need dreamers and thinkers and organizers.  Let’s get a group together who will lead us into a new generation. 

What’s Next?

A whole bunch of folks will be together at General Convention!  Let’s get the conversation started there.  I am working with Scott Gunn and Tom Ferguson – go check out their blogs too.  Together, the three of us would like to invite anyone who is interested to come together in Indianapolis at 9:30 p.m. on July 5 (location TBA - like us on Facebook or follow the Acts 8 Moment on Twitter for details).  We want to start the process by gathering, praying, reading the Bible, and talking together about the church we dream of seeing.  Let’s listen for where the Holy Spirit is calling us to go!  Let's hear each other's prayers and dreams!  Let’s enter into our own Acts 8 Moment.

“Like” The Acts 8 Moment on Facebook!

“History belongs to the intercessors, who believe the future into being….The future belongs to whoever can envision … a new and desirable possibility, which faith then fixes upon as inevitable. This is the politics of hope. Hope envisages its future and then acts as if that future is now irresistible, thus helping to create the reality for which it longs.”
Walter Wink, 1992 "Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination" Augsburg Fortress p. 299 (reprinted  in Avery Brooke's "Healing in the Landscape of Prayer")

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Part Two

This post is continued from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Part One.

The Bad and the Ugly


When Clint Eastwood rides into town wearing a poncho, people pay attention.  It must be ... The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.  


I talked about The Good points of the PB's budget proposal here.  And I want to be clear - the good points of this proposal are enough to win my support.  This proposal is a vast improvement over the Executive Council proposed budget that came out a few months ago, and caused such a brouhaha.  A kerfuffle.  A dustup.  A mad dash to find the Confederate gold ... no, wait, that's Clint Eastwood again.  


I think we should vote for the PB's proposal, with some adjustments that will no doubt be considered carefully by PB&F as they listen to input in their hearings.  Mostly I support the PB's proposal because it adopts a mission-based and much healthier format that the tired old Canonical, Corporate, Program format, and also because it has much better information regarding necessary staffing levels than Executive Council had.


But as we go to a vote, we need to understand also the negative points of this proposal: the Bad and ,,,


The Ugly.


I really don't have to explain the Ugly to you.  I will leave the astonishment over the crazy process that gave rise to the current budget fracas to Katie Sherrod and the Crusty Old Dean.  I just have to say that I am truly troubled that people have been hurt, that well-intentioned input has been disregarded, that there are mysteries to what happened in this budget melee that still have not been unraveled.  When we in the church start disrespecting, disregarding, and hurting each other, I am concerned that we have lost our way.  Our beloved BCP says that the mission of the church is "to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ" (p. 855).  We are not modeling that reconciliation well within the church; why would others want to join us in our unreconciled differences?  


Can't we make a pact to give each other the benefit of the doubt at this Convention?  Can't we give each other credit for loving Jesus and following him the best way we know how?  Can't we listen, share, and discern God's way forward in atmosphere of trust and respect?  Rodney King has just died - in his honor, can't we all just get along?


It's time for a change in the way we do things ... a big, sweeping change, led by the Holy Spirit, putting an end to old things and taking on new things for a new era.


But more on that later.  For now ... back to Clint Eastwood.


The Bad


It's maybe a bit of an exaggeration to call this "bad" (but we're sticking with Clint Eastwood, by gosh).  But there are a few things I think we should be aware of.  


> This proposed budget does not increase the percentages of funding devoted to mission as much as it appears to.  The pie charts at the back of the document would have us believe that "mission" has increased from 53% (in Bishop Sauls' famous presentation to the House of Bishops) to 67%.  A lot of this apparent increase is due to some accounting reclassifications.  For instance:

• $4.5 million of principal payments on the 815 debt were moved out of administrative expenses altogether, and shown in the PB's proposed budget as a discretionary use of cash surplus rather than an administrative expense (which it was in the EC budget).  The money is still being spent, on exactly the same thing it was before (that lovely hierarchical-model headquarters building), but it's no longer counted as administrative expense, or any kind of expense.  This is not a reduction in administrative expenditures.  But it makes the percentages look better.  
• The new budget takes $4.6 million of administrative services provided to affiliated organizations, like ERD, ECF, UTO, etc., breaks them out separately, and includes them in the percentages devoted to "mission."  Those same expenses were incurred in EC's budget, but included in administration.  Again, it makes the percentages look better while changing nothing.
• Funding for the Development Office in this budget, as in the EC budget, comes from a special draw on the endowment, shown in income.  The EC budget had an inexplicable error that needed to be corrected: it showed expenses less than income for this item of $1,250,000.  Therefore the EC budget was actually a deficit budget of this amount.  The PB's budget has corrected this error and described the costs of the Development Office as a "mission" expenditure.  The correction needed to be made.  But again, it increases the percentages.
• The PB's budget shows a special collection for Haiti, spearheaded by the Development Office, in the amount of $1.6 million, and also shows it in "mission" expenditures.  The expense is a wash - income equals expense, and presumably if the Development Office doesn't succeed in raising the funds, the money won't be spent - but it increases, once again, the "mission" percentage.  
• I calculate that if the above items were treated consistently with EC's treatment, the percentages in this budget would be Mission - 60%; Governance - 11%; Administration - 29%.  Still an improvement over the percentages in Bishop Sauls' presentation.  Just not as dramatic an improvement as it appears on first glance. 
• Please understand, the accounting treatment of all the above items is appropriate; we should just not understand them as actually improving our situation.  

> I am not convinced that it is appropriate to fund a new Development Office from the endowment.  I generally think we do need a Development Office, but unless that office is raising funds for the endowment, I do not think it should be funded from the endowment.  This is drawing down our permanent asset base to pay operating expenses.  According to a copy of the Development Office Strategic Plan, the initiatives it is planning to support include the Archives, rebuilding in Haiti, church planting, and support for Navajoland and other area missions.  These are operating expenses.  If this office is important to us (which it probably is), we should find a way to fund it from operations.  Or, be honest about it and change the percentage draw we are taking from our endowment investments to show the Development Office as an operating expense.

> Likewise, I am not sure where the special initiative for Haiti, which is listed as a separate income item and which the Development Office is supposed to support, comes from.  Who created this priority?  If Executive Council agreed with this priority, why was it not in their budget?  If staff created this priority, I think it needs to be agreed to by General Convention.  Which I guess is what we're doing in this budget.  I just think things need to be clearly stated and justified.  Rebuilding Haiti is a great cause, and I support it. I just think we need to decide together on this priority.  

> Speaking of which, this budget allocates our entire 0.7% MDG commitment to Haiti.  Let's decide on this together.  

> Like the EC budget, this budget eliminates the General Board of Examining Chaplains.  I am not crazy about the GOEs myself, remembering long hard days tortuously slogging my way through those things.  I commend to you Crusty Old Dean's alternate proposal for GOEs.  But in the meantime, it is a canonical mandate.  I asked Bishop Sauls how you de-fund a canonical mandate.  He said that the existence of the GOEs is a canonical mandate, but that doesn't mean the funding of them is a canonical mandate.  Sophistry, angels dancing on heads of pins!  He said that perhaps, for instance, the GOEs could be funded entirely from user fees.  So there's that.  But I think this is an example of restructuring by de-funding, which I do not believe is a healthy way to operate.  If we are going to de-fund something, I think we should have a good reason, corporately decided (not by 815 staff), and a plan for how to get that function accomplished otherwise.

Now, Gentle Reader, if you have followed me this far, I congratulate you.  You have now heard my take on the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in this budget proposal.  After all is said and done, in my opinion the Good outweighs the Bad or the Ugly in the PB's budget proposal.  Clint Eastwood may now ride into the sunset!  

I think we should adopt the PB's budget, with perhaps a few changes.  Because:

>  It directs our attention to Mission.

>  It contains a few new and needed initiatives.

>  It shows a good level of conscientious budget-cutting, backed up by much better data than EC had.

>  It restores Christian Formation and Vocation, which is the subject that got me (and maybe you) all worked up about the budget in the first place.  

>  It does not make the mistake I believe we made in 2009 of making long-term restructuring decisions based on short-term budget-cutting measures.  

>  And therefore, it provides us some breathing room.  We can work together, beginning at this Convention and continuing into the next triennium, on discerning God's will for this church.  Structure?  It's not about Structure.  It's about the mission of the church.  God's mission.  Let's pray, read the Bible, study, and discern together where God is leading us.  

More on this tomorrow.