Report of the Clerical Representative to Executive Council Meeting June 25-28, 2021

 The Executive Council’s meetings were held on June 25-28, Plenary sessions of that meeting were live-streamed and are available for your viewing. A few highlights of the meeting are: 

​The Presiding Bishop announced that a new churchwide racial truth and reconciliation Commission will be established to bring recommendations to the 80th General convention to acknowledge and reconcile the church’s role in the numerous racial exploits.

Leaders from the Episcopal Church in North Texas, formerly the Diocese of Fort Worth, talked about the diocese’s 12-year legal battle with the Anglican Church in North America and its ongoing threat to The Episcopal Church.

We met in small groups and committee meetings, where council members shared their reactions to the findings of the racial audit, which concluded that people of color experience lack of access to power and experience stress from being held to unreasonable expectations, as well as their feelings of being invisible or over visible. We identified with the racial Audit and we are seeking ways for the church to reconcile and improve the way forward.
 
On Saturday, July 17, at 2 p.m. Eastern, bishops, deputies and alternate deputies of The Episcopal Church will gather online for a convocation of prayer to prepare for the 80th General Convention, which will take place on July 7-14, 2022 in Baltimore, Maryland. The service will be open to everyone at www.episcopalchurch.org/convocation-of-bishops-and-deputies. Presiding Bishop Michael Curry will preach. House of Deputies President Gay Clark Jennings will give opening remarks and officiate at the service, which will be led by deputies, bishops and others from across the church. The service is scheduled for the Feast of William White, who was the only person to serve as both The Episcopal Church’s presiding bishop and president of its House of Deputies.
 
Council approved the resolution brought by my JSC, Mission Beyond in support of Representative James Clyburn's bill H.R. 301 which proposes that “Lift Every Voice and Sing” be established as the national hymn of the United States.

Mally Ewing Lloyd completed her finance report and ended our meeting with the following list of accomplishments the Executive Council has achieved over the past year. I share this with you with her permission so you can be proud of the work your council has performed in spite of an unprecedented pandemic around the world.  

Yet despite our human foibles, and exhaustion, and worry or fear, we have done the work.  Listen for a minute to what we have done in the last 13 months: Not by way of patting ourselves on the back, prideful, but by way of taking a moment to notice that the Spirit has worked in and through this Executive Council."

The work of the church, nuts and bolts:

• Budget Management guidelines-staff sick time guidelines-grant use during Covid- reset dates for GC80
• PPP discussions- reworked budgets for 2020 and 2021, adjusted as needed
• Zoom meetings of EC and JSCs (how many more times we all met)
• Archives – rent, construct, move!
• Hired a new CLO
• Diocesan Relief Grants. No strings attached, and discernment process
• Approved adjustments to the diocesan and parochial reports to reflect Covid effects on ASA
• Trusts, grants, appointments, kept our governing docs and policies up to date, regular business of EC – didn’t miss a beat –

 
Thanks to staff GCO, HOD, and PB
 
Engaging the church and the world, responding and anticipating:

• MB 021 recognition of Global implications of the Pandemic
• MW 025 Disparate impact of Covid on Communities of Color
• MW024 – sent BBC RR Grants
•  2 resolutions on MW 023 Policing violence and MB017 – Policing reform
• MW 029 Ahmaud Arbery death and EC response
• MW FIN 001 – unsolicited grants to KY & MN in wake of policing violence; ECEC Atlanta and Georgia for dismantling racism work
• MW 036 – authorized the creation of a White Supremacy and Deradicalization working group (staff) and at this meeting received its report – in 5 short months
  
  

--Received and reflected on the report of the Racial Justice Audit

• MB 025 – Condemned Hate Crimes against Asian and Pacific Islanders, suggested action
• MB 020   support for rights and existence of the Indigenous Peoples of Amazonia
• MW 040 – Reviewed and renewed commitment to LGBTQ+ equality
• ​Approved adjusting name and gender on official documents
• MB 024 – Encouraged Carbon Capture and Storage
• Struggled in committee with treatment of children in indigenous boarding schools
• Invited Province IX – how life and ministry is in the Covid crisis

Respectfully Submitted,
The Rev. Lillian J. Davis-Wilson