[Episcopal News Service – Linthicum Heights, Maryland] The Episcopal Church Archives would move to a new permanent location at a church property in the Diocese of Atlanta, under a plan authorized June 24 by Executive Council, the church’s interim governing body.
The resolution adopted by Executive Council directs church leaders to conduct final negotiations to purchase and redevelop the 3.5-acre property in Oakwood, Georgia, formerly St. Gabriel’s Episcopal Church, which closed in October 2023. Documents and artifacts detailing centuries’ worth of Episcopal Church history are preserved by the Archives, which currently occupy a leased warehouse space in Austin, Texas.
“We are hopeful at the prospect of making St. Gabriel’s the future home for The Episcopal Church Archives,” Chief Financial Officer Christopher Lacovara told Episcopal News Service. “We plan to approach negotiations balancing market realities with our responsibility for stewardship of church resources and the need to preserve our shared stories.”
The Archives vote occurred on the final day of Executive Council’s June 23-25 meeting here at the Maritime Conference Center in suburban Baltimore. Presentations and council business this week also included updates from church leaders on the ongoing churchwide staff realignment, the future of Episcopal Migration Ministries, upgrades to the church’s financial management systems and the work of Episcopal Relief & Development.
“We’re in the midst of a serious reallocation of resources to invest in mission … so that we can be heard [by the world] and our very powerful witness can be most effectively carried out,” Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe said June 24 in his formal report to Executive Council on the realignment and other changes since he took office last fall.
In addition to endorsing the Archives plan, council voted this week to finalize the elevation of the church’s Navajo Nation mission to the new Missionary Diocese of Navajoland by accepting the new diocese’s constitution.
And council elected two new Episcopal members to the Anglican Consultative Council: Puerto Rico Bishop Rafael Morales Maldonado and Diocese of New York lay leader Yvonne O’Neal. They will join the Rev. Ranjit Mathews of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut on the ACC, one of the Anglican Communion’s four Instruments of Communion. The three Episcopal members will participate with members from the other 41 Anglican provinces around the world at the next ACC meeting, scheduled for summer 2026 and hosted by the Church of Ireland.
Executive Council also paid tribute to the Ven. Stannard Baker, a member and deacon from the Diocese of Vermont who died of an apparent heart attack overnight after participating online June 23 in the meeting’s first day. On June 25, council voted for a resolution named in Baker’s honor that backs the creation of a working group to improve churchwide support for deacons. Council concluded its work by approving a courtesy resolution remembering Baker and standing for a moment of silence before Rowe offered a final prayer.
Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe gives a report to Executive Council on June 24 at the Maritime Conference Center in suburban Baltimore, Maryland. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service
Executive Council is the church’s governing body between the triennial meetings of General Convention. It 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.
The presiding bishop chairs Executive Council, and the House of Deputies president serves as its vice chair. Its 38 other voting members are 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.
Its next meeting is in October at Kanuga, the Episcopal conference center in the Diocese of Western North Carolina.
The Archives vote was Executive Council’s central action on its final day of this meeting, following a presentation in closed session about financial considerations and other details related to the Diocese of Atlanta site. Selecting a new location brings the church a major step closer to concluding its nearly 20-year effort to find a new home for The Episcopal Church Archives.
General Convention passed a resolution in 2006 initiating efforts to relocate the Archives, and in 2009, The Episcopal Church purchased a parking lot across the street from St. David’s Episcopal Church in Austin, intending to develop part of the lot for the Archives. In the subsequent decade, the value of real estate in Austin surged, and in late 2018, the church chose to sell the undeveloped lot, realizing a net investment return of several million dollars.
The Archives have been without a long-term home since 2021, when they moved out of space they had occupied for 60 years at the Seminary of the Southwest. The church had been keeping about 6,500 cubic feet of material on the third floor of the seminary’s Booher Library, including letters, diaries, photographs, motion pictures, plans, maps, certificates of ordination, journals of every diocese, various periodicals and magazines, church newspapers, paintings and parish histories. An overflow of additional archival materials was kept in rented storage at three offsite warehouses.
Instead of building a new facility, Archives staff oversaw renovations of a rented 10,000-square-foot former furniture store in Austin to include a lunchroom, bathrooms, a shipment receiving area and an archival reading room. That facility helped address storage constraints but was never seen as a permanent solution.
In January 2024, Executive Council authorized negotiations for a potential long-term lease of space at the DeKoven Center in Racine, Wisconsin. The DeKoven Center, with an 11-acre campus overlooking Lake Michigan about a half hour south of Milwaukee, originally was founded by Episcopalians in 1852 as Racine College under Bishop Jackson Kemper. Today, it is operated by the nonprofit DeKoven Foundation as a retreat center and a popular site for weddings and other events.
When Executive Council discussed that plan again in April 2024, however, members concluded the meeting without finalizing a lease agreement, and church leaders instead began researching a broader range of potential sites for consideration.
Several options were presented to Executive Council at its meeting this week, though the Diocese of Atlanta site was the only recommendation, receiving unanimous backing of the Archives Advisory Committee and two committees of Executive Council. The final council vote also was unanimous.
“We concluded that [the DeKoven Center] site was too expensive, did not have room to grow and would not have been owned and controlled by the church since occupancy would have been subject to a long-term lease,” the committees said in their explanatory text attached to the resolution.
“The site in the Diocese of Atlanta offers more benefits at a lower cost than other sites, with the significant advantage of a reasonable purchase price so that the church owns and controls it indefinitely. … The new Archives facility shall be constructed to incorporate nationally recognized and designated professional standards.”
The resolution did not specify the estimated purchase price for the property nor what it would cost to redevelop the site to house the Archives. Lacovara, the church’s chief financial officer, said church leaders are still considering whether it would be most appropriate to renovate and expand existing structures on the property or pursue new construction for the Archives.
– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.