Executive Council receptive to presiding bishop’s vision; tensions persist over Spanish translations

[Episcopal News Service – New Brunswick, New Jersey] Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe presented a more detailed vision for the beginning of his nine-year term as denominational leader at a Nov. 7-9 meeting here of Executive Council – which then agreed to his plan to establish a new committee structure for carrying out the interim governing body’s business.

Rowe took office Nov. 1 promising to refocus The Episcopal Church’s governance and operations to support Episcopal ministries at the congregational and diocesan levels. On Nov. 4, he announced a series of churchwide staff changes partly intended to begin that transition, and on Nov. 7, he addressed Executive Council directly about its role in the church’s evolving mission strategy.

His underlying message: Effective churchwide structures are needed now more than ever in a world craving justice, liberty and unity, especially in the United States, where last week’s presidential election revealed a sharply divided electorate.

Rowe acknowledged that older institutions like the church have their share of detractors in today’s society, but “vibrant institutions are crucial to sustaining meaning and purpose.”

“We need structures desperately because we need to be able to build more capacity for vision, for all of these values that we say that we hold, for all of the ways in which we want to witness to the world,” he said. “When we do it right, when we are doing it in accordance with the practices of Jesus Christ, which calls us to a very different way … I think it brings a kind of life and reality to being the risen body of Christ in the world.”

Rowe, as presiding bishop, serves as chair of Executive Council, which is the church’s governing body between 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.

Last month, during two orientation sessions held online with Executive Council members, Rowe sought to more clearly define the roles and responsibilities of Executive Council and the presiding bishop’s staff. Then last week, during Executive Council’s first meeting of the church’s new triennium, Rowe implemented several changes that he said were based on feedback from past members, other church leaders and staff.

As one example, instead of inviting staff to regularly present updates to Executive Council about departmental work, Rowe plans to limit such presentations to matters of particular importance to the business of each council meeting. He also wants to conduct more of Executive Council’s business in livestreamed plenary sessions, while reserving committee discussions for addressing specific tasks.

And Rowe and House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris, who serves as Executive Council’s vice chair, proposed an update to its bylaws that included an overhaul of its committee structure, to give the body more flexibility to address emergent issues while ensuring that core functions aren’t neglected.

Executive Council’s role as a board is essential, Rowe said. “We exercise oversight of this critical ministry that the world needs. When we do our work well, we help ensure that the structures of the Episcopal Church are containers for ministry that follow Jesus on the ground.”

Before voting on changes to the bylaws, council members debated Rowe’s proposal for five new ad hoc committees and two joint standing committees. Previously, Executive Council had maintained four joint standing committees; of those, Rowe and Ayala Harris recommended eliminating two that were focused on ministry while keeping the Finance Committee and the Governance and Operations Committee.

Rowe then spoke in favor of creating the following committees for as long as they are needed:

Realignment Committee – to advise Rowe as he develops plans for a structural realignment of churchwide staff and operations, as requested by Executive Council in its last term.
Committee on Mission and Ministry in Haiti – to consider ways The Episcopal Church can assist the Diocese of Haiti and Episcopal ministries in the country, which has been torn apart by violence and civil unrest. The 81st General Convention passed Resolution D060 requesting this work.
Executive Officer Review Committee – to advise the presiding officers as they consider the future role of the executive officer of General Convention, following the Rev. Michael Barlowe’s retirement this year.
Nominating Advisory Committee – to identify skills and experience that would be beneficial to Executive Council when recruiting future nominees.
Archives Subcommittee – as a subset of the Governance and Operations Committee, to ensure progress on the church’s continuing efforts to establish a new, permanent home for The Episcopal Church Archives.

Annette Buchanan, a lay member from the Diocese of New Jersey, noted that Rowe’s recommended committees seemed more focused on church structure than on ministry and program. Betsy Ridge, from the Diocese of Massachusetts, echoed Buchanan’s concerns and argued for creating one dedicated program committee, “so that a group can talk about which of those mission priorities are most important right now.”

Council voted against Ridge’s suggestion and ultimately adopted the committee structure suggested by Rowe and Ayala Harris.

At this three-day meeting, held at the Heldrich Hotel and Conference Center, half of Executive Council’s 38 elected members were new to the council and starting six-year terms. Its membership is 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.

Meetings typically are held three times a year. The next will be in February in suburban Baltimore, Maryland.

In addition to approving the bylaws changes, Executive Council passed a series of routine but notable measures. The Joint Budget Committee presented a revised version of the $143 million churchwide budget plan for 2025-27 and a single-year budget for 2025. Both were passed without objection.

Members also approved a work plan for the church’s Committee on Corporate Social Responsibility, which reports to Executive Council. Its focus areas will include human trafficking, immigration, Indigenous cultures, health care, climate change and diversity in corporate governance.

And two Episcopal dioceses that formed this year through mergers of formerly independent dioceses received some relief from the assessments that all dioceses are expected to contribute to the churchwide budget.

The three dioceses in Wisconsin reunited to form the Diocese of Wisconsin, and two dioceses in Michigan merged to form the Diocese of the Great Lakes. Previously, those five dioceses each received the standard $200,000 exemption that all dioceses receive on their revenue figures when calculating churchwide assessments. Executive Council voted to continue granting Wisconsin three exemptions, or $600,000, and Great Lakes two exemptions, or $400,000, at least through 2027.

During a separate session, on Nov. 8, Rowe and the Rev. Molly James, the interim executive officer of General Convention, presented their analysis on the newly released 2023 parochial report data, showing a continuing long-term decline in membership and worship attendance but a recovery from the church’s pandemic lows.

In an otherwise amicable meeting, one of the few discordant notes centered on Spanish-language translations.

Sandra Montes, a lay member from the Diocese of Texas who serves as dean of chapel at Union Theological Seminary in New York, has been an outspoken critic of church leaders’ track record on ensuring that communications and resources are multilingual. She initially confronted Rowe on that subject during Executive Council’s Oct. 31 orientation session.

“I have seen since my very first meeting that Spanish is not treated as respectfully as English is,” Montes said at the time. She has served on Executive Council since 2022. “We have had, over and over, mistranslated – items that are not translated fully or that are not translated well.”

Most Executive Council members speak English. Montes and Puerto Rico Bishop Rafael Morales Maldonado are bilingual. Three other members rely on church-provided Spanish-language translations and interpreters: Isabel Alzate Jaramillo of the Diocese of Colombia, the Rev. Gina Angulo Zamora of the Diocese of Litoral Ecuador and Grecia Christian Reynoso of the Diocese of the Dominican Republic.

On Nov. 9, while Executive Council was in the middle of electing members to its Executive Committee, Montes again raised the issue of translations by confronting Rowe and James, the interim head of the General Convention Office, on what appears was a machine-translated message to all council members.

The message’s heading was “housekeeping notes,” an English colloquialism that had been translated literally into Spanish as “notas de limpieza,” or “notes of cleaning.”

“[For] anybody who speaks Spanish, that is ridiculous,” Montes said. She demanded that the church leaders admit to using Google Translate – which she called “evil” – rather than human translation.

“If Google Translate is The Episcopal Church’s best for the least of these, that is unacceptable,” she said. “You refuse to be Jesus to us. I am angry, not righteous anger, but anger – anger because I started hoping this body was different.”

James clarified that her office does not use Google Translate but relies on the translation software DeepL for less formal messages like the ones Montes referred to. The church pays contractors for professional translations of other materials into multiple languages.

Morales nodded his head while Montes was speaking, and he later stood to speak, agreeing that more should be done to include non-English speakers in the work of a denomination that promotes itself as an international church with a presence in 22 countries and territories.

“I see that we have an opportunity, an opportunity to build a culture of understanding, and that is very, very important,” Morales said, “because when we have a culture of understanding we start to accept each other as is.”

Rowe repeated that he and other church leaders would do their best to improve their handling of translations. “We will continue to try,” he said. “We expect to be held accountable to that, and you’re holding us accountable. And I do appreciate that.”

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