Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe gives opening remarks Nov. 7 at a meeting of Executive Council at the Heldrich Hotel and Conference Center in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Photo: David Paulsen/Episcopal News Service
[Episcopal News Service – New Brunswick, New Jersey] Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe opened his first Executive Council meeting as chair of the church governing body on Nov. 7 with brief remarks that acknowledged the momentous events of the past few days while committing the church to careful discernment about its future.
“It might be an understatement to say this has been quite a week,” Rowe told fellow council members as they convened in a ballroom of the Heldrich Hotel and Conference Center in this college town south of Newark.
Rowe took office on Nov. 1, and the next day, the church celebrated the beginning of his nine-year term during a livestreamed investiture held in the chapel at The Episcopal Church’s New York headquarters. One of his first acts as presiding bishop was to issue a letter to the church responding to the Nov. 5 election of former President Donald Trump to a second term.
In his opening remarks at Executive Council, Rowe underscored his message in that letter – that “regardless of our political allegiances, God has called us to seek Christ in all persons” and to strive for justice and respect human dignity, as affirmed in the baptismal covenant. To that end, supporting Episcopal Migration Ministries’ work of welcoming the stranger will be a “top priority,” Rowe said, as the refugee resettlement agency braces for expected cuts under the new Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies.
“We need to be prepared for what may lay ahead,” Rowe said.
House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris, in her opening remarks, also addressed feelings of uncertainty and trepidation after the presidential election. “We gather today in a moment that calls for both courage and compassion,” Ayala Harris said, and she invoked a verse from Isaiah: “Do not fear. I am with you.”
“As a woman, as a Latina, as the mother of a teenager girl, as the daughter of an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, holding leadership in this moment I feel the weight of our communities’ struggles,” said Ayala Harris, who serves as vice chair of Executive Council. “Our baptismal promise to ‘respect the dignity of every human being’ stands not as a political statement but as a divine calling, a gospel imperative that transcends partisan divisions.”
Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe and House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris speak Nov. 7 at Executive Council’s meeting in New Brunswick, New Jersey, as seen on the livestream of the plenary session.
Executive Council’s Nov. 7-9 meeting is its first of the triennium, with half of its 38 elected members new to the council and starting six-year terms. Much of their time this week in the Diocese of Newark will be spent in plenary sessions focused on orientation, board norms and mission strategy discussions. Rowe and Ayala Harris also are asking the council to consider a series of proposed bylaws changes, the most significant of which would streamline the council’s standing committee structure while empowering ad hoc committees to form around specific tasks.
As the church’s governing body between meetings of General Convention, Executive Council’s 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.
The bylaws discussion was scheduled for the afternoon Nov. 7 and could continue in subsequent days. On Nov. 8, Rowe said council members will hear from representatives of Compass, the contractor hired by the church to study the church’s staffing structure and help facilitate changes under a “structural realignment” that was requested by Executive Council in its last term.
Rowe also spoke of the importance of creating a task force to study potential changes to the way the church gathers every three years for its General Convention. Such a task force was requested by a resolution adopted in June by the 81st General Convention in Louisville, Kentucky. The next General Convention is scheduled for 2027 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Rowe also reflected on his election and confirmation at the 81st General Convention. “The day I was elected in June, I asked bishops and deputies to think about the time between then and November as a kind of relational jubilee, a time of letting go of the resentment, anger and grudges that have too often weakened the leadership of our church to look for new ways to work together.”
He asked council to extend that spirit to this week’s meeting. “I hope the way that we treat one another here can be a witness to power of the Good News of God in Christ,” Rowe said. “And I hope that where we are divided, we can find the courage to forgive one another and begin again.”
Ayala Harris said Executive Council’s leadership can be a model for the church and the wider world. “Looking around this room, I see the incredible diversity of gifts and experience that each of you brings,” she said. “Let us begin our journey together with hope, with courage and, yes, even with joy. Let us be bold in our dreaming and faithful in our doing.
“The work before us is holy work. The community we build together matters more now than ever.”
– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.