[Episcopal News Service – Linthicum Heights, Maryland] The Episcopal Church must remain committed to Christian witness in increasingly troubling times, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe said June 23 in his opening remarks to Executive Council, and the church’s new chief financial officer outlined accounting upgrades to help bolster the church in that mission.

Rowe opened this June 23-25 meeting by inviting prayers for the Middle East amid recent attacks between Israel and Iran and the June 22 U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear sites. He said he was in contact with Anglican Archbishop Hosam Naoum of the Diocese of Jerusalem, who asked Episcopalians to be peacemakers in the face of his region’s continuing conflict.

“Please continue to pray for all God’s people in those places,” Rowe said.

The presiding bishop also lamented political divisions and recent violence in the United States, where a Minnesota lawmaker and husband were assassinated this month and where the Episcopal cathedral in Utah offered shelter for protesters when gunfire broke out during a rally.

“I do not need to tell you that these are challenging times for the church we serve and God’s people in our communities,” Rowe told the council members, who were gathered online and in person at the Maritime Conference Center in suburban Baltimore. “Many of our dioceses and congregations are responding to unprecedented need, feeding people who are hungry, comforting those who are afraid, struggling to find new models for ministries and to hold onto hope for the future of the church.”

He acknowledged the fine line that he and other church leaders must walk in speaking out on national and global issues, with some people calling on the church to respond more publicly to the day’s issues and others accusing the church of meddling too much in politics.

The church’s first allegiance, Rowe said, is not to world leaders or political parties. Though Episcopalians are not of one mind politically, “we are all followers of the risen Christ.”

“We can resist the urge to give ourselves over to the excesses of one party or another, or one country or another,” he said. “We’re a living laboratory for how to build community with the risen Christ at the center. … When we are at our best, we can make a powerful witness to the world through our unity.”

House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris also alluded to contemporary issues, tensions and challenges in her opening remarks.

“The global disruptions we are witnessing are not abstract. They have names, faces and sacred dignity,” she said while sharing the story of a transgender teenager named Finn who was troubled by the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing states to ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.

“He challenged me to bear witness to trans joy,” Ayala Harris said, and she invoked a resolution adopted in 2022 by the 80th General Convention affirming that people of all ages should have access to gender-affirming care.

“To every transgender person hearing or reading these worlds: I see you. I love you,” Ayala Harris said. “You are wonderfully made in the image of God, crafted in sacred dignity. You are not a mistake.”

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.

Executive Council typically meets three times a year. The three-day meeting this week is its first since Rowe announced in February a series of layoffs and retirements as part of a major churchwide staff realignment partly intended to achieve personnel cost reductions requested by General Convention.

Some of the most significant staff changes occurred in the Finance Office, where longtime Chief Financial Officer Kurt Barnes announced plans to retire once the church hired his replacement. He continues to advise Executive Council as the church’s elected treasurer.

In March, Rowe and Ayala Harris nominated and Executive Council appointed Christopher Lacovara, a longtime Episcopalian with decades of financial management experience, as the new chief financial officer. On June 23 he gave his first presentation to Executive Council.

“We are stewards of the church’s resources in a frankly very challenging environment,” Lacovara said. “We still have to take what we have and to maximize what’s available, to maximize ministry.”

Overall, the church remains in a stable financial position, with revenues and expenses for 2025 so far mostly tracking the $46 million budgeted, Lacovara said. The downsizing of churchwide staff that started in February will begin realizing long-term cost savings in the second half of the year.

Lacovara noted that the church’s administrative costs and other non-program expenses total 44% of its budget, significantly higher than the commonly accepted goal in the nonprofit sector of under 25% for those expenses. Some of the church’s administrative costs relate to its canonical structure, particularly its governance functions mandated by General Convention, Lacovara said, though he told Executive Council that one of his top objectives will be to find ways to increase the share of the church’s spending on its ministry priorities.

“Our goal, at least our financial goal, should be to plow every dollar we can into service,” he said.

One crucial step will be to improve the church’s financial management systems and accounting, from largely manual operations currently to more automated functions handled by customizable software, making it easier for both program staff and the Finance Office to do their jobs, he said.

“There are computer systems that have been doing that for quite a while,” Lacovara said, citing the church’s expense reimbursement process as one example. “The goal is that this is going to free up a lot of time for our staff … rather than having to devote so much time to the paper [trail].”

Newer financial management systems will allow the church to produce digital dashboards to provide information and regular reports for review by departments, Executive Council and the wider church, ensuring greater transparency about how closely operations are in line with budget expectations.

Lacovara also said he and other church leaders are applying greater scrutiny to the costs and benefits of maintaining the Episcopal Church Center at 815 Second Avenue in New York, New York. With the staff restructuring, the church needs much less office space than it once did, and the building is running an annual deficit of $2.5 million, with expensive improvements needed.

“The status quo is not attractive,” he said. That doesn’t necessarily mean it is time for the church to sell the building, he said, though he expected some changes will be necessary, such as renting more of the building’s space to outside tenants to help offset costs.

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