The New York Episcopalian was chosen from a pool of 121 applicants, and is CFO and general counsel to a nonprofit focused on supporting people with mental-health challenges.
Kurt Barnes, who has overseen the church’s finances for 21 years, was honored for his leadership, and Executive Council heard about the complicated role of the Executive Officer of General Convention and challenges faced by immigrants.
Major goals include practical assistance with crisis communication, Title IV, and faster bishop searches, as well as a “reinvention” of General Convention.
PB Rowe: “Our true power lies not in me making a barrage of statements, or in us collectively reacting to every outrage that the world presents … [but] in a churchwide structure rooted in Christ and in the kingdom principles that can make a strong and effective witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Insight Global’s study revealed a passion for the church’s mission among church center staff coupled, with an organizational culture plagued by territoriality and resistance to change. Bishops reported that support from the church center was poorly defined, and that they were especially in need of more support in handling Title IV matters, evangelism, and crisis communications.
“Today in the Episcopal Church we are faced with institutional structures that we have for some time now permitted to atrophy. They have lost their ability to do what we need to do…. All of these values that we say that we hold, all the ways that we want to witness in the world – we have to have the capacity to carry that out.”
