Standing Commission on Episcopal Church Communications Meeting
21 September, 2004
The General Seminary of the Episcopal Church
New York City, New York

Present: Allen, Briggs, Davidson, Knisley, McFarland, McMahon, Meade, Thompson

Guests and Consultants: Seitz, Caum, Werner, Fuller

Absent: Wolf, K. Smith, Whalon, Reid, Monroe, Spence

Recording: Briggs

Convened at 6:03pm EDT by the Chair.

Chair noted our time ends at 6:45pm to go to the refectory. None of the bishops will be here with us since they are all in travel to the HoB meeting in Spokane, WA. He noted which will be able to phone in to our conference call tomorrow afternoon and which will be unable to.

Chair distributed a detailed agenda, as well as a letter from 'Faithgroups,' which now owns Ecunet. Nick gave brief history of this organization. When we hear from Rick Lamb tomorrow (CTO), we will be able to bring some issues and opportunities to him.

Chair proposed that we refine the agenda during this time before going to dinner.

Chair distributed a list of restaurants nearby to General that server breakfast. The Dean Werner mentioned knowing a place nearby that serves Guinness on tap, which deeply offended the Commission member who is employed by Anheuser-Busch. [1]

Dean Werner also noted that in a conversation with the presiding bishop recently, there is a much greater appreciation for the need for communication than perhaps there has been in the last 18 or even the last six months.

The Commission then reviewed the agenda and noted that Rosemari Sullivan would be available to us tomorrow morning, especially to provide greater clarity about the purpose of the Commission and its intended role in the matrix of communication at the national church level.

There was a discussion of the systemic nature of the challenges facing the Commission. There was recognition that we will specifically need to put information forward with respect to the National Ad Campaign, especially with respect to its budget for the upcoming triennium. Another point for particular emphasis in tomorrow's discussion will be a wider strategy for communication necessitated by the upcoming Eames Report.

The Chair mentioned the Anglican/Lambeth Portal, which generated a lively discussion of what its name really is and what it should be. After that died down, we noted that we may require a resolution to pay for participation in this endeavor. Vice-Chair noted that this will bend upon the tone of the Eames Commission report, as well.

The ECUSA website has some significant design issues and may be limited by prior technology choices. We need to discuss this with Bob, to determine whether 'we're sending good money after bad.' We can also present the results of our website survey that we conducted earlier this year.

An interesting option for coordination is to begin hooking into some of the very large communication groups that operate under the umbrella of existing Episcopal ministries.

In response to a prior GC's resolution regarding translation of resources into Spanish, we've been tasked with putting a price tag on the effort to put 'everything' into Spanish.

A meeting with Rick Lamb at 4:00 will cover technology issues and concerns, including data sharing. Specifically, do we need a CTO to coordinate technology implementation and development in the Church. If so, how would that work, and how would we insure that such a position would be effective.

Recessed at 6:45pm EDT for dinner

The Chair asked those who've been participating in the communication work of the Church for a long time to speak to us and how this has progressed over the years. Dean Werner reminded us that until 1946 the presiding bishop retained his bishopric, and that originally, the National Council served as coordinators to the CCABs. Under Presiding Bishop Browning, the staff was brought under the presiding bishop. Cutbacks, etc. have consolidated positions that were previously separate. Executive Council now serves in a very high position of the church, being elected by General Convention, yet it seems to have very little actual power. Apparently, goodwill is what makes it possible to coordinate between the various administrative groups and the power structure that is meant to run them. The Dean mentioned a particular piece of information that would be valuable for the next presiding bishop would be information about how to coordinate with the Communications organizations and institutions of the Church.

Dean Werner continued by saying that in the future chairs of committees at GC will be tasked with cleaning up contradictions in canons imposed by resolutions as they are brought forward in committee. But, our Commission's creation unfortunately fell victim to such a glitch, in that the specific charge to our Commission is much broader than other canons (that govern all CCAB's) permit. Also, we did not have a formal orientation from Rosemari Sullivan or Tony Jewiss from the GC office, which should have served to answer a number of questions about what we were to do and how we were to do it.

The Chair reflected that we work with a 'hermeneutic of charity,' and that we are trying to make communication work as well as possible, bringing our collective gifts to bear on the wide and disparate situations.

The Dean also mentioned the need for new talent, and specifically a need for a GC press officer starting probably in May and staying on through GC. We noted a difficulty at 2003GC when the main person in charge of communications was unfortunately tied up dealing with the media and was unable to speak to the communication committee about the strategic concerns of the EC.

Bonnie Anderson is chairing a working committee to discuss General Convention planning, and there is an opportunity for us to provide them input on communication matters, so the Dean asked us to consider how we might give insight and advice to that body as the planning is being considered.

We had a long discussion about some of our General Convention pains and gaps. The Chair brought us back to task when things started to pinwheel out of control and the conversation drifted into network addresses and people's fake British accents (not counting Cynthia's, which is both authentic and pleasant).

The Vice-chair told us a bit about the background of Internet domain names, bulletin boards, and the Church's deployment of them. She mentioned the struggle to get the church to show an interest in reserving domain names that they should have owned. There was some discussion about the creation and appointment of the director-level position for communication for the Church. The Chair noted that this director was then a director of the DFMS and did not head up a program area directly correlated with a CCAB that would provide it oversight and strategic direction. This has most likely been the cause of some of our friction that we've encountered in attempting to conduct our work. We looked at the appointment of Bob Williams to his position as indicative of the problem, not that Bob is a bad person, but that this process was not transparent.

We noted that the way our Commission was created and instantiated made it possible for us to do things differently and more quickly than commissions typically move, and this also has generated some the resistance we have encountered.

We made an interesting insight that we perhaps have a critical point to put forward to the Nominating Committee for the PB to ask that technological savvy be a part of the profile that they draft for candidates.

Commission recessed at 9:16 pm for the night.

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1. He recovered quickly, nonetheless.