Since Jamestown in the 1600s the influence of the Episcopal Church has been disproportionate to the number of Episcopalians. They were landholders and industrialists at a time it was popular to give to your church, to build a great edifice on Fifth Avenue or in Newport. As generations have gone on, and money has been filtered down through generations, the wealthy have become more detached from their churches, their rectors and their clergypeople. The people who have been parishioners have come to believe that, yes, my church is a big church and has an endowment left by Mrs. Moneybags 200 years ago or 50 years ago. Not appreciating that the money is not a bottomless well. Yes, there is the belief that the Episcopal Church has unlimited wealth.

My parish [Grace Church] is a small country parish a couple hours north of New York city. New parishioners believe that Grace Church is wealthy. Grace Church has an endowment of several hundred thousand dollars, but it’s one we raised in the last three years. Prior to that there was virtually nothing.

It’s replicated nationwide. The financial crisis in the last year has caused parishes that had relied on endowments to have new approaches to replenishing and growing their endowments.

Q: Do you think the crisis will be a good thing or a bad thing in the long run? Does the potential benefit outweigh the pain or is the pain too great?

Our neighbors always have a Thanksgiving dinner. This year 25 people were there and each person said what they were thankful for. It got to me this year. My reflection was that I’m thankful there have been more smiles than tears this last year. That’s what I hope people in the church, and across the country, will look back at 2008, 2009 and say, “Yes, it generated more smiles than tears.”

I hope the crisis has forced people to rethink what is most important to them, to readjust their lives necessarily. For other people who weren’t impacted as severely, who didn’t lose their jobs or their homes, the observation of people around them who lost a lot will encourage them to think about is important.The crisis has been a wake-up call to rethink what’s most important in individuals’ lives. It might be the church for some people. It might be a non-church social activity for others.

Q: Your new budget took effect on the first of January. How will life look different for the Episcopal Church based on the new budget?

About 40 fewer people will do the work at our denominational headquarters. But the work will be done. God’s mission will be done. Our spending for the church-wide budget will be about $5 million less than it was this past year.

We have refocused what the work should be and will be. We will achieve that work. I hope the crisis has encouraged us to be more strategic, to look further than one year or three years out. It encouraged us to think about measuring what we’re accomplishing and identifying what our goals are and what our expectations are.

Q: What are the guiding principles for deciding which parts of the mission are funded?

Decisions on what to emphasize and what to reduce were based on what things we do well and what things we have done well that should be assumed, developed and implemented at the local level.

Q: Can you give any examples?

Fifteen or more years ago the Episcopal Church developed an extensive program of training on how to think about racism, sexism and ageism. It developed a program of training throughout the dioceses around the country. Now there are anti-racism trainers and facilitators in most of the dioceses. In looking at budget decisions this summer, [we decided] the local parishes should continue that work. As a broad national headquarters we cannot afford to do that work any longer. We engendered the work. We developed it. Now we hope and expect that it will be continued.

Another example is that we identified things that we do well already across the church. I jokingly say we do pomp and circumstance really well. For that reason, we decided that one area where we could reduce budget was in our liturgy and music program. If there are liturgists and musicians across the country and around the world that are developing prayers and music, we don’t need to duplicate that effort at the national level.

Q: What’s the difference in your budget from last year ?

Roughly $47 million in 2010 compared to $52 million in 2009. It’s about a $5 million difference.

What will we do if we’ve been overly pessimistic about income? We hope we are wrong. We hope we have been overly conservative. In which case we will endeavor to rebuild the church’s reserves, which we have accessed over the last few years for projects that we could not have otherwise accomplished. We will provide things like a reserve for bricks and mortar, which churches never seem to identify; we never provide for the boiler that we know will fail after 20 years. It’s just something people don’t like to spend or reserve money for, bricks and mortar.

When a vestry is looking at whether to set aside money to re-carpet the altar or spend it on the soup kitchen, it’s very difficult to allocate money for the altar. The Judeo-Christian tradition says not to spend on yourself, give to others. In some instances spending on yourself is required.

Q: Are you nervous about the coming year as the CFO?