Mainline moves to trim bureaucracy

A  list of the Episcopal Church's 75 commissions, committees,
agencies and boards spilled over eight PowerPoint slides during a recent
presentation by its new chief operating officer, Bishop Stacy Sauls. By
his count, there are also nearly 50 departments and offices in the
church's New York headquarters and 46 committees in its legislative
body, the General Convention.

Sauls, hired by Presiding Bishop
Katharine Jefferts Schori in May, said that he has since learned there
are even more offices "that I had never heard of before."

"It has
become just Byzantine," he said. "The governance structures have grown
by accretion, without any strategic plan." Nearly half of the
denomination's budget is spent on overhead, according to Sauls.