Timeline and Issues for the Common Cause Partnership

Timeline

1. College of Bishops organized: September, 2007
2. Theological Statement and Articles ratified by all Partners
3. CCP Leadership Council 1 (Article 4): week of December 3 or January 6
1. Organizing meeting
2. Leadership elected
3. Communications office created (Article 6)
4. Committees named:
1. Executive (Article 4)
2. Admissions (Article 5)
3. Mission (Article 7)
4. Education (Article 8)
5. Additional task forces created:
1. Prayer Book task force
2. Episcopate task force
3. Budget adopted
4. Province by province visitation and appeal for recognition of the "separate ecclesiastical structure in North America"
5. CCP Leadership Council 2: Advent, 2008
1. Reports and adoption of work from committees and task forces
6. Constitutional convention for an Anglican union held at the earliest possible date agreeable to all the Partners

Issues for the Lead Bishops' Roundtable

Within the stated timeline, we intend to address the following items:

* How we can best exercise our episcopate in common.
* A Rule of Life for bishops.
* The ways and means of a mutual review of candidates for bishop before consecration.
* Common worship.
* Stating and maintaining a common Anglican ethos.
* How we will live together with bishops and congregations and dioceses that do ordain women and others that do not ordain women, affirming that we will not violate anyone's conscience on this matter.
* The relation of clergy and congregations to bishops. Will our dioceses be rigidly fixed or flexible, allowing for affinity-based arrangements?
* The shape and nature of our common episcopal oversight. Will it be conciliar as it was in the early church and as it is maintained in some parts of the Orthodox churches and as it is reflected in some aspects of the Anglican Communion? Will it follow a more hierarchical model? Or will it be modeled after the Western institutional structures, such as the federation model, with which we have been familiar in The Episcopal Church?
* Exploring ways to form a leadership "pipeline" from congregational life onward that will lead candidates to offer themselves for ministry, including ordination, in an expanding, mission-minded Church.
* Exploring resources for the bishops' care for clergy and their families, including burned-out clergy and clergy families in trouble.
* Exploring with the seminaries of the Church how they can best serve us and how we can support them in our new mission context.
* Exploring a Common Cause electronic newsletter, with the intention of incorporating the various newsletters of the Partnership members.
* Exploring the standards, spiritual and moral, of ordained and lay leaders.
* Consistent with resolutions of Lambeth Conference, seeking to draw continuing churches, not members of the Common Cause Partnership, into fellowship.
* Opening ecumenical dialogues.