Chief Financial Officer Kurt Barnes to retire after 21 years in top churchwide leadership position – Episcopal News Service

[Episcopal News Service] Episcopal Church Chief Financial Officer Kurt Barnes plans to retire after 21 years, according to an announcement Dec. 19 by Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe.

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In addition to chief financial officer, Barnes holds several other top positions in church governance and administration, including treasurer of General Convention and treasurer of Executive Council, which is the church’s governing body between meetings of General Convention. Rowe said Barnes will remain as treasurer for now, to assist the leadership transition in the church’s finance, investment and development offices.

“Kurt has served our church with expertise, diplomacy and unflagging commitment, and I am profoundly grateful for his leadership and wisdom,” Rowe said in a church news release. “I wish him every blessing in his retirement, and I am grateful for his willingness to assist us with his vast institutional knowledge as we move forward with our strategic realignment.”

The chief financial officer reports to the presiding bishop. The position is filled by Executive Council after a joint nomination by the presiding bishop and the House of Deputies president. The search for Barnes’ successor has begun, Rowe’s announcement said.

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One of the top responsibilities of the chief financial officer is the ongoing management of the churchwide budget, with support from the Finance Office staff and in consultation with the presiding bishop, other executive church leaders and Executive Council. In that role, Barnes advises General Convention and Executive Council in adopting and revising the churchwide budgets, and then works to match actual revenues and expenses as closely as possible to the budgeted amounts.

At meetings of Executive Council, Barnes often was called on to present his treasurer’s report, providing balance sheet updates since the previous meeting. Barnes made clear he adhered to the belief that no news was good news.

“No surprises. Unexceptional,” Barnes said in one characteristic presentation, at a July 2020 meeting of Executive Council. “Those are words that most people want to hear in a financial report.”

That report concluded that the church’s finances were “on pretty solid ground” despite uncertainty in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Barnes, his staff and the Executive Council Finance Committee helped navigate the church through pandemic disruptions, which ultimately affected church revenues much less than they affected worship routines and parish life.

During Barnes’ two decades leading the Finance Office, the church also overhauled how it collected money from dioceses to support the churchwide budget. When he first took over the role, dioceses were asked to contribute 21% of their revenue, but those contributions were not mandatory. In June 2004, Barnes reported to Executive Council that only 43 of 100 dioceses had pledged to contribute at or above that requested level.

Then in 2015, the church initiated a shift away from a policy of “asking” in favor of “expecting” its dioceses to share in its operating expenses, and the diocesan assessment rate was gradually reduced to 15%, with a portion of each diocese’s revenue exempted from those calculations.

Today, diocesan assessments comprise the largest portion of churchwide revenue, about $30 million annually. Barnes and other church finance leaders regularly tout that nearly every diocese commits each year to paying the full 15%.

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The chief financial officer also oversees management of the church’s vast investment portfolio. A portion of the annual returns on those investments also supports the churchwide budget. About $13 million a year is budgeted in that line for the next three years. And Barnes’ position oversees the Office of Development, which plans and executes a range of fundraising campaigns for the church, including its Annual Appeal.

The chief financial officer’s 2024 salary was $296,317, according to the church’s annual summary of officer pay.

Barnes, a lifelong Episcopalian who is active in the Diocese of New York, previously worked for 20 years as a financial officer at Inco Limited and also has experience at Morgan Stanley as vice president in its fiduciary advisory group. He began his career as an economist for the RAND Corporation. In 2019, the Union of Black Episcopalians presented Barnes with its Bishop Quintin Ebenezer Primo Award.

The announcement of Barnes’ retirement follows a series of other leadership and staff changes under Rowe, who began his nine-year term as presiding bishop on Nov. 1. Three of the top leaders on the staff of former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry will leave by the end of 2024: the Rev. Stephanie Spellers, who served nine years as the presiding bishop’s canon for evangelism, reconciliation and creation care; Bishop Todd Ousley, who has served since 2017 as head of the Office of Pastoral Development; and the Rev. Ann Hallisey, who has served for the past year as canon to the presiding bishop for ministry within The Episcopal Church.

Rowe also is in the middle of overseeing a “structural realignment” of churchwide operations, based on a June 2023 request from Executive Council. Part of that realignment is expected to result in staff cost reductions of more than $3.5 million over three years, or about 5% of personnel costs, as the 81st General Convention endorsed in its 2025-27 churchwide budget plan.

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at [email protected].