The NYC church with 2 billion in assets thanks to Queen Ann

[markpkessinger]

11. As an Episcopalian and a New Yorker . . .

. . . who, for a time, sat on the vestry (sort of a board of directors, for those unfamiliar with Episcopal churchspeak) of another Manhattan Episcopal parish with a modest endowment (paltry by comparison with Trinity), a working cemetery and a handful of small property holdings (ironically a parish founded by members of Trinity in 1807 as a "summer chapel" for the benefit of Trinity parishioners who had summer homes in what was then the bucolic countryside now known as the Upper West Side), I can sympathize with the desire to manage a parish's assets wisely and with an eye toward the long-term. But only up to a point. For a single parish to be sitting on assets of $2 billion (!) is frankly an obscenity. The rector (head priest), with a salary of $475,000/yr. and a total compensation package valued at $1.3 million, seems to feel quite confident that his tenure as rector has been wildly successful. Maybe as a CEO of Trinity, Inc. that's true; as a priest and rector of a parish, I'm not so sure.