THE primacy of the new Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States was inaugurated with a simplified service, intended to have a lighter carbon footprint, in New York.

Bishop Sean Rowe was installed as the 28th Presiding Bishop on Saturday, in front of just 130 people, in the chapel of the Church’s Manhattan headquarters. Instead of sending representatives to attend in person, churches and dioceses were encouraged to hold “watch parties” to follow the live-streamed service.

Dioceses were also asked to send in video messages for the new Bishop, which were played on screens before the eucharist began.

The scaled-down service — previous Presiding Bishops have had a full enthronement or installation in Washington National Cathedral — is just one indicator of the changes that Bishop Rowe intends to make.

He has spoken of his desire to streamline services and put more back into the hands of dioceses. Chairing his first Executive Council meeting this week, he said that there was a need for more strategic planning that was served by a budget, not the other way round. As a diocesan bishop in north-western Pennsylvania, he brought in structural changes to save money, and he has spoken of the need for a “decentralised and networked Church” (News, 28 June).

In his sermon at the installation on Saturday, he said: “The days are over, if they ever existed, that dioceses and congregations and institutions of our Church can just go it alone and do it their own way; for we must acknowledge our mutual interdependence, our need to do ministry together, to share what we have, and to sustain one another. Especially now, in this badly hurting world, we need to become one Church.

“We’re not a collection of dioceses and institutions, a collection of ways of doing things. We are one Church, one Church in Jesus Christ. God has given us the ability to share our resources and talents and invest in ministry happening on the ground — ministry in which everyday faithful people, Christians all around the world, are building communities, advocating for justice, and saving lives.”

He told those watching the live stream: “In those churches where you are sitting right now, in your parish halls, in your churches, where you’re watching this happen, that’s where it’s happening. That’s where ministry is taking place.“

The path ahead would not be easy, he said. “The unbinding and liberating of ourselves and our structures and our hurting world will take all the resilience we can muster. It will require us to set aside our disbelief and our divisions, our attachments to the things of this world, and maybe our attachment to the way we think things ought to function.”

And he warned: “If we prize our own preferences, traditions, and comforts above the need to collaborate, to share, to work creatively, to proclaim the gospel,” this was the work of “the enemy”.

The service was attended by the secretary-general of the Anglican Communion, the Rt Revd Anthony Poggo, but not the Archbishop of Canterbury. Bishop Poggo offered a message on behalf of the Communion. “Bishop Sean, you bring a wealth of experience and Christian wisdom to this role at a time when careful discernment and confidence founded in the gospel is so much needed,” he said.

The Episcopal News Service reported that Archbishop Welby sent a message read out by the Adviser for Anglican Communion Affairs, the Very Revd Dr Sammy Wainaina, in which he told Dr Rowe: “The Church has placed a trust and a responsibility on your shoulders.” He urged him “to rise up to the occasion through the power of the Holy Spirit to lead the Episcopal Church in responding to its ministry context”.

Dr Rowe is the youngest bishop to be elected to the primacy, aged 49. He will serve a nine-year term. His predecessor, Bishop Curry, had been the first African-American to lead the Episcopal Church in the US. In an interview with the Religion News Service, as he retired, he said: “There’s a hymn that has a verse in it that says ‘New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth.’

“You have to learn new realities, you have to take the ancient principles, and you’ve got to apply them in new ways,” Bishop Curry said.