Development of the curriculum was halted in August after curriculum publishing officials decided that lack of use of the curriculum made further development a poor use of the church’s resources. Only approximately 1,000 congregations – about 10 percent of the churches in the PC(USA) – are now using it.
The recommendation passed without comment Thursday afternoon during the committee’s meeting in Tempe, Ariz. The full General Assembly Council will act on it, and two other recommendations related to Covenant People, during its session on Saturday.
The committee also recommends that (1) GAC Chair Jeff Bridgeman write an open letter to the church to explain the action and to make clear the availability and educational support for existing Covenant People resources, and (2) that Congregational Ministries Publishing staff bring preliminary curriculum alternatives and proposed budgets to the Congregational Ministries Division Committee meeting in November. Proposals by the committee would then go to the GAC meeting in late January 2002.
Approximately $6 million has been invested in Covenant People, the first denominationally based curriculum the Presbyterian church has produced in 30 years.
Sandra Moak Sorem, publisher of Congregational Ministries Publishing, acknowledged numerous problems which have plagued the four-year development of the curriculum. Among them has been a major turnover in the staff: no leading figures remain from the staff which started the process. Also, she noted that potential customers have been critical of the complexity of the ordering system and the need for more advance preparation time by those who use the curriculum.
Sorem said there are supplies of the first two years of the Covenant People curriculum available for use and her staff would continue to support them. Also, she noted that two other curriculum lines the PC(USA) is offering — Bible Quest and Present Word, both ecumenically produced — are doing well, exceeding both budgeted projections and year-to-date sales from last year.
The committee tabled a proposal for creating a task group to study why the Covenant People curriculum did not succeed from a marketing point of view. Mike Gillespie, a Christian educator from Lakeside Park, Ky., made the motion, noting that “there are serious flaws in how we do curriculum.”
The GAC division committees meet through Friday at the Tempe Mission Palms Hotel. The full council will meet Saturday.
