These days, in part because of the economy, in part because of congregations that are dissatisfied with denominational policies and are withholding or restricting their giving, in part for other reasons, there’s not enough coming in. And Detterick — faced with cutting $5.57 million from the budget this spring — says it’s time for a change.
The PC(USA) continues to lose members. And there are generational differences, too. Young adults don’t trust in denominations or other big institutions the way their parents and grandparents did. Many want hands-on involvement, not an arms-length financial arrangement. Some have other priorities for where and how they want to give.
So a strategy paper on funding, distributed at the recent General Assembly Council meeting, lists some ideas for new approaches — ranging from asking presbyteries and congregations to become more involved in planning and funding mission priorities to coming up with a serious funds development approach targeting younger Presbyterians. The strategy paper was presented for discussion only — no action was taken and nothing in it was approved — but it represents some of the prime thinking of the PC(USA)’s Mission Funding and Development staff about new directions that ought to be considered.
“Too often the Presbyterian mode is ‘You’ve elected us to make the decisions . . . . Here’s what the decisions are, give us the money,’ ” Claude Godwin, the PC(USA)’s associate director for Mission Funding and Development, said in discussing the paper.
But “people aren’t as trusting of the system anymore,” Godwin said. So the denomination needs to find ways to involve people from congregations — many of whom aren’t shy about starting their own independent mission efforts — in helping the national church set its priorities for international mission work and evangelism, and finding ways to pay for what it wants to do.
Among the changes the paper cites:
- The PC(USA) has lost 1.7 million members since 1965. The average size of Presbyterian congregations has dropped from about 315 to 228 members, and the median size of Presbyterian churches is now 122.
- The average Presbyterian congregation has about $31,000 less to spend in today’s dollars than it had in 1965. While per-member giving to the congregation, adjusted for inflation, has gone up a little, there are fewer members around to give.
- There’s no longer “a unified sense of denominational purpose” — no common agreement about what kind of church the PC(USA) should be.
- Trust in authority has eroded significantly. Many people don’t expect big bureaucracies to provide what they need. So the push is towards building new networks at the local and regional level.
Unrestricted giving for Presbyterian mission is far less now than what it was, in equivalent dollars, in 1965. Total receipts for presbytery, synod and General Assembly mission in 1965 came to $61 million. Adjusted for inflation, that would total $327 million in 2000. “But our best estimates is that in 2000 they were in the neighborhood of $150-$160 million — about half the amount required to be equal to receipts in 1965.
So what response should there be to these new realities?
First, the mission funding team says that presbyteries and synods should be encouraged to promote churchwide special offerings and basic mission support. Over the past five or six years, giving to basic mission support seems to have stabilized. And the report states that “a few presbyteries have demonstrated conclusively that giving appropriate attention to some basic principles (visiting sessions, asking their advice, presenting a specific challenge, expressing appreciation) still works among most of our congregations.”
Second, the denomination should involve more people — not fewer — in making decisions about what to spend. People are involved in mission in their local communities and even internationally. They have ideas about what works, what’s important and what they’d be willing to financially support.
Third, take advantage of new opportunities presented by changing patterns of wealth. Some younger Presbyterians are professionals with significant incomes, who may not have been contacted by the denomination or asked to give. The report states that — just as colleges and universities typically do — “we need a serious funds development strategy” that would identify both older Presbyterians who have built up sizeable estates and younger ones who might be willing to give.
Fourth, consider shifting more to a market economy model, where people pay for the services they receive — be it curriculum materials or Presbyterian camping programs. In a consumer-driven society, Presbyterians may well be willing to pay for such services rather than having them underwritten by mission giving.
One proposal that sparked disagreement was encouraging formation of new “affinity groups” that would raise money for specific mission causes. There already are three validated mission support groups that have covenant relationships with the PC(USA) — the Medical Benevolence Foundation, Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship and the Outreach Foundation. The report states that “while the independence of these groups creates advantages and disadvantages for them and for the General Assembly, a primary advantage for the denomination is that they support the work of the church but are not seen as part of ‘the bureaucracy.’ “
Whether new groups are created or not, the trend toward donors and congregations restricting how the denomination can spend its money is clear. From 1993 to 2000, total basic mission giving declined more than 10 percent, from $27.4 million to $24.5 million, although that decline seems to have evened out and stabilized.
But during that same period of time, Extra Commitment Giving to the denomination — one form of designating donations for particular causes — increased 239 percent.
