That’s a key question. And the answer is a little more complicated than it might seem.
Already, there are hints that some evangelicals are not completely enthusiastic about the idea. While many support wholeheartedly the Presbyterian commitment to evangelism and mission work, both in the United States and internationally, there remains deep suspicion of the PC(USA)’s national staff in Louisville and a skepticism about any program that seems initiated from the top down.
Bob Davis, a pastor from California who leads the evangelical group the Presbyterian Forum, wrote this fall that the Mission Initiative “appears to be a program designed to sustain the General Assembly Council” and that the Mission Initiative should not be supported if it’s just another way to support undesignated mission giving to the PC(USA). His statements reflect the view of many evangelicals that, in the past, undesignated giving has been used at times to fund programs or causes they contend should never have been considered.
Some involved in mission work also have grown accustomed to decentralized approaches to mission — with congregations or individuals deciding for themselves what to support, sometimes giving money to parachurch groups such as World Vision, organizing their own mission trips or otherwise bypassing the PC(USA) structure. Many congregations are determined to control the money they give to the denomination, limiting it to specific PC(USA) programs they support, or withholding funds altogether and using the money for their own mission work.
“I think trust is an issue,” said Jerry Andrews, a pastor from Glen Ellyn, Ill., and former co-moderator of the Presbyterian Coalition. Evangelicals are deeply committed to new church development and to international mission work, but they have not forgotten, Andrews said, the mistakes they contend the PC(USA) has made in the past.
And some are asking, “Is this the way to do it? A central corporation way of doing this, that’s pretty old-style.” Andrews said he’s in charge of a capital campaign for Chicago presbytery, and said the approach of “Pick the project, raise the money, get it done” just wouldn’t fly there. With the Mission Initiative, some people ask, “Is this too centralized, too top down?”
On the other hand, there is real hope for the Mission Initiative campaign too. Some high-profile evangelicals are on the Mission Initiative Steering Committee and seem excited about what it can accomplish, saying they’re determined to make sure the money will be properly accounted for and properly spent. The campaign is targeting big contributors, individual Presbyterians whose pockets are deep enough so they can afford major gifts. But at the steering committee’s first meeting, in Chicago in November, several people stressed the need for the grassroots to get involved too, because individuals and congregations who may not be wealthy have been asking how they can help. And one of the goals of the Mission Initiative, according to Bill Saul, a California businessman who’s co-chair of the steering committee, is “getting us back to where there can be a common goal,” where Presbyterians who disagree on some controversial issues can work together to support mission, work they see at the heart of what Jesus Christ has called them to do.
This may also be a time when denominational leaders are open to conversations about new ways of doing business. John Detterick, executive director of the General Assembly Council, has said the Mission Initiative is “critically important” for laying the groundwork for a future vision of how mission work is funded. That’s what some evangelicals are hoping: that the Mission Initiative may open the door to broader reconsiderations of how the PC(USA) funds evangelistic work, and how the national denominational structure relates to local congregations and to individuals who already are up to their necks in mission work themselves.
Many Presbyterians are saying that evangelism, both in the United States and overseas, “is the work the denomination is to major in, it’s critical to the work of the gospel, it’s crucial to the grassroots,” Marian McClure, director of the PC(USA)’s Worldwide Ministries Division, said in an interview. And “they’re also saying to us that they’re frustrated with the mission funding system. It’s not clear enough, it’s not transparent enough, it’s not responsive enough.”
At last summer’s General Assembly, “commissioners did a couple of really good things to strengthen the Mission Initiative,” McClure said. They made it General Assembly policy that money given to the Mission Initiative can’t be used to simply pay for mission personnel already in place — meaning the denominational leadership couldn’t use Mission Initiative money to free up other unrestricted funds in the budget to be used however they wished. And it mandated that money given and spent through the Mission Initiative be listed on the PC(USA) Web site — meaning it should be possible for people to track for themselves what’s coming in and how it’s being spent. In doing that, McClure said, the commissioners “responded to the doubts and concerns people have from the grassroots.”
Those concerns stem not so much from the particulars of the Mission Initiative as from the denomination’s much longer history of infighting, and an intensive questioning by many evangelicals about whether the PC(USA) is on the right path. Many were outraged, for example, when 34 mission personnel positions were among the jobs cut when the PC(USA) cut $4.2 million from the budget last spring. Another $5 million, at least, is expected to be cut from the budget over the next two years.
Joe Rightmyer, executive director of Presbyterians for Renewal, said he wants the denomination to set its priorities on mission and other important work, and to stop spending money on things such as the PC(USA)’s Washington office or for denominationally produced curriculum, which hasn’t sold well and has cost the PC(USA) millions.
By creating the Mission Initiative “this seems to be an end run in a sense around the [General Assembly] Council doing the hard job of actually putting money where the priorities are,” Rightmyer said. “Money continues to go to things the church at large does not subscribe to, and to make up the difference you have to go out and get more money.”
Skeptical of that, some congregations struggle with the question of whether to give to the denomination and in what way — hoping that, by designating the funds, the money will be used for programs the congregation sees as worthwhile. They are aware, Rightmyer said, that in directing money only to particular programs “you wind up maybe hurting some causes” that don’t receive sufficient funding.
Conversations continue, McClure said, to determine “what would good look like,” what would better meet the needs of congregations as the denomination funds its mission work. People want to understand, for example, how undesignated money will be used, “what are the rules that determine where it goes? What’s our philosophy for the use of unified (undesignated) dollars. Right now anyone on the staff leadership team would tell you there isn’t one philosophy . . . We need one.”
But designating money, while favored by many congregations, can be tricky business as well. Some programs are necessary, important and even mandated by the General Assembly, but don’t attract designated dollars (There typically is no deluge of Presbyterians wanting to foot the bills for insurance, for instance). Sometimes the denomination provides seed money for programs that are brand-new and not yet popular, but could have promise. Examples, according to McClure, include geriatric ministry projects or work that the PC(USA)’s partners in Romania have encouraged the denomination to undertake with the Romany, the gypsies, in Europe. And on the national staff “there is a historical continuity of information and relationships,” especially with partner churches, “that is rarely matched by congregations,” McClure said.
Like it or not, however, designating money is clearly a pattern, and one that many evangelicals see as a positive approach that can keep congregations from withholding money altogether.
“Obviously, if you go strictly to designated you’re going to hurt some mission programs that don’t get the same kind of publicity, but may be equally valid,” Rightmyer said. “It always runs the risk of ‘Who’s got the best marketing out there?’ . . . But on the other hand, if you don’t have the trust, when you go designated it results in more money overall” — congregations are willing to give to specific programs in which they have confidence, but otherwise might refuse to give. “The kingdom of God is enhanced by designated giving,” Rightmyer said.
McClure said she sees strengths in both approaches and she argues for a balance — for guidance from the national staff, what she describes as “a coordinating and consulting role” — combined with the energy and passion for mission from the grassroots church.
And David Hackett, executive director of Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship, said “that kind of flexibility just jazzes me up.” He often directs congregations to specific “extra commitment opportunities” — designated funds that the PC(USA) has set up — if they’ve shown an interest in evangelizing to particular peoples or geographic areas. One example: a new “Faith Factor” extra commitment opportunity that will be used to replace the missionary personnel positions that were cut in the last round of budget-slashing.
“Unified giving is dead and dying — it’s not the solution,” Hackett said. “I don’t want programing to die, I want it to continue. But it needs to connect to local givers. It’s their money.”
As an example, Hackett cited a network of about 20 congregations that want to be involved in ministry to the Kurdish people — and who recently committed $20,000 to hire someone to facilitate the work of their partnership. What local churches need, he said, is not someone to tell them what to do, but to guide them, to help them deal with the complexity of ministry in other places.
“Top down doesn’t have to be a lot of staff and apparatus,” Hackett said. “It’s a philosophy of partnering down, of reconnecting with the local base of mission, which is the congregation. It’s the church in each place — that’s the power of doing mission . . . It doesn’t have to be that mission is local, but [that] the vision for mission is local. There’s interest, commitment, engagement, excitement at the local level. That can fuel it as far as the plane can fly.”
