Presbyteries and churches struggle with dilemma of withholding per capita from the GA

In July, the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission ruled that presbyteries cannot compel sessions to send in their per-member payments. Paying per capita is strongly encouraged, but technically is voluntary, the denomination’s highest court ruled. The decision also states, however, that withholding payments “as a means of protest or dissent” is “a serious breach of the trust and love with which our Lord Jesus intends the covenant community to function.”

And the ruling did not directly resolve what some folks think may be the next question up at the plate: what presbyteries can and cannot do if congregations don’t pay.

Different presbyteries have different policies for handling things when congregations withhold per capita as a matter of dissent. Some make up the difference by using other funds — meaning the presbytery pays its full per capita assessment to the General Assembly by taking money away from other things. In other presbyteries, if the congregations withhold money, the presbytery lets that stand — the denomination gets less.

One of the latest questions to emerge is whether there can be consequences, including financial ones, for churches that refuse to pay.

In Heartland Presbytery, Johnston’s church has come into conflict with a new presbytery policy, passed in June, which states that only congregations that have “full participation” in the life of the presbytery, including making per capita payments, will be eligible to get help from the presbytery in receiving grants or obtaining loans. That’s important because, under the PC(USA) Constitution, church property is held in trust by the presbytery for the benefit of the denomination. Without the presbytery’s backing, a congregation would have difficulty getting a loan for construction or renovation, or to buy land.

First church in Paola already has a $1.3 million loan with the Church Development Corporation of the Mid-America Synod, used to pay construction costs for the first phase of an expansion program. But the growing congregation does plan a second phase of construction, Johnston said, and “we have no ability to get a bank to give us the loan” for future work or for refinancing the current loan without the presbytery’s support, he said.

On Sept. 5, Johnston filed a complaint with Mid-America Synod, alleging that the presbytery’s policy violates the PC(USA)’s Constitution and that refusing to provide grants or help procure loans for churches that withhold per capita payments both punishes those sessions and mutes their “rightful witness” to higher governing bodies.

If that case moves forward, one thing the church courts might be asked to decide is whether a presbytery’s refusing to back a loan for a congregation that won’t pay per capita indeed constitutes punishment, or whether presbyteries have the responsibility to set appropriate criteria for when they will extend themselves financially to help congregations. As Gradye Parsons of the Office of the General Assembly put it, when a congregation asks the presbytery for help, “Is it a reasonable thing to ask, ‘What did you give and when did you give it?’”

How much withholding out of conscience takes place?

Typically, presbyteries fail to pay the denomination about $200,000 of the $13 million per capita budget each year, Parsons said. The per capita budget — the assessment in 2003 was $5.44 per member — pays for administrative costs of the PC(USA), including General Assembly costs, some ecumenical dues, the Department of History and the costs of certain standing committees. But there’s no way to tell how much churches are actually withholding, if presbyteries cover for the withholding by taking funds from elsewhere and sending them to the denomination.

Not all presbyteries do that. Wabash Valley in Indiana, for example, collects about 91 percent of its per capita assessment, and has had a policy for several years that it will only pay the General Assembly the actual amount of per capita that’s collected, according to Sue Berry, the general presbyter.

Berry wasn’t with the presbytery when that policy was adopted, but said one impact is that “we are becoming less denominationally focused and more congregationally focused,” and there are fewer resources available at the presbytery, synod and General Assembly levels. Wabash Valley, for example, last year paid $15,730 less in per capita to the denomination than it was assessed.

In other presbyteries, money is taken from the mission budget to pay for the per capita that some congregations withhold.

The case the judicial commission ruled on this summer emerged from Scioto Valley Presbytery in Ohio, where Presbyterians from two congregations filed a complaint contending the presbytery was improperly trying to compel congregations to pay per capita. In the wake of that ruling, the issue has died down in Scioto Valley, said executive presbyter Dana Knapp, but it’s still an open question whether the presbytery should continue to make up per capita payments for congregations that won’t pay.

In Scioto Valley, for some time two of the largest churches in the presbytery weren’t paying per capita, “and that put a real crunch on the administrative budget and administrative work in the presbytery,” Knapp said. In order to make up that difference, the presbytery had to raise per capita, which meant “the other churches picked up the difference … . It does take money from the mission budget.”

In San Gabriel Presbytery in California, withholding isn’t much of an issue — but that’s because, increasingly, congregations that disagree with PC(USA) policies see the denomination as irrelevant, said Tom Rennard, San Gabriel’s interim executive presbyter. The presbytery has adopted a policy stating it can add to its per capita assessment a contingency reserve equal to 5 percent of the per capita budget, to offset nonpayment of per capita by sessions, but for the most part that hasn’t been needed, Rennard said.

Many of the biggest Presbyterian churches in his part of California are part of a strong support network of evangelical churches and groups in the area — and increasingly, their identities and allegiances are being shaped outside the PC(USA) system, so they pay less attention to internal denominational conflicts, Rennard said. Children and teen-agers are involved with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship and go to camps that aren’t Presbyterian; the pastors attend seminaries and conferences that aren’t Presbyterian; in many cases, the congregations’ mission dollars flow to projects outside the PC(USA).

The congregations don’t worry about withholding because “they stopped listening to the General Assembly and synod a long time ago,” Rennard said. One of the biggest churches in the area likely pays $40,000 in per capita, he said, but “probably they have a $400,000 mission budget” that is not being funneled through the PC(USA) system, so churches for the most part feel they have freedom to do what they want with their dollars and withholding consequently is not a big concern.

Elsewhere, though, perhaps in places where the evangelical churches feel more isolated, the dynamics are different. And in some presbyteries, the withholding debates have become heated.

In Heartland Presbytery, theological arguments have been presented in recent months to support both a congregation’s right to withhold money out of conscience, and the idea that churches in a connectional denomination are accountable to one another.

Johnston’s position is that sessions of particular churches have the right and the responsibility to distribute the congregation’s money properly, and “we take that very seriously.” But Johnston said “we’ve lost confidence” in the denomination’s direction, and his session isn’t convinced that if it gives money to the General Assembly, the money will be spent for things with which his congregation can agree are accomplishing Jesus’ mission in the world.

So Johnston’s church gives about $10,000 in per capita to the presbytery and synod, but takes about $2,800 that would be apportioned to the General Assembly and spends it on mission projects, everything from supporting children’s homes to mission work abroad. The test for his congregation, Johnston said, is “Will it serve the cause of Christ? Will it feed the hungry? Will it do it in Jesus’ name?”

And “we don’t think lobbying for war crimes against George W. Bush really does that,” Johnston said. “We have the right to decide.”

As a result of that, however, Heartland presbytery digs into its own budget to make up the difference to the denomination, said Ellen Marquardt, who’s the associate executive presbyter for congregational care and currently serves as the presbytery’s acting head of staff.

Marquardt said at least twice in the seven years she’s worked for the presbytery, motions have been presented stating that the presbytery should not make up the per capita for churches that withhold, “and there have been impassioned speeches about how we are a connectional church and we need to keep faith with the higher governing body. And of course the Book of Order says the presbytery shall remit” the per capita apportionment. “That means we are using mission dollars to pay the per capita” — in Heartland presbytery, about $50,000 a year, she said.

The policy that Heartland passed in June “is much larger than just per capita,” but takes the position that “we will not support financially churches that are not supporting the presbytery,” Marquardt said. The policy states that “no congregation [shall] be considered eligible to request assistance from the presbytery in the form of mission support, shared grants or loan guarantees unless that congregation has demonstrated its full participation in the fiscal and ecclesiastical life of the presbytery including the paying of per capita, the making and meeting of a mission pledge, being current on Board of Pension dues, the filling of annual statistical reports and the annual reporting of the pastor’s terms of call.”

When the presbytery passed its policy in June, a majority of those at the meeting voted for it — according to Johnston, the vote was 102 to 76 in favor of the policy. But when a request for reconsideration was raised at the September meeting, the presbytery voted 92 to 58 to rescind it — a considerable shift, but not enough, because the motion to rescind was introduced as a late-breaking matter of new business and needed a two-thirds margin to pass.

Johnston said he reads the changed vote as a sign that some agree the presbytery’s policy does amount to inappropriate punishment for churches that withhold — that “people saw the light.”

Marquardt said “our intent was certainly not to be punitive,” but to say that “if we’re going to put presbytery dollars on the line” in approving loans, then “we need to expect that the churches we support are full partners with us.”

Asked why she thought the vote shifted so significantly at the September meeting, Marquardt said “part of it may be the ‘Oh, we really don’t want to waste time and precious dollars doing the judicial procedure. We don’t think this sort of being at loggerheads is going to be productive.’ “

But some may also have been convinced by the argument that sessions ought to be able to use their dollars to support their beliefs, Marquardt said. She said that one pastor who may well vote differently from Johnston on controversial issues got up at the meeting and said “he has often taken stands because his conscience has led him to do so, and he can only honor someone else’s need to take a similar stand.”

There also has been conversation in the presbytery about “what does it mean to be part of the family,” Marquardt said — probing the question of how it’s possible to follow one’s conscience but also to remain loyal to the family. Marquardt said there’s been discussion of “what might be appropriate channels for protest. People feel they need to be heard and respected” — they can’t just be ignored, she said.

Some have suggested that those who want to withhold should just take the word “Presbyterian” off their church signs. But Johnston said he’s a Presbyterian pastor who’s married to a Presbyterian pastor, and he doesn’t want to go away. Johnston said he’s lost vote after vote on issues he cares about in the presbytery, but he continues to attend presbytery meetings; his congregation continues to pay presbytery and synod per capita (although Marquardt said records indicate the congregation did not give to the presbytery’s general mission fund in 2002 or 2003); and “I’ve never left the table, never quit.” Instead, his session redistributes the per capita money to mission projects it selects, Johnston said, trying to match its spending with its beliefs.

When churches don’t pay up, presbyteries often try to talk to them about that — using everything from what one executive called the “gentle phone call” to a formal letter. The Office of the General Assembly has conversations with presbyteries that don’t pay, but has taken no punitive action against them, Parsons said.

In some presbyteries, those quiet conversations seem to have made a difference.

In Shenango Presbytery in Pennsylvania, lots of Presbyterians are unhappy with General Assembly actions, and last year, per capita payments to the denomination fell $23,563 short of the apportionment, according to David Dawson, executive presbyter. About 10 congregations withheld roughly $14,000; of the remaining shortfall, “we can’t say for sure,” whether it was out of protest or for financial or other reasons, Dawson said.

But over time, the picture of withholding in Shenango Presbytery has changed — while it still happens, it’s not as much as it used to be, partly because some respected and trusted evangelicals in the presbytery have taken the lead in encouraging sessions to pay.

Even before the Re-imagining Conference — a controversial gathering of feminist Christians in 1993 that had support from the PC(USA) — a General Assembly took action regarding homosexuality that infuriated many in Shenango, and “about half of our congregations said ‘We’re not going to cooperate with a General Assembly that does that’” and started to withhold per capita, Dawson said. “At that point, it was a huge number [of congregations] and a huge number of dollars.”

Shenango Presbytery, which Dawson said puts a strong emphasis on relationships, did not make up those dollars, because the leadership felt that to do so “would be trumping the session’s decision. It would be saying, ‘We don’t care what you think, we’re paying it,’ ” Dawson said. “It would not have integrity.”

He also feels that taking money from the presbytery mission budget to pay General Assembly per capita “would be a misappropriation of funds” that sessions gave for mission work. And the presbytery couldn’t rely on its reserves for very long to pay per capita, he said, because “we’d be broke.”

Dawson acknowledged that most presbyteries probably don’t take the same stand as Shenenago — but in his presbytery, “it would be cross-cultural” for the presbytery to pay what the sessions refuse to. Instead, the presbytery leadership has tried to talk to sessions that don’t want to pay — an effort led for the past six years by F. Stanley Keehlwetter, who’s chair of the presbytery’s budget and finance committee and is pastor of Bethany church in Mercer, Pa. In Shenango, “everyone trusts him theologically,” Dawson said of Keehlwetter. And “he goes around to sessions and says, ‘You need to pay it.’”

Keehlwetter tells sessions that are withholding that “we know you have the right to protest and no one can do anything to you,” but that “your position doesn’t ultimately have integrity,” according to Dawson. Keehlwetter points out that despite all the furor, the PC(USA)’s position on ordaining homosexuals remains as many of those sessions want it to be — the denomination limits ordination to those who practice fidelity if they are married or chastity if they are single. So he asks, “What reason do you have to protest,” if the policy on gay ordination is one those sessions can support.

Keehlwetter isn’t alone. “In all 10 of our churches that are withholding, the pastor has encouraged them not to withhold … but the session has said no,” Dawson said.