Detterick says council’s work on mission plan represents a ‘new day’ for the PC(USA)

That may be — depending on what happens when the actual budget cuts are presented in early May. Detterick said the staff now has the opportunity to make its budget planning “much more rational,’ based on stated priorities and not just “maneuvering numbers.” But “our alternatives will be agonizing, each of our options will impact the lives of our colleagues,” he acknowledged. “Even though we have been through it before, because we have been through it before,” he knows the next few months — when from $5 million to $8 million will have to be cut from the budget for the next two years — will be difficult.

A sign of the kind of discussion that new day may bring came in comments made by Phil Butin, president of San Francisco Seminary. As the meeting drew to a close, Butin raised a concern about a new fee the council voted to impose to recover administrative costs from restricted gifts to the church — money given on the condition that it be spent for particular things.

The council had discussed that issue earlier, and Butin had indicated then that the presidents of the Presbyterian seminaries were “OK with the agreement that has been reached.” But Butin raised the issue again later, saying that he had misunderstood the proposal, thinking that the Theological Education Fund would have a cap of 5 percent of its income it would have to pay in administrative fees — and this year, the fund is paying all but about $2,000 of that amount anyway. But Butin said Feb. 14 that he didn’t realize that, if the fund’s administrative expenses exceed 5 percent, it would still have to pay them — in other words, the fund wouldn’t get any relief from the denomination if those fees, because of rising costs, creep up over 5 percent.

Butin, in an interview, said he didn’t really expect his argument to prevail this late in the discussion — and it didn’t. The council voted down an amendment that would have removed the Theological Education Fund from being subjected to the administrative fee.

But what Butin did have a chance to do was to make a case to the council about the importance of the denomination providing financial support to the seminaries — because of “the relationship between the congregations who desperately need the theological education” and the leadership training that the seminaries provide.

Butin provided a quick tutorial in seminary funding.

In the 1960s, the Presbyterian church provided about one-fourth of the seminaries’ budgets, Butin said. Now, the seminaries rely on congregations for support through the Theological Education Fund, but only about one-fifth of the churches give to the fund and many of them at a level less than the one-percent of their budgets suggested by the Theological Education Fund, Butin said in an interview.

In talking to the council about the administrative fee, Butin was both representing the views of the seminary presidents regarding the administrative fee, but also making a bigger case for a reconsideration of the way the PC(USA) funds its seminaries.

And it’s likely that — just as Butin did — every program that could be affected by the new budgeting realities will be making as strong a case as it can for the importance of the work it does to the denomination. “I’m just as committed to the financial health and flourishing of the church, the PC(USA), as I am to the seminaries,” Butin told the council. “We need a scenario where the interests of the two are not pitted against each other,” because “as the seminaries go, so the church goes,” and vice versa.

Others tried to send a message of hope — that whatever happens in the budget process, God will be with the PC(USA).

Bill Saul, one of the co-moderators of the steering committee of the Mission Initiative: Joining Hearts and Hands fundraising campaign, told of his optimism that the campaign will exceed its goal of raising $40 million in five years for international mission and new church development and revitalization in the U.S., particularly among racial-ethnic and immigrant churches.

The National Korean Presbyterian Council has tithed to the Mission Initiative $300,000 of its $3 million fundraising campaign to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Korean immigration to the U.S. A Mission Initiative video is being prepared, former fundraisers for the Presbyterian Foundation have volunteered their services, and the campaign’s staff is ready to start making calls on potential big donors en masse.

In early February, Santa Fe Presbytery — which presbytery executive James Collie said has benefited from Presbyterian mission giving and from the support of Presbyterian Women for “forever” — challenged itself to raise $1.7 million, half of which would go to the Mission Initiative and half of which would be used by the presbytery for new church development or mission work. If Santa Fe can do it, “your presbytery can as well,” Collie said, “and I hope you’ll line up.”

Susan Andrews, moderator of the 215th General Assembly, challenged the PC(USA) to remember that God promised, “I will never leave you.”

And that holds true, Andrews said, even when some are calling for splitting the church or withholding funding or when millions of dollars need to be cut from the budget and jobs and ministry will be lost. Preaching to the council during morning worship on Feb. 13, Andrews described the Presbyterian church as wandering “between the glory days of the 1950s and the unknown future of this bewildering 21st century.”

And, using as her text God’s dealings with Jacob in the 28th chapter of Genesis, she told of how Jacob tried to bargain with God, saying, “Hey, God, if you are with me … then and only then will I let you be my God, only then will I worship you.”

But God wants Jacob — and the Presbyterian church — to trust and obey, to be faithful always, Andrews said. God eventually gave Jacob a dream — and Andrews spoke of Christians she’s met around the world as the angels and messengers of God, “scurrying up and down the ladder of possibility” — from the Korean pastor who leads five Bible studies a week for young Korean professionals who may not go to church, to a pastor opening up a dying, white congregation to reach the Hispanics moving in.

As much as this meeting focused on internal matters — budgets and General Assembly recommendations — it was also spiced with these kinds of moments, when the numbers got pushed aside and stories of real people took command of the room.

Charles Easley Sr., vice-moderator of last year’s General Assembly and an African American, told of being met at the airport in Johannesburg by a man who said, “Welcome home, brother,” and how he recognized in the music he heard in South African churches the roots of the spirituals he’d heard all his life. Andrews described a church in western Ethiopia, a simple concrete structure, where the congregation is growing so fast that people crawl through the windows to squeeze into the corners, eager to stand for two hours in 110 degree heat to worship and praise God.

Then, of course, there were piles of business — motions and reports to get ready for the General Assembly.

For example, the council endorsed the findings of the Special Offerings Review Task Force, which is recommending that no new churchwide special offerings be created.

Karl Travis, a pastor from Michigan and chair of the task force, said the task force determined that Presbyterians don’t want another special offering to support overseas mission or new church development and that creating another offering could hurt the Mission Initiative.

Ken Newbold of Coastal Carolina presbytery, one of two presbyteries that sent overtures to last year’s General Assembly asking for a new offering, said his presbytery is “deeply disappointed” that a way wasn’t found to send more money to evangelism and international mission, and “we’re going to be watching what happens with the Mission Initiative. We may be back.”

In other business, the council:

• Agreed to recommend to the General Assembly two approaches to per capita — the assembly can take its choice. The first option would set a rate of $5.46 per active member for 2005 — five cents less than the rate for this year — then to raise it to $5.56, a boost of 10 cents per member from the current rate, for 2006. The second option is to raise the per capita rate to $5.51 per member next year, a jump of five cents, and then leave it there for 2006. The extra money that would come in in 2005 would be saved and then spent on General Assembly expenses in 2006.

• Approved a change to allow the Committee on Theological Education to report directly to the General Assembly. In the past, that’s how the theological education committee did report — along the way, that changed, and now, with the approval of the General Assembly, it would change back. Reporting directly to the assembly is “an effective way to maintain the connection between the theological schools and the denomination,” the report states. And the theological education committee and the Presbyterian seminaries “desire to be seen as partners of all the ministry divisions” and of the Office of the General Assembly, rather than being related to just one division, the report states, because the work of the theological schools is related to the work of the whole denomination.

• Elected new leadership, with the shifts to take place after the council’s meeting in June. Nancy Kahaian of Indiana, who’s been chair of the Mission Work Plan group, will be the council’s new chair, and Paul Masquelier of California its vice-chair. The council’s new committee leaders are: Congregational Ministries Division, Charles Easley Sr. of Georgia, chair, and John Bolt of West Virginia, vice-chair; Mission Support Services, Linda Toth of Oregon, chair, and Frank Adams of Florida, vice-chair; National Ministries Division, Allison Seed of Missouri, chair, and Isaac St. Clair Freeman of Virginia, vice-chair; Worldwide Ministries Division, Fran Calderwood of Kansas, chair, and Melvin Lowry of Georgia, vice-chair; and Audit Committee, Karen Dimon of New York state, chair.

• Previewed three television ads that will be rolled out soon as part of the PC(USA)’s “Here and Now” campaign. Doug Wilson, of the denomination’s evangelism office, said the new spots are targeted towards adults ages 25 to 49 who don’t go to church.

One shows guys playing rugby, running hard and slamming their bodies into a pile. “One day, all of a sudden, it hits you,” the voice-over says. “You’re 39, and you’re not invincible. When you’re ready, there’s a church, here and now,” followed by the logo of the PC(USA).

In a second, a young woman is shown crying. “Ten years ago, your life was your clothes, your church, your boyfriends,” the voice-over states. “Now it’s Jennifer, Jennifer, Jennifer” — and you hear the sound of a just-born baby crying. “When you’re ready,” the voice-over says, “there’s a church, here and now.”