The General Assembly Council, meeting this week in Louisville, is hard at work on its Mission Work Plan, setting the priorities for spending that are supposed to guide the shaping of the denomination’s budget for 2005 and 2006. But along with big thinking about figuring out what the denomination most wants to do – determining its top priorities and then shaping a budget to fit that – come some cold, hard numbers.
There is an estimated shortfall in revenue for those two years of about $8 million – about $4.85 million in 2005 and $3.15 million in 2006. Of that, some strategies have been identified that potentially could take care of about $3 million, by finding other sources of funding. But that still would leave the denomination about $5 million short – and, if the plan goes forth, budget cuts to achieve that probably would have to be identified by the time the council’s executive committee meets May 7 and 8.
The whole thing is complicated – kind of like trying to figure out what a painting is going to look like before it’s finished. Some of what can be seen at this point is that:
• It’s not all about cutting. Built into the figures – if they are approved – would be some new spending, to support areas that the council thinks would be important to do in the next two years if it’s serious about making an impact in the areas it has identified as priorities. Some examples: more money spent on mission co-workers, more materials produced for congregations in languages other than English, and funds for a staff person to tell “good news” stories about the denomination.
• The new work being suggested totals over $8.5 million – and would be paid for in a number of ways, including more than $5.1 million from the Mission Initiative: Joining Hearts and Hands fundraising campaign. There would also be some reallocating of money, to the tune of more than $1.5 million, although the details of what would be scaled back or eliminated in order to do the new work weren’t laid out.
• The plan lists five “Mission Work Plan Goals” for 2005 and 2006, listed in priority order. Those goals – with those deemed most important coming first – are: evangelism, leadership, spirituality, justice, and the role and identity of the General Assembly Council. Within each of those areas, the plan lists “work plan objectives,” again in priority order.
• Some broad proposals for how to divide the unrestricted funds among the priority areas have been presented. Evangelism would get 30 percent (it now gets 29 percent); leadership would get 29 percent (down from 30 percent now); spirituality, 19 percent; justice, 17 percent; and the role and identity of the council, 5 percent. Joey Bailey, the denomination’s chief financial officer, said that 1 percent shift from leadership to evangelism would amount to about $350,000 for 2005.
• There would be some system for accountability built in – to measure whether the council really is meeting its goals – and an effort made to present goals that really can be accomplished in two years, said Kathy Lueckert, the council’s deputy director. For example, “we would love to be able to feed hungry people,” Lueckert said. “But we won’t be able to feed all the hungry people in the next two years” – so the plan would try to specify, where during that time can the PC(USA) most effectively be of help.
All of this still must be approved by the council and could change – but this is the way the budget proposal was laid on the table Feb. 11. That means, as the council’s executive director John Detterick explained to the Mission Support Services Committee, that the council will “set the parameters,” and the staff will recommend to the council’s executive committee by its May 7 meeting the specific budget cut proposals.
The council is being asked to make ‘high-level framework decisions,” Detterick said, and “we haven’t tried to think through what that would mean” for specific programs. But once the council sets those parameters, then the staff will begin “struggling – and I mean the word `struggling’ ” Detterick said – to recommend the actual budget cuts. That will mean “trying to do fewer things better,” he said. “It means some things will not be done.”
And Detterick said one of his disappointments is that the council decided earlier that it would not meet again this spring – instead, the council preferred to meet in Richmond just before the General Assembly. What that means is that the executive committee, not the full council, will have to make decisions on the budget cuts.
This isn’t the first time. The PC(USA) has had to cut the budget, and jobs, during each of the last two years – trimming $3.1 million and 19 positions last year (9 of those were vacant slots), and by slashing $4.2 million and cutting 66 jobs the year before.
And this next round is definitely going to hurt. Bailey told the Mission Support Services Committee that “the whole building is going to be affected by a two-year budget proposal that’s $8 million short.”
Gary Skinner, a council member from Seattle, said he can’t tell from looking at the Mission Work Plan what programs might be cut, and that makes him uncomfortable. “Sometimes when it says shift the allocation 1 percent, we don’t know programmatically whose ox is getting gored,” Skinner said.
There may be some hints – for those with the patience and skill to read deeply between the lines – in the listings included in the report of what are considered to be “lead programs” in each of the five priority areas. Presumably, what’s not listed prominently there as “lead programs” might be candidates for cutting, although that’s not definite either and there’s still plenty of room to shift things around.
Lueckert emphasized that the dollar figures being used in the Mission Work Plan are considered accurate “high-level estimates,” but not precise figures.
The plan does say that about $60.4 million in the denomination’s current expenses seem to meet the definition of “lead program” work in the five areas of priority. Another $27.6 million is considered “major” work (such as internal audit and legal services) that isn’t included in a priority area but which seem important to keep doing. About $8.5 million would be needed for new work – work that, if these truly are priorities, should be done but isn’t happening now.
That leaves $36.7 million in work that’s now being done and paid for – but isn’t, at least in this preliminary consideration, classified as “lead-program” work in a priority area. Presumably, if this plan is followed, it’s from somewhere in these unnamed areas that the budget cuts would come.
Those most deeply involved with the Mission Work Plan acknowledged that this approach means doing things differently – and that “there is something about us that doesn’t like change,” as Nancy Kahaian, a pastor from Indiana and the chair of the Mission Work Plan team, put it.
But – playing off on the title of the popular book, Who Moved My Cheese?, Kahaian said that “God moved Abraham’s cheese, and Sarah’s too for that matter,” and that “the first word that God says to Abraham and Sarah is ‘Go.’ “
God then spelled out for Abraham and Sarah exactly what they’ll be leaving, she said, telling them to “leave behind your nation, your family, the very home in which you have lived in all your life” and saying that “when you have moved, I will bless you. That’s the primal Bible story, the foundation of everything that follows.”
Whatever budget the council’s executive committee recommends would have to be approved by the 216th General Assembly in Richmond in June.
