Commitment to supporting the church comes from some unexpected places

Conversations with people in presbyteries that lead the pack in unrestricted giving — that are willing to fork over funds without saying exactly how the money must be spent — show that kind of thing doesn’t happen accidentally. It’s the result in part of a strong historic commitment to a connectional church. People in some places choose to be Presbyterian; they do so intentionally, and they want to be part of something bigger. If they disagree with certain of the denomination’s policies, they want to stay involved to try to effect change.

And in some of these places the leaders talk without timidity about stewardship — about believing that all gifts come from God, about giving back as God requires, about trusting in God to provide.

PC(USA) leaders are starting to pay more attention to the presbyteries that have the best track records in basic mission giving. The “top 10” in unrestricted giving were honored at the recent General Assembly in Richmond and members of the denomination’s staff leadership team have begun paying visits to those presbytery councils — first to say “thank you” (and, obviously, “keep it up!”) but also to find out about what those presbyteries are doing and what the national church can do to help.

Those discussions also are coming in conjunction with a broader effort getting underway to look at the denomination’s overall strategy for funding its work. There have been, over the last few decades, some tremendous shifts in the way Presbyterians give money — and in the attitude of Americans overall to charitable giving. More people want to have a voice in how the money is spent. Today, 70 percent of the PC(USA)’s mission budget is restricted — only about $36 million of the $128 million budget comes in unrestricted money, almost a complete reversal of what that ratio was a few decades ago.

The question being asked is “Is this mission funding system, which hasn’t changed a whole lot in 50 years, … still relevant to the world in which we find ourselves? said Kathy Lueckert, deputy director of the PC(USA)’s General Assembly Council.

In a time of overall mistrust of institutions, when many people want to control how their donations are used, “What does it mean to be connectional? How does that value play out with our dollars?” Lueckert asked. “The entire underpinnings of the system need to be examined and talked about honestly.”

To do that, the General Assembly Council is planning to form a task force to consider such questions — a group that likely will meet over the next two years or so, and which needs, Lueckert said, to include “new and different voices,” including younger Presbyterians and some who are disenchanted with the system now.

There also may be lessons to be learned in places such as Donegal, a medium-sized presbytery where people may have their differences with national church policy — the presbytery has a history, for example, of submitting overtures to the General Assembly trying to make change — but still have been willing to give generously.

Donegal was one of the first four presbyteries in the United States. It has a long history of giving first to the denomination, “and then you dealt (at the congregational level) with what was left,” said Donald Campbell, who was executive presbyter in Donegal during much of the 1990s and now is director of the PC(USA)’s Congregational Ministries Division.

“We are part of a much larger church than simply who we are as individual churches or who we are in Donegal Presbytery,” said Roger Uittenbogaard, who’s executive presbyter there now. “The church is doing important mission around the world … What we need to do is clearly get the message out about the good things we’re doing.”

But this isn’t just a matter of top-down encouraging — of selling Presbyterians locally on the good work of the national church. The idea of a connectional church also has a lot of local flavor and ingenuity. Some presbyteries are structured in particular ways — around geographic realities and a vision of what ministry can be that give strength and energy by linking the resources available around a common vision in a way that gets the most bang for the buck.

Donegal Presbytery, for example, is divided into four areas, each with a mixture of small and larger churches, which helps give each financial stability, Campbell said.

Cascades Presbytery in Oregon is another of the top-giving presbyteries in unrestricted dollars. Cascades has replaced the term “basic mission support” with “mission partnership giving” — people didn’t understand what the old term meant and asked questions such as “basic to whom?” said Jack Hodges, one of four presbytery co-executives.

It’s restructured the presbytery committees to give support to four vision statements the presbytery has agreed upon, so there’s a common sense of what kind of work the presbytery most wants to do, Hodges said.

And Oregon — unlike Pennsylvania, with its strong history of Presbyterianism — is in a part of the country that’s decidedly unchurched.

“There are absolutely no cultural incentives to be part of a church in Oregon,” Hodge said. “In the South, the first thing they want to know is your name and the second thing is what church you go to. Here, they could care less … So if you’re in a church, it’s because you’ve decided to be in a church,” as a conscious choice and often with a significant level of commitment to both that congregation and to the denomination’s work around the world.

With declining membership and a rocky economy, the PC(USA) has been hurt financially. The national staff has been hit with layoffs each of the past three years. And many synods and presbyteries are feeling the dollar crunch too.

But in March 2003, Cascades Presbytery voted not to support a proposal that would have given a greater percentage of basic mission support to the Pacific Synod and a smaller percentage to the national denomination. That would have helped with the synod’s deficit, Hodge said. But Presbyterians in Oregon support the idea of partnership, he said — and they recognize that some of the money that goes to the PC(USA) comes back to the presbyteries and synods to support programs they consider worthwhile.

It might be easier, Hodge acknowledged, not to give the money away. Cascades Presbytery is cutting its program budget, is using some of its reserves, and “churches are feeling the push,” he said, of higher insurance expenses and other incremental costs increases that all add up, particularly for small churches.

But “in many respects, I find myself viewing all this stuff in a kind of non-anxious fashion,” Hodge said. It is, in essence, “an opportunity to say what’s important, what do we want to affirm, what’s not necessary?”

In Lake Michigan Presbytery, another of the “Top 10” in unrestricted giving, executive presbyter Mary Sample challenges congregations to tithe, even if they’re not sure how they can afford a pastor, telling them that “when we do, we see things happening we didn’t think possible,” encouraging them to rely on the words of Malachi 3:10 and to “put God to the test.”

To the skeptics, Sample tells them what she’s learned from her own experience.

Before she came to Michigan in April 2003, Sample worked at a small church in Florida “that was cleared out financially by a secretary and left with $108.”

The week the theft was discovered, Sample got up in the pulpit on Sunday and told folks the money was gone “and now we’re going to have to trust God, and that’s not a bad thing.”

She encouraged the people in the pews to tithe. And each month, although the congregation’s reserves had been wiped out, the church faithfully sent one-tenth of what it collected to the presbytery, its own tithe. Somehow, “our bills were paid,” Sample said. “I never missed a paycheck … The underlying thing is, if we’re willing to trust, God can do some amazing things.”

As the PC(USA) talks about money, “we really need to get back to some biblical things,” she said in a telephone interview. “We don’t give to see what we get out of it, we give because it’s what God told us to do, to give. And we do it for God’s glory, not ours.”

Growing up, Sample said, she was not taught to tithe, although she knew of deacons in the Baptist church who would stand up and tell how much they were putting in the collection plate and challenge others to match it. In the Presbyterian church, “we don’t do that,” Sample said — but she did learn in years to come from the example shown by friends who did tithe and who talked about why that mattered to them.

“The more I did it, the more I saw there were times I was really stretching to make ends meet,” but “different doors were opened” because she did, Sample said.