LOUISVILLE — Without releasing any specifics of a $9.1 million budget cut, the details of which are expected to emerge May 1, the General Assembly Council of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has unanimously approved a budget of $97.2 million for 2007 and of $95.9 million for 2008.
What exactly that will fund — what programs will be kept and which will be cut — remains to be seen, as virtually all the council’s budget discussions over four days took place behind closed doors.
When the council finally pushed open the doors, about a half-hour before they were scheduled to adjourn for worship April 29, they handed out only overall budget figures they had approved. More details will be released May 1 after employees being terminated are informed.
There are a few clues in what was said in what is to come. Some funding has been designated for the “short-term continuation” of Presbyterians Today magazine (the exact amount being spent isn’t clear, nor was “short-term” defined). The report states that $500,000 will be taken from reserves — half in 2007 and half in 2008 — to continue publishing the denominational magazine, at least for a while, and “to create and fund an effective communications program” for the General Assembly Council
A new staff structure will take effect Oct. 1. The three ministry divisions (Worldwide, National and Congregational) will be streamlined into two working areas (Witness and Support Services). John Detterick, the council’s executive director, plans to retire this summer, and the council is meeting May 23 in Chicago to nominate someone to replace him — an appointment the General Assembly will be asked to confirm in June.
The new executive director will hire the two deputy directors — one each for witness and support services — and the council will confirm those hirings at its meeting in September.
The report also states that the staff will evaluate programs relating to evangelism and multicultural work and in September bring to the council “alternative programs that will directly speak to communicating the gospel in clear ways which will give a stronger identity to our mission work plan.”
The budget includes the use of $4.6 million in reserves for 2007 and $6.3 million in 2008. For 2007, that’s $250,000 more than the staff had proposed using in presenting the budget to the council April 26.
The overall numbers show spending as follows:
· For evangelism, $16.7 million for 2007 and $16.8 million for 2008;
· For multi-cultural work, $2.6 million for 2007 and about the same for 2008;
· For fighting poverty, $22.7 million in 2007 and $23.2 million in 2008;
· For working for peace, $3.1 million in 2007 and about the same in 2008;
· For strengthening Reformed identity, $9.3 million in 2007 and $7.7 million in 2008;
· For working with families, $938,076 in 2007 and $1.1 million in 2008;
· For developing vocation, $11.4 million in 2007 and $11.5 million in 2008;
· For working with small churches, $558,000 and $567,000 in 2008.
The private process
Although very little information was released publicly, there was a sense the council was pushing to the wire to make decisions before adjourning its meeting.
During the opening session, Detterick apologized that council members weren’t given even broad-brush budget proposals to read before they arrived. That had been the intention, Detterick said, but when the packages were due to be sent out, “candidly as of Friday (April 21) all of the numbers hadn’t come together.”
On April 28, the night before the meeting was to end, the council decided it needed more time and added a private session after dinner. It also started early the next morning — its final few hours, before council members had flights booked to leave for home — and spent more time behind closed doors then, still grappling with what to do.
Detterick had warned that if the council wanted to add anything back into the budget, it had to find something else to cut. And every bit of that discussion took place behind closed doors.
Denominational officials have insisted that this approach — a $9.1 million budget cut crafted with virtually no public discussion — is the only choice they had, because of confidentiality concerns involving the employees who will lose their jobs. They cited the personnel exemption in the open meetings policy, saying over and over that the employees deserved to learn what was happening to them directly from their supervisors on May 1.
They warned council members against leaving paperwork out on tables or about talking in the elevators or hallways where they could be overheard.
But the process chosen also means that neither the employees affected nor the church as a whole have any way to know why certain programs were selected to survive and others were eliminated.
There was no opportunity for the church to debate publicly, for example, what type of work or emphasis best serves the goals of “justice” or “compassion” or “evangelism” — all emphases of the new Mission Work Plan.
What if there are different ideas of what working for justice means? What if a particular kind of work is controversial, such as public advocacy, or pushes for change that makes some people uncomfortable — should that make it more or less vulnerable? If two programs both do important work but there’s not enough money to go around, how is it decided which one to cut?
At a time when a lack of trust is a key issue in the PC(USA), is an understanding of what happened in the discussions — and why — information that the broader church wants or needs to know?
All of the discussion took place in more than 10 hours of “private sessions,” from which even the 18 at-large, corresponding and ecumenical advisory members of the council were excluded. Nancy Kahaian of Indiana, the council’s chair, said that meant only the 71 elected members of the council were making the decisions, and that the others, some of whom represent specific groups and might be seen as accountable to specific “constituencies,” would not be involved.
But Douglas E. Theuner, an Episcopal bishop from New Hampshire who’s an ecumenical advisory member of the council, said during the opening session that he didn’t understand why he’d been asked to come to the meeting in the first place if he couldn’t participate in most of it — particularly since he’d skipped another ecumenical meeting in order to come.
At a time of such scarce resources, to fly him across the country to sit in the hallway outside a closed meeting is “a waste of my time and your money,” Theuner said.
Throughout the meeting, the council prayed for all those who would be affected by their decisions.
Peggie Blenman, the PC(USA)’s associate director for human resources management, said the staff has been informed of what’s happening every step of the way — meaning the process for handling things has been described in detail and workshops offered in such areas as résumé writing and career exploration — and she repeatedly described the process as “transparent.”
The council’s executive committee also praised Mid-Kentucky presbytery for providing pastoral care, having chaplains available at the national offices in recent weeks to meet privately with any worker who wished to — including those in danger of losing their jobs and those managers involved in the stressful work of recommending who would stay and who would go.
Mid-Kentucky presbytery will continue to provide chaplains at the national offices as the downsizing takes effect, and around the edges of this meeting there has been discussion of “survivors’ guilt.” Some losing their jobs will have to clear out their desks and be gone May 1; others will be given extensions of a few months — they’ll be told they will be terminated but not immediately.
Employees have to show up Monday to get their letters informing them of their fate. It’s reported that some plan to wear black.
