LOUISVILLE — The General Assembly Council made it clear Sept. 29 that it wants some questions answered about the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s $40 million fundraising campaign — significant questions, such as how many international missionaries the denomination actually is sending out and how much money is available to support them.
At the same time, the council does not want to signal that it’s pulling back its support for the Mission Initiative: Joining Hearts & Hands campaign, which is raising money for new church development in the United States and for international mission work.
Rick Ufford-Chase, moderator of the 216th General Assembly, said during the council’s meeting in Kentucky that the denomination’s primary story line needs to be “we want to lift mission up and are looking for ways to support that.”
Ufford-Chase said he recognizes that the Joining Hearts & Hands campaign is now “the public face of the General Assembly Council’s commitment to mission” — and that because of it, money has been raised for mission work that the denomination would not have otherwise had.
But the push for public accountability of the Joining Hearts & Hands campaign is gaining steam because the campaign’s leadership announced this week that they don’t have enough unrestricted funds available to pay their operating expenses for 2007 — they expect to run about $500,000 short.
That has raised the possibility the campaign could shut down before it had planned to — falling as much as $15 million short of its five-year, $40 million goal.
Tom Gillespie, a council member from New Jersey and the former president of Princeton Theological Seminary, told the council he has 21 years’ experience in institutional fundraising, and “an absolutely cardinal rule is you never, ever, ever have an unsuccessful capital campaign. Once you announce it, you keep doing it until you’re successful. … For goodness sake, let us not abandon it. We will regret it if we do.”
Conrad Rocha, a council member from New Mexico, made a motion — which the council approved — that the council’s Executive Committee be authorized to seek sources of funding for the campaign’s operational costs for 2007 and to approve spending those funds once they’re found.
Some council members were uncomfortable with that — Steve Benz of Tennessee said he didn’t want to go down the “slippery slope” of altering the PC(USA)’s budgets “on the fly” as needs emerge.
But Linda Valentine, the council’s new executive director, said she thinks it’s critical that the fundraising campaign succeed, and she asked the council to give the Executive Committee the flexibility to find the $500,000 where it can.
These questions come at a tricky time, because two independent Presbyterian groups — Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship https://www.pff.net/ and The Outreach Foundation https://www.theoutreachfoundation.org/ — announced in June that they will be raising money to send their own overseas missionaries.
The $9.1 million downsizing of the PC(USA) this year and the restructuring of the denomination’s national staff also has raised some concerns — particularly about whether worldwide mission work will have enough prominence in the new arrangement. So some see this as a particularly significant time for the denomination to stress its continuing commitment to having an evangelistic and mission presence around the world.
Most of the first $25 million of the Hearts & Hands campaign has been raised through partnerships with presbyteries, and will be spent for new church development in the U.S. But the campaign’s steering committee has announced that the remaining $15 million, if it is raised, would be targeted towards international mission work.
That desire for the Hearts & Hands campaign to do well has not squelched, however, the questions about accountability that council members also want answered. Ufford-Chase said he’s been frustrated for months now, since before the budget cut was announced last spring, with the difficulty of getting solid numbers on the financing for the PC(USA)’s international mission work, and the role that the Hearts & Hands drive plays in it.
Ufford-Chase said there have been “tensions and struggles” in the fundraising effort and a change in focus in how the money is being raised — a shift from big donors to presbytery partnerships. He said he senses that the campaign, while being in a good way responsive to changing needs, also to some extent is “built on kind of shifting sands.”
Among the questions he’d like the Executive Committee to find answers for:
· How many mission co-workers, specialists and volunteers are currently deployed and funded on behalf of the PC(USA)? Ufford-Chase said that when the budget cuts were being considered last spring, he heard different numbers used at different times of how many missionaries might lose their jobs, and never was satisfied that the information was solid.
· What are the needs for maintaining the missionaries already working in the field? What’s required financially for their ongoing support? Ufford-Chase said he’s troubled by the “slipperiness” of the conversation regarding funding new mission work. Does new mission work mean a job for a new missionary? Or that an existing worker’s term of service is ending, and this would provide new funding to allow that person to continue doing the same work?
· If the Hearts & Hands campaign succeeds in raising another $15 million for international mission work, how will that money be used? How many missionaries would be deployed or supported?
· Where will the money come from to pay the operating expenses of the Hearts & Hands campaign? “I have continuing questions about a campaign,” Ufford-Chase said, “that doesn’t even raise enough undesignated support to pay its own costs.”
· How can the denomination as it is being restructured create an “integrated, cooperative approach” to working with the Hearts & Hands campaign, so the right questions get answered and new mission co-workers are sent to the places they are most needed?
Council member Ken Newbold of North Carolina added another question. What happens to missionaries who are sent into the field when Hearts & Hands has spent all its money? Newbold said he was told recently that they come home when that money is exhausted — so he wants to know, “What happens when the money runs out?”
The conversation about what’s working and not working with Hearts & Hands caught fire Sept. 28 in the council’s Worldwide Ministries Division Committee, where some of these questions first got asked publicly.
And the campaign’s director, Jan Opdyke, sounded a warning when she told the Executive Committee Sept. 26 that donors who had promised to give unrestricted gifts were instead providing the money with the requirement that it be spent for specific projects — so the campaign would only have enough money to pay its operating expenses for the first two or three months of 2007. Opdyke characterized that trend towards restricted giving as a sign of a lack of trust in the PC(USA).
Ufford-Chase, while he wants his questions answered, also said he wants people to know that the PC(USA) is in no way pulling back from international mission work. He said he wants “full accountability,” but also to say that the council “is committed to mission and also to completing this campaign successfully.”
In other business:
· Valentine formally thanked the PC(USA)’s division directors whose jobs were eliminated as part of the reorganization. Those three — Don Campbell, from Congregational Ministries, Curtis Kearns Jr., from National Ministries, and Marian McClure, from Worldwide Ministries — have continued to provide “servant leadership” during this time of transition and “boldly put their jobs on the line in service to the whole church,” Valentine said.
· The council responded to a letter of complaint involving its decision last April to close its meeting during which the budget cuts were being considered. Some at-large and corresponding members excluded from that meeting objected in a letter. The council acknowledged Sept. 28 that it had committed an “irregularity” in excluding Douglas Theuner, an Episcopal bishop who is an ecumenical advisory representative to the council. Theuner should have been included, a report to the council states, because the Book of Order specifically lists ecumenical advisory delegates as members of the council.
Some still are uncomfortable, however, with the way the council handled things at that meeting. For example, to exclude Walter Baker, an at-large member with financial expertise, “was offensive. It was permitted by the rules. It wasn’t ethical,” said David Van Arsdale, a council member from Michigan.
