LOUISVILLE — After the news hit that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s major fundraising drive doesn’t have enough unrestricted money to pay its operating costs for 2007, the question naturally came up: what to do about it?
And that dilemma is leading members of the General Assembly Council to ask other questions.
How successful has the Mission Initiative: Joining Hearts & Hands campaign really been? The General Assembly birthed the campaign in 2002, saying it wanted the PC(USA) to raise $40 million for church growth and redevelopment in the U.S., and for missionary work overseas. So far, the campaign has more than $25 million in pledges, most of it for new church development projects here in the U.S.
Now, wanting more information, the council’s Worldwide Ministries Division Committee has voted to ask that the council’s Executive Committee be authorized to look at the implications of the Joining Hearts & Hands campaign for funding international mission work and for supporting overseas missionaries. It’s asking that the Executive Committee consider whether the campaign is the best vehicle for funding the PC(USA)’s international mission work — and if it is, to figure out how to raise the money for operating expenses that the campaign says it needs.
In raising these questions, the council members are responding to red flags waved earlier this week by Hearts & Hands leaders — including the campaign’s director, Jan Opdyke, who said Sept. 26 that the campaign only has funding to carry it through two or three months of next year’s operating expenses.
She said the problem arose because donors had promised to give about $500,000 to the campaign as unrestricted gifts, but the donors later placed restrictions on how the money could be spent.
“Trust is an issue” in the PC(USA), Opdyke told the Executive Committee.
On Sept. 28, David Peterson, co-chair of the campaign’s steering committee, told the General Assembly Council he considers Joining Hearts & Hands to be the most important thing the PC(USA) is doing. Peterson, pastor of Memorial Drive Church in Houston, spoke from the heart about why he thinks its vital for a denomination that is slumping in membership and crippled by controversy to turn its passion and energy to the crucial work of spreading the news of Jesus Christ around the world.
In response, council member Linda Knieriemen of Michigan suggested asking the council to continue its support of the Joining Hearts & Hands campaign for its full five years.
She told the Worldwide Ministries Division Committee she was troubled because the council heard “an impassioned plea” from Peterson, but didn’t talk about what he had said and didn’t seem to have a plan for what to do.
But others weren’t ready to support the campaign without more information.
“There are some profound implications that have not been addressed,” said Will Browne of the PC(USA)’s Worldwide Ministries Division staff.
The campaign says it wants to raise money to send more missionaries overseas, but what about financial support for mission co-workers already deployed?
Who decides where missionaries are most needed?
What’s the relationship between the campaign and the Worldwide Ministries Division, which works with partner churches around the world?
“I have some serious questions about the viability of the project,” said Zane Buxton, a council member from Colorado. Some of the $25 million is coming from new church development projects that presbyteries are doing — but which now is being counted as Joining Hearts & Hands funds, he said.
Rick Ufford-Chase of Arizona, moderator of the 216th General Assembly, said he’s felt frustrated for months at not getting clear information about how many international missionaries the PC(USA) has and how their positions are funded.
And Bill Young, who’s executive director of Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship and a former national staff member, said: “I know how we were yanked around from the beginning” by the Joining Hearts & Hands campaign. “Every time we thought we had something set,” the rules changed, Young said.
“They won’t let us get out to do what we need to do to raise money for missionaries. This has been a real problem for them (the national staff) at a time when they haven’t needed this,” he said.
Young also said some presbytery projects got included in the Joining Hearts & Hands numbers “to make it look good,” when those were projects the presbyteries were planning to do anyway.
Emily Enders Odom, the communications director for Joining Hearts & Hands, disagreed that the presbytery money would have been raised anyway. The fundraising campaign has provided motivation and marketing support to the presbyteries partnering with Joining Hearts & Hands, “to help them tell their stories” and to raise the money, she said.
Buxton said the campaign started out as an effort to raise money from wealthy donors, but when that didn’t happen it was changed to emphasize presbytery partnerships. “The model had to change dramatically from the initial model,” and “it’s struggled to pay for itself,” he said. If it doesn’t meet the goals, the question should be asked, he said, whether it should continue.
But Ufford-Chase said he has heard enthusiasm for the campaign in his travels around the church, and thinks that shifting the focus of Joining Hearts & Hands to presbytery partnerships “has in fact been a good thing for the whole church.”
Ufford-Chase said that while he has questions, “I’d like to find a positive way to have the conversation.”
The full council is expected to take up the matter at its meeting Sept. 29.
