LOUISVILLE — Here’s the good news, according to Jan Opdyke, director of a major fund-raising campaign for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Presbyterians are willing to give generously to support the mission work of the church. Missionaries are eager to serve — “they’re ready to get on a plane” if money can be found to send them, she said in an interview.
So far, more than $25 million has been pledged for the $40 million Mission Initiative: Joining Hearts and Hands campaign, with about three-quarters of that coming through partnerships with seven presbyteries, Opdyke told the General Assembly Council’s Executive Committee Sept. 26. People are saying, “We love the church, we want to support it, we want to put new mission personnel in the field.”
But that ties into the bad news: right now, there doesn’t appear to be enough money to pay the campaign’s operating expenses in 2007, because so much of the money being given to the campaign is being restricted by the donors for specific uses.
“Trust is an issue,” Opdyke told the executive committee. And the council needs to find money quickly to pay the campaign’s 2007 administrative expenses — because right now the campaign only has funding to carry it through two or three months of next year’s operating expenses, according to a report to the council.
According to the plan for the five-year Joining Hearts and Hands campaign, the PC(USA) would provide 100 percent of its operating costs for the first two years and half for the third year, but after that the campaign had to pay all of its own costs from the proceeds of the campaign. And now that’s proving difficult, because so many donations are being designated for specific projects.
In the interview, Opdyke said that about $500,000 that donors had promised to give to the Hearts and Hands campaign as unrestricted gifts have actually been designated to particular projects.
“I believe those pledges were made in good faith,” she told the executive committee, but the givers are now asking that their donations be used to support particular missionaries or projects, are giving their donations earmarked for “specific mission personnel they can name and claim.”
The recent $9.1 million budget cut and downsizing of the PC(USA)’s national staff hasn’t helped at all — particularly the initial announcement that the positions of 55 PC(USA) missionaries would be eliminated. Money to restore some of those positions later was found through a bequest, but the announcement that the denomination would send fewer missionaries angered many long-time supporters of Presbyterian mission work overseas.
A report to the council states that “to raise capital campaign funds an organization needs to be stable and it needs established leadership.”
Under the restructuring, the PC(USA)’s Worldwide Ministries Division is being dissolved. And congregations, pastors, and individuals who have supported it “now question what will replace that division and who will lead it,” the report states. “Mission co-workers are the most sacred of all denominational personnel. The thought of reducing our presence in the world is unfathomable to many.”
The Joining Hearts and Hands steering committee decided in April 2006 to focus on raising the remaining $14.5 million target in order to fund about 50 new mission workers overseas.
The report also states that to be successful, “an organization needs a constituency. The average Presbyterian in the pew neither knows of the work of the GAC nor connects to it,” and few are willing to give money directly (and without strings) to the national church.
Opdyke told the Executive Committee that the council needs to send a message of support for the campaign, and “the louder and stronger,” the better.
Linda Valentine, the new executive director of the General Assembly Council, told the committee, “I’m aware of this issue. It concerns me greatly.”
The report to the council states that the Hearts and Hands campaign was $92,402 under budget as of August 31, but had only $101,872 projected to be available to pay operating expenses in 2007 — out of an operating budget of about $789,000.
Asked what will happen if the money runs out, Opdyke replied that the council must decide.
