Dave Peterson, the Houston pastor who’s co-chair of the Mission Initiative: Joining Hearts & Hands fundraising campaign, is as curious as anyone about what will happen next.
The Hearts & Hands campaign doesn’t have enough money in unrestricted donations to pay its operating costs for 2007 — and the campaign’s leaders hope the General Assembly Council can find a way to come up with enough funding soon to keep the $40 million campaign afloat.
Peterson, pastor of Memorial Drive Church, also is one of the leaders of the new Presbyterian Global Fellowship, which is encouraging Presbyterians at the grassroots to work together in mission — either through the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) or on their own.
In an interview, Peterson said that unhappiness with the actions of last summer’s General Assembly “absolutely” played a role in the difficulties Hearts & Hands is experiencing in raising undesignated funding — “I think there’s a direct connection between the two,” he said.
And Peterson said, “I think what’s happening is our connectionalism is getting redefined right now. I think there’s a high level of need for a connectional church. … But the old form of connectionalism isn’t serving us very well.”
The PC(USA) suffers from “a lack of a global sense of vision,” a sense of “what are we trying to do in the world,” Peterson said. “If you were to ask a typical Presbyterian, `What’s the Presbyterian church about at its national level?’ I doubt if anybody could say. Institutional survival is what it’s about right now.”
But he also thinks the Hearts & Hands campaign, which is raising money for new church development in the United States and for international mission work, “is the most important thing the denomination is doing and should be doing. I hope the General Assembly Council will find ways to make the resources available to keep this thing moving forward. … I have found it something that both sides of the political issues can get behind with some sense of integrity.”
Peterson’s own congregation, Memorial Drive, has committed $1 million to the campaign — all of it designated for particular uses, $850,000 for church planting and $150,000 for mission partnership in Central America.
“We’re just excited about those things,” he said. Most people don’t think of providing unrestricted funds for operational expenses for a fundraising campaign, “and when there’s suspicion in the community, that only adds to the concern.”
The campaign’s steering committee is scheduled to meet next shortly after Thanksgiving. “We’re in a little bit of a wait-and-see mode right now,” Peterson said, waiting to discover if there will be money for the campaign to continue in 2007.
Peterson, 59, is the son of a Presbyterian minister — he grew up in the PC(USA).
He acknowledges that he’s worried about the denomination, “but I’m not worried about the Presbyterian church, if that makes any sense.”
Houston is a city of more than 50 megachurches, many of them nondenominational and drawing thousands each weekend for worship. He is used to people being put off by the label “Presbyterian.”
But there are strong Presbyterian churches in Houston, and Peterson believes that denominational labels don’t matter that much these days anyway.
“I think a lot of people don’t care that much anymore,” he said. “They want to know what’s going on in that local church. If you can have a strong local congregation, no matter what your denomination is, I think you can still thrive.”
