LOUISVILLE — Most Presbyterians don’t sit around thinking about how the top levels of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) are organized. But just understand this:
· The reorganization of the top levels of the denomination’s national staff is continuing — with a key appointment in communications and funds development recently being announced. That appointment, if confirmed by the General Assembly Council this week, will round out the top level of the PC(USA)’s administrative team.
· The council, meeting March 14-16 in Louisville, is also being reorganized, with the election of new leadership and a new committee structure. The size of the council also will change in the months to come, producing a council that’s supposed to be more streamlined and more focused on the denomination’s Mission Work Plan goals.
· Linda Valentine, who was named the council’s executive director in June 2006, spoke of how she hopes the new alignments will allow the council to more effectively “talk about big issues, what the church needs and how we can respond.” Valentine spoke of the need for “adaptive thinking, generative thinking, strategic thinking” in the PC(USA).
The council’s executive committee did hear an update on funds received from the Heiserman bequest — an unrestricted gift from a Colorado woman that, at the end of 2006, was valued at just over $10 million. The council already is committed to spending $2.5 million of it to finance mission co-workers.
And it’s being recommended that $1.5 million be put into the PC(USA)’s capital reserve funds, that about $996,000 go to the National Mission Partnership Fund, and that three gifts be made to honor the involvement of the Heisermans in Colorado — 1 percent of the fund be given to First Church of Yuma, Colo., where the Heisermans worshipped; 1 percent to the Synod of the Rocky Mountains; and 3 percent to the Presbytery of Plains and Peaks.
That would leave just about $4 million to go into the PC(USA)’s reserve funds.
Council member Tom Gillespie said he would have liked to see some of the Heiserman funds go to support Johnson C. Smith University, https://www.jcsu.edu/ an historically black school in Charlotte, N.C.
But Joey Bailey, the PC(USA)’s deputy executive director for shared services, said the denomination is in negotiations to sell property from the former Mary Holmes College, and it’s more likely Johnson C. Smith would be considered as a possible recipient of some of that money once a sale goes through.
The council’s executive committee, meeting March 14, confirmed the appointment of Karen L. Schmidt of Chicago as the PC(USA)’s deputy executive director for communications and funds development. The full council is expected to vote on Schmidt’s appointment later this week.
“My soul started singing” when she learned of the job, Schmidt told the executive committee. “I’m here by the power of the Holy Ghost.”
Schmidt brings to the job extensive corporate experience — she’s been a senior executive in marketing and sales with companies including LandAmerica, Andersen Consulting (now known as Accenture), and BDO Seidman.
In a biography provided to the executive committee, Schmidt, who in 2006 earned a master’s in business administration, is described as a “results-oriented problem solver” with experience managing big budgets and developing marketing and branding strategies.
She’s also a Presbyterian elder, having been a member since 1994 of First Church in Glen Ellyn, Ill. The pastor of that congregation, Jerry Andrews, is co-moderator of the Presbyterian Coalition, an evangelical group, and Valentine quoted Andrews as describing Schmidt as “one of the strongest elders I’ve ever worked with.”
Schmidt is a Lutheran-turned-Presbyterian, with a heritage in her family of relatives serving as Lutheran pastors and missionaries — “my father was the first one who wasn’t a minister,” she told the committee.
Before joining First Church, Schmidt “surreptitiously” attended worship at Fourth Church in Chicago for four years, the biography states — acknowledging that “taking the step to become Presbyterian in the face of her Lutheran heritage was difficult.”
But Schmidt told the executive committee she has a “passion for mission,” and she tells the fifth graders in the Sunday school class she teaches to “believe in Jesus Christ, transform the world.”
When she finished, one council member said quietly: “That’ll preach.”
Schmidt’s appointment, if the council confirms it, will round out the top layer of leadership changes Valentine has initiated. Another of her three deputies — Tom Taylor, the deputy executive director for mission — told the executive committee that his first few months on the job have been “an unbelievable amount of fun” and “a tremendous amount of work.”
Taylor said that “to see the needs of churches from a treetop view has been just a thrill,” and that he’s “obsessed” with connecting the denomination’s national offices with congregations and people in the pews.
One of the subtexts of this meeting is the recognition that things are changing in the PC(USA). Valentine referred again to a Presbyterian Panel survey from 2005, which showed that 84 percent of Presbyterians in the pews didn’t know much about the denomination’s mission work.
“No wonder financial support has declined,” Valentine said, and “our connectional bonds are frayed in a lot of places.”
As she travels around the church, “what’s the number one topic” people raise, Valentine asked? “Communication, communication, communication.”
It’s clear, despite the reorganizations and the high hopes for the future, that the PC(USA)’s troubles are far from over. Now, the Office of the General Assembly needs to cut seven jobs from its staff. It’s asking its 70 employees to consider taking a voluntary separation package so that layoffs might be avoided. In the spring of 2006, the General Assembly Council cut $9.1 million from its budget and about 75 employees of the national staff lost their jobs.
Surveying all the change — new leadership on the council and the national staff, new arrangements all around — the council’s chair, pastor Allison Seed of Missouri, said during worship that “God is working His purpose out” in the PC(USA).
