In the beginning, the Mission Funding Task Force of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) set out to develop a new funding system for the denomination.
But one of the most significant things the funding task force figured out was that it couldn’t fix the PC(USA)’s financial problems — they couldn’t dream up some new configuration to make it all better. Conrad Rocha, a council member from New Mexico who leads the task force, said this is not a problem along the lines of “you have a roof that has a leak” — something that can be repaired quickly — but more like a chronic illness the denomination must learn to live with.
The Mission Funding Task Force recently presented a draft of its report to the General Assembly Council — the final report is due in September 2007 — and “there are some people who are very, very unhappy with what we are proposing, simply because it’s not a solution,” Rocha said in an interview.
Instead, the task force is saying this. The General Assembly Council and the PC(USA)’s national offices need to listen, to work in partnership with congregations and middle governing bodies, and to rebuild trust.
“People are starting to realize the General Assembly Council wants to be a partner in consultation and not the king of the hill,” Rocha said.
The task force is telling the national church to “make every effort you can to be open, to be transparent, and to be willing to listen.”
Per Capita
There’s also conversation about the role that per capita — the per-member payments congregations pay to support the work of middle governing bodies and the national church — should play in the PC(USA).
Grace Presbytery in Texas, for example, has approved an overture to the 2008 General Assembly calling for ending the use of per capita apportionments by 2010. For some years now, Grace and other presbyteries in the Synod of the Sun have done without per capita — quite successfully, its leaders say. And now Grace is asking the national church to realize, according to a statement presenting the overture, that “all that we do today should be part of how we participate in the mission of God’s work in Christ.”
In other words, everything — from running a soup kitchen to disaster relief work to deciding how often the presbytery should meet and how big its staff should be — involves mission, said Dave Wasserman, Grace’s executive presbyter.
Some congregations — unhappy with the direction of the PC(USA) — withhold their per capita and designate how all mission giving should be spent. Increasingly in his presbytery, people are saying, “We don’t want any of our money to go to General Assembly and the synod,” Wasserman said.
But many presbyteries, including Grace, find a way to make up those per capita payments, and do send on to the national church the full per capita payments. Part of the conversation that needs to take place, Wasserman said, is “do we want to continue to equalize?”
Wasserman also said he was concerned when significant staff cutbacks in the PC(USA)’s national offices in the spring of 2006 involved only the General Assembly Council staff, not work funded through the per capita budget of the Office of the General Assembly.
“Trying to create a level playing field for the mission of the national church would go a great way towards reclaiming some of that trust,” he said.
The task force, while not taking a position on the Grace overture, also is suggesting that the issue of what’s funded through per capita be discussed, through a joint conversation involving the per capita table of the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly and the General Assembly Council — a group that exists structurally but has in recent years basically been in hibernation, Rocha said.
“Is per capita working? It depends on whom you talk to,” he said. Some middle governing bodies say it’s not, “because they’re not collecting it (all) from the churches. They’re paying it themselves.”
The task force report states that per capita, “though flawed,” should remain part of the current funding system. But “we have learned that there are perhaps ministries and work currently included in the general mission budget that might better be included in the per capita budget and vice versa,” the report states. For example, a new Joint Vocation Office — handling everything from the certification of Christian educators to helping congregations find new pastors — is housed jointly in OGA and the GAC.
“Does the conversation need to be had — absolutely,” Rocha said.
Fiscal realities
The Mission Funding Task Force also pointed out some other realities of Presbyterian funding — worth paying attention to in a denomination that’s losing members by the thousands each year and has endured round after round of financially-driven staff layoffs.
It refers to this troubled time as a “unique moment” in Presbyterian history — when, “guided by God’s spirit, we are called to seek a new consensus” about the roles the national church should play in supporting mission in the U.S. and overseas.
Designated giving — in which congregations or individuals give money to be used in a specific way — is becoming more and more popular. Rather than fighting the trend, or being lukewarm about it, the PC(USA) should recognize the value of having Presbyterians give money to causes they’re excited about, the task force suggests.
It refers to shared mission giving (funds provided to support the overall mission work of the church) and designated giving as being of “equal worth,” with both being “faithful ways to support Christ’s mission.” When designated giving is chosen, an administrative fee would be assessed to cover costs associated with administering that particular program.
Designated giving “is not necessarily bad,” Rocha said in the interview. “It’s the way our culture works” — and can be a sign of enthusiasm for a particular area of mission. Increasingly, Presbyterians at the grassroots level have become directly involved in mission work.
Some of that is happening outside the PC(USA) structure — through parachurch groups and humanitarian relief projects, through ecumenical and interfaith networks.
In some cases, those groups may be “doing it better than we’re doing it” — the PC(USA) might learn from that where to focus its energy and where it might pull back to let others take the lead, Rocha said. “We can value their ministry as well,” he said.
The report states that areas experiencing growth in giving are those “successfully engaging the giver,” not those depending on a sense of loyalty to the institution. The old way was to tell the national church, “I give it, you spend it,” Gradye Parsons of the Office of the General Assembly told the council at its March 14-16 meeting.
Now it’s more a “mysterious process in which there are lots of givers and lots of spenders at all different kinds of levels,” said Jim Collie, executive presbyter of Grand Canyon Presbytery. God provides the gifts to Presbyterians, and “it’s God’s Spirit alone that helps the process work.”
The task force also suggests that the PC(USA) set aside time each year for a “Season of Giving” — to tell the stories of the denomination’s mission work and to “promote the concept of giving as a form of Christian discipleship.” It won’t be a time to ask for money, task force members said, but to talk about why stewardship and giving are important to support the PC(USA)’s mission work.
The task force proposes creating a pilot program for such a season of giving from Oct. 14 to Nov. 11, 2007, in the Synod of the Covenant with offices in Maumee, Ohio.
And the task force talked of the importance of having a mission funding system that’s accountable. “We are desperately in need of a transparent system of reporting who’s giving and where the money is going,” said Linda Knieriemen, a council member and pastor from Michigan.
The Committee on the Office of the General Assembly (COGA) also voted recently to allow its ministries to solicit designated funds from potential donors — not to rely solely on per capita funding. In recent years, only the Presbyterian Historical Society has initiated special fund raising.
But COGA voted March 14 to expand the duties of associate stated clerk Kerry Clement to include development, or fund-raising.
Prior to joining the denomination’s national staff in 1990, Clements served for seven years as development director for Interfaith Community Services in St. Joseph, Mo. He told COGA, “I’m excited about the work, and about not creating a whole new structure to do our work. We will work with the Presbyterian Foundation, Board of Pensions, and all the other agencies so we don’t step on each others’ toes in the process.”
