LOUISVILLE — The mission budget being proposed for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) for 2009 and 2010 does not call for layoffs, but would use $7 million in reserves to balance the budget.
The proposal, which the General Assembly Council will vote on this week — probably April 25 — also calls for an increase in the number of missionaries who would serve the PC(USA) in the next two years.
And it would restore the denomination’s Environmental Ministries office, which was eliminated in a major round of budget cutting in May 2006. At least two overtures coming to this year’s General Assembly have asked for that — with one from Mid-Kentucky Presbytery, for example, saying that the office was eliminated “at a time critical to sustaining the planet and life on earth as we know it.”
The cost for restoring the office is estimated at $100,000 a year.
The council will vote this week to approve a proposed two-year budget that it will send on to the General Assembly for consideration in June. Concern about Presbyterian presence in global mission work definitely will be part of the discussion.
At the council’s meeting in February, some members had voiced alarm over the prospect of a financially-distressed PC(USA) continuing to cut back on the number of missionaries it sends overseas at a time when many nondenominational Christian groups are becoming ever more active.
The number of missionaries the PC(USA) has sent overseas has been sliding for nearly 50 years — down from a high of 1,849 missionaries in 1959.
Hunter Farrell, the denomination’s director of world mission, said then that the number of international mission workers the PC(USA) has deployed internationally was dropping at a “precipitous pace” — down from 250 in 2006 to a projected 190 by January 2009. As missionaries leave through retirements and attrition, there hasn’t been money available to send more people out, although qualified candidates are lined up and ready to go.
But the budget that GAC Executive Director Linda Valentine is proposing calls for the PC(USA) to employ 215 international mission workers in 2009 (at an average cost of $49,586 apiece) and 220 in 2010 (at an average cost of $51,074 each). If approved, that would be an increase from the 196 missionaries the PC(USA) expects to have in the field in June 2008.
How exactly all this would be accomplished will be discussed in more detail once the council meeting begins in Louisville April 23. But the broad outlines of the budget proposal show that there will be some shifting of funding priorities and some reductions, even if widespread layoffs are not being proposed at this time.
Some cutbacks may be achieved bit-by-bit, for example, by eliminating vacant positions. Not filling a vacant post in the office of the deputy executive director for mission would save $91,641 in 2009 and $95,391 in 2010. Eliminating a vacant position in human resources would save more than $83,135 in 2009 and $85,792 in 2010.
Continuing the budgets of some denominational offices would depend on success in fundraising because some of their past funding has come from endowments that are nearly depleted. The report to the council states, “… the 2010 funding of $124,201 for the Interfaith Relations office and funding of $161,334 for the UN (United Nations) Peacemaking office are conditioned upon successful fundraising efforts. This funding or funding for other mission work will have to be revised if these fundraising efforts are not successful.”
Over the two years, $7 million would be drawn from the denomination’s reserves — $3.5 million each in 2009 and 2010. As of Feb. 29, the PC(USA) had a balance in the Presbyterian Mission Program Fund (PMPF) reserves of just over $21.2 million, with a required reserve balance of just over $9.5 million. Once the $7 million is spent, the PC(USA) would have left a “projected cushion” of $8.3 million at the end of 2009 and $4.8 million at the end of 2010, the report states.
Grants made from unrestricted funds to outside groups would drop by 14 percent from the 2007 spending levels, to make more dollars available for other mission work.
And there would be new fundraising efforts to try to raise money for world mission. The budget being presented includes the expectation that the denomination would receive a net of $2.1 million in both 2009 and 2010 in new funds development initiatives for world mission.
The overall budget being proposed would total about $110.3 million in 2009 and $107.6 million in 2010. Within that budget, there would be increased spending in some areas, including about $8 million for ongoing hurricane and tsunami recovery work through Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (the result of restricted donations for those purposes), and more funding for new immigrant churches.
And the council will be asked to affirm three years of operational goals in the Mission Work Plan, for 2009 through 2012. That plan includes both the goals and some proposed outcomes for achieving them.
For example, the plan includes an operational goal of “utilizing effective storytelling and interpretation” to engage Presbyterians in being involved with and supporting the denomination’s mission work.
A proposed outcome for that would be to increase the awareness level of PC(USA) mission and ministry among Presbyterians from 16 percent — a level that Valentine has repeatedly lamented as being way too low — to 50 percent by the end of 2010.
