So let’s assume the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) runs out of unrestricted reserve funds (which it’s expected to do by the end of 2016), and must balance its budget with only the funds it has coming in. What happens then?
Good question.
The Presbyterian Mission Agency Board spent a little time Sept. 24 conducting a “priorities exercise” to get a sense of what that might be like.
Among the issues board members were asked to consider:
- Mission priorities come first.
- There’s a need to prioritize underfunded programs.
- Consider these questions:
- What are the programs that the PC(USA) should prioritize in the coming three years, even if there are no restricted funds or program fees to pay for them?
- What is needed for the PC(USA) that no one else but the Presbyterian Mission Agency can do?
- If a particular program went away, who would notice?
To work through that – hypothetically – board members were asked to imagine that they had 100 points to distribute among Presbyterian programs listed on a chart – and if so, how they’d distribute those points. They spent some time in small groups working on that (although their decisions weren’t shared). Then Wendy Tajima, a board member from California speaking for the board’s Strategy Advisory Group, asked what that effort had been like.
“Hard,” one person responded.
“I have no idea what most of these programs are, who they serve, what the metrics being used for determining how effective they are,” board member Molly Baskin said earlier during the exercise.
Marilyn Gamm, chair of the board, said that exercise gave “a tangible picture of what is before us” – in other words, what the board will face in early 2016 in crafting a PC(USA) budget for 2017-2018.
In preparation for that process, Tajima said, efforts are being made to coordinate work now being done on a variety of fronts:
- To address the immediate financial challenges the PC(USA) faces.
- To develop a two-year interim strategy (meaning: the mission work plan and budgets for 2017 and 2018. Originally, the board had hoped to create a four-year strategy – but has decided that’s not the way to go, with top leadership in the denomination in flux).
- A churchwide discussion, which is being coordinated with the Office of the General Assembly to gather ideas from Presbyterians about the direction of the church.
- Transitions in leadership – with the 2016 General Assembly slated to elect a new PC(USA) stated clerk as Gradye Parsons steps down, and with Tony De La Rosa having just been selected as interim executive director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency.
- A multi-level listening plan. That will include discussion among the board; a survey; feedback sessions with constituent groups; and a churchwide discussion coordinated with the Office of the General Assembly.
Among the priorities for the interim period, according to Tajima:
- “Help us do less and interpret that to the church – prioritize, and make cuts along those priorities.”
- “Help us with the theological underpinnings for the agency’s purpose, and the decisions the agency makes.”
- Build trust, and “reconcile with the larger church and each other.”
- Nimbly follow Christ into the next decade – innovate.
- “Cultural humility involving White privilege but also issues that have arisen over the last year.”
- Keep structure simple, maximize synergies among ministries.
- “Pursue justice, address sin.”
