Salt Lake City — One more hurdle in the process of unifying the Presbyterian Mission Agency (PMA), the Office of the General Assembly (OGA) and the Administrative Services Group (ASG) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was crossed as commissioners to the denomination’s 226th General Assembly last week approved a combined budget for the to-be-named organization by a vote of 340 for and 2 against.
Originally approved in May by the PC(USA), A Corporation before circulation to the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly (COGA), and the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board (PMAB), the “unifying budget” was updated for presentation to the assembly as item FIN-13. The slightly revised totals reflected assembly actions and income adjustments for the combined agencies of $94,859,983 in 2025 and $94,949,969 in 2026.
In addition to including a reserve policy that seeks to fully fund a unified financial reserve instead of the separate agency reserves reflected in previous budgets, this budget predicts a combined agency staffing level of 429 full-time staff and 48 part-time staff, 3% salary increases each year and an updated 7.1% increase in Board of Pensions (BoP) dues, recognizing changes to this dues structure will need to be revised after the recent changes to BoP pricing.
Retained in this budget, however, are the earlier approved estimated surpluses of $3,021,389 in 2025 and $557,534 in 2026 that will help offset reduced revenues.
As a comparison, the individual agency budgets for 2023 and 2024 approved by GA225 in 2022 were $14,954,091 and $16,193,992 respectively for OGA, $70,145,938 and $70,825,021 respectively for PMA, and $19,423,551 and $19,942,459 respectively for ASG. Due to combined cost collection from the budgets of OGA and PMA for ASG services of $14.8 million in 2023 and $15.1 million in 2024, the adjusted total combined budgets approved by the 225th General Assembly was $88,365,740 in 2023, and $89,557,635 in 2024.
This approved budget included allocations for 418 full-time staff and 43 part-time staff to include employees of OGA, PMA, ASG and mission co-workers. The budget accounted for 3% salary increases each year and an estimated 1.8% increase in Board of Pensions dues for major medical coverage.
The work of joining the PC(USA)’s Office of the General Assembly and Presbyterian Mission Agency has been underway since 2016 when two committees and the Way Forward Commission were formed to explore options for streamlining the options of these two agencies. The work of these groups, and the subsequent 12-member Unification Commission formed by GA225 in 2022 to serve a four-year term, is targeting a July 1, 2025, date for full unification.
Most recently, the communications groups of the two agencies were combined as a test case for how the mission objectives of the denomination can be achieved together.
“We can draw on the communications effort as a kind of first fruits,” said Felipe N. Martínez, co-moderator of the Unification Commission. “Very soon it will not be two agencies.”
As outlined in August 2023, when the July 1, 2025, unification goal was announced, a five-step process was envisioned to work toward combining the two agencies. Falling squarely in Step 2, the interim report of the commission and budget presentation to the General Assembly comprise tasks in this second phase of designing the structures of the new agency.
Kathy Lueckert’s slide from the August 2023 Unification Commission meeting.
In addition to reporting 24 consultations and listening sessions throughout the wider church, the interim report noted the Unification Commission has continued its work of defining a new governance structure for the combined agency and worked with OGA and PMA to create the unifying budget approved at the assembly.
The next meeting of the Unifying Commission is scheduled for October 10-12, 2024, at which point further work toward Step 3 of the plan for unification will be revealed to include a more complete governance framework along with support systems and staffing designs.
During the discussion of FIN-13, GA226 commissioners asked Kathy Lueckert, president of A Corp., about expected staff levels or plans for downsizing the combined agency. Lueckert responded, “We don’t know what the implications [of this budget] will be for our staffing patterns. Our hope is to always preserve staff… We will take a plan to the Unification Commission in October.”
