Per-capita shortfall is increasing rapidly
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, October 29, 2003
Whether it’s because of hard times or disagreement over the agenda of the denomination’s leaders, the sessions of local congregations are increasingly reducing their contributions to the per-capita budget of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
The rising shortfall in per-capita gifts to PCUSARecently, the denomination wrote off as uncollectible more than $200,000 for the year that ended on Dec. 31, 2002, and the shortfall is projected at $425,000 in 2004. In the 2000 calendar year, the contributions were $23,000 under budget.
The General Assembly tries to cut its losses by annually increasing the amount it seeks from Presbyterians through their local congregations. But it often guesses wrong. Budget-makers failed in their estimate of membership loss in 2002. The actual downturn was 41,812 in 2002 – more than double what was forecast.
All per-capita contributions come from local churches. They are collected by presbyteries, which keep their share and send the rest to the synods and the General Assembly. Per-capita requests for the General Assembly are $5.51 per church member for 2004. The requests from presbyteries and synods vary according to the extent of their programs.
The decline in per-capita revenue for the denomination comes in spite of the 1999 General Assembly, which adopted a policy that required presbyteries to remit the full per-capita amount requested by the national church offices from the congregations in its region – even if the presbyteries had to dip into their own mission program funds.
In their report on collections for the denomination in 2002, PCUSA financial officers said 42 presbyteries – nearly 25 percent of the presbyteries in the denomination – failed to remit the full amount requested.
The budget-makers do not identify who’s withholding the money or why. While a number of evangelical congregations have announced publicly that they are not paying their full share of the requests from the denomination, they are not alone.
The list of the 43 presbyteries coming up short in 2002 includes Northern New England, Long Island and Hudson River, which are among the most liberal presbyteries in the denomination. Northern New England fell 25 percent short of its apportionment. The largest underpayment percentage was by Hamni, a Korean presbytery, which was billed $30,192.75 but paid only $10,000.