New leaders are named for $40-million campaign
The Layman Online, April 24, 2006
Joining Hearts & Hands, the $40-million campaign in the Presbyterian Church (USA) for missions and new church development, has changed leadership while the bulk of its pledges remains unfulfilled and expenses outpace its cash collections.
Bill Sauls of Long Beach, Calif., and Lucimarian Roberts of Biloxi, Miss., both elders, have resigned. The steering committee of the campaign, after “reluctantly” accepting their resignations, named two ministers to succeed them. The new leaders are the Rev. David Peterson and the Rev. Joanna Adams.
Peterson is the minister of the 4,400-member Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church in Houston. He is one of 35 pastors who signed a recent statement expressing their concern about the direction of the denomination and the possibility that the 217th General Assembly will approve the recommendations of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (USA). While saying they are “longing to retain our unity,” the signers added, “we are ready for a redefinition of that unity and the structural realities that hold us together. God help us.”
Adams is the pastor of the 208-member Morningside Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, Ga., and former co-moderator of the Covenant Network, an organization committed to repealing the denomination’s constitutional prohibition against ordaining homosexuals. She formerly served as co-pastor of the 5,383-member Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, whose senior minister, John Buchanan, is a former General Assembly moderator and was one of the co-founders of the Covenant Network.
On paper, according to the most recent financial report through the last quarter of 2005, Joining Hearts & Hands has raised $24 million – but only $2 million in cash. Most of the rest is in pledges made by presbyteries and earmarked for new church development, which presbyteries generally traditionally sponsored without a denominationwide fundraising campaign. The campaign has not posted figures for the first quarter of 2006, which ended on March 31.
With the PCUSA facing a financial shortfall of $9.1 million – requiring another round of staff cutbacks – for the 2006-2008 budget years, the presbyteries also may be harder pressed to fulfill their pledges to the fundraising campaign. Cash expenses during the campaign have been 17 percent higher than the cash receipts.