Letter to PCUSA churches explains three ‘bailouts’
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, February 29, 2000
The leadership of the General Assembly Council has dispatched its “pastoral letter” to more than 11,000 congregations in the Presbyterian Church (USA) explaining why it approved three “bailout” appropriations.
The four signers of the letter said they were writing “in response to interest we have heard from across the church concerning decisions made over the past six months to fund three unbudgeted expenditures.”
The largest response was from 1,170 individual Presbyterians and local sessions that opposed giving the National Council of Churches $400,000 to help it recover from a $4-million 1999 deficit. Only 131 respondents favored the NCC bailout.
Curriculum and ‘The Dawn’
The other two issues were $4.5 million in debt forgiveness and credit for publishing new curricula in 2000 and funding to cover up to $2.1 million in debts from “The Dawn … An Epiphany,” the year end youth event that drew only 2,000 people after plans were made for 30,000.
The letter did not call any of the appropriations “bailouts” although that was in the language of the original resolution. It referred to the “recapitalization” of the National Council of Churches but said, in closing, that the church needed to move beyond a “bailout mentality.”
Furthermore, the letter referred only to $1.6 million to cover costs associated with the new curriculum and did not mention $3.3 million in debt forgiveness for the Curriculum Publishing area. “This action became necessary,” the letter said, “because adequate monitoring systems were not in place to control development costs and original sales projected proved overly optimistic.” The Curriculum Publishing Program Area was designed to be self-supporting.
“By the time of the September GAC meeting, most of the [curriculum] development costs had already been incurred,” the letter said. “A decision to stop development at that point would have foreclosed the opportunity to recoup any of the costs through curriculum sales. The GAC believed that moving ahead was a financially responsible decision under the circumstances. Initial response to the new curriculum has been very positive.”
Y2K fears blamed
The letter blamed the Dawn’s deficit on low attendance and Y2K fears. “When Y2K fears reduced the actual attendance to only around 2,000, however, we found ourselves in a serious financial situation,” the letter said.
Shortly before the Dawn, organizers blamed Y2K for the reduced turnout. “It appears that a lot of people have chosen not to come because they fear problems that could result if computers malfunction as the world enters a new millennium on January 1,” said Roger Nishioka, the principal organizer.
However, Jack Marcum, administrator of the Presbyterian Panel, said a survey of Presbyterians concluded that “For most, Y2K’s not even a blip on their radar screen.”
Other critics of the Dawn blamed poor planning, unappealing location, inadequate promotion and unrealistic expectations.
Safeguards missing
The pastoral letter said, “We failed … to build into our planning process sufficient safeguards that would have allowed us to act in a more timely way to minimize our losses. GAC Executive Director John Detterick has already begun a complete review of the planning and decision-making process surrounding this event. His findings will be used as a case study in training that will be mandatory for GAC staff planning future large scale events.”
The letter said, “Inadequate administrative and financial management over a period of several years has led to the $4 million deficit currently faced by the National Council of Churches.”
It said a key factor in “the decision to approve this grant was the importance of the NCC’s Church World Service and Witness (CWSW) activities to our own humanitarian and relief work. Much of the work that is done through Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is coordinated with other denominations through CWSW. The cost of replicating CWSW for the PC(USA) would have been greater than our share of the recapitalization costs.”
Deficit reduced with relief funds
Church World Service is the NCC’s most successful and financially stable ministry. The NCC has decided to use $1.4 million raised through events such as Church World Service’s local CROP walks to reduce the deficit.
There have been discussions about making Church World Service autonomous. But NCC leaders are unwilling to grant full independence to Church World Service because the NCC relies on money raised for hunger relief to fund some NCC programming.
“It is our strong desire and fervent intent that these situations not be repeated,” the letter said. “With better management procedures and clearer expectations now in place, we believe that we can move beyond a ‘bailout’ mentality.”
The letter was signed by Donetta C. Wickstrom, chair; Peter J. Pizor, chair-elect; Carole Rummel, vice-chair-elect; and Jeffrey G. Bridgeman, member.