Two-year per-capita projections based on 90,000 fewer members
By Paula R. Kincaid, The Layman Online, February 16, 2004
LOUISVILLE – The General Assembly Council will send the 216th General Assembly two proposals for setting the per-capita rate for the 2005 and 2006 budget years.
“Let’s let the assembly have the choice on where they want to go,” said John Detterick, executive director of the council.
Both figures are based on anticipated membership losses of 45,000 in 2003 and 45,000 in 2004, the years that set the basis for the per-capita rates in 2005 and 2006. The loss in 2002 was 41,812, the highest exodus since the reunion of the northern and southern wings of the mainline denomination since reunion in 1983.
One proposal would drop the per-capita rate for 2005 to $5.46 per active member, since there will be no General Assembly meeting that year. In 2006, however, the rate would increase by 10 cents to $5.56.
The second proposal would maintain the same rate of $5.51 for each year.
For the first time, the 216th General Assembly, which will hold its last annual meeting in June in Richmond, Va., will approve budgets and per-capita rates for two years. After June, the General Assembly will meet every other year, beginning in 2006 in Birmingham, Ala.
In comparing charts on the two figures, Detterick said that both proposals would end up close to the same place.
Both Detterick and Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick told the council and the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly that per-capita collections had remained strong despite dissension in the denomination.
However, they did not mention the General Assembly and the stated clerk have all but declared it a crime for local sessions not to remit their full per-capita apportionments to support the General Assembly and higher governing bodies.
The 1999 General Assembly adopted a policy that requires presbyteries to remit the full amount, even if some sessions withhold or redirect their per capita – “as long as funds are available within the presbytery.”
In many cases, presbyteries have cut their own missions in order to remit the full amount after some sessions voted against paying their apportionment, whether because of disagreement with denominational policies or lack of money. Only one of the 173 presbyteries has publicly announced a policy of not making up the difference for sessions that withhold or redirect per capita as a matter of conscience.
In 2002, Kirkpatrick warned ministers and elders that they would violate their ordination vows by advocating withholding – a threat that conflicts with the PCUSA Constitution that says sessions may neither be coerced into making their payments nor punished for failure to do so.
Detterick said that in 2002, the uncollected per-capita was “the lowest in decades.” The amount written off at the end of 2002 was $188,061. However, the staff presented graphs showing that uncollected per capita was lower in 1993 ($182,353) and 2000 ($175,603).
The 2004 budget projects a per-capita shortfall is projected at $425,000. While 2004 uncollected figures aren’t known yet, the 2005 and 2006 budget has reduced the uncollectible figures to $350,000 for each based on the 2002 numbers.
The council voted also to recommend proposed per-capita expenditures of $12,403,390 for 2005 and $15,003,117 for 2006.
During a joint meeting of the council’s executive committee and the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly earlier in the week, Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick, said that “basically we have had a good year.”