GAC, COGA to seek disapproval of overture seeking to eliminate per-capita as part of mission-funding system
By Craig M. Kibler, Staff Writer,The Layman Online, April 25, 2008
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The General Assembly Council and the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly will be urging commissioners to the upcoming General Assembly to disapprove an overture that seeks to eliminate per capita as part of the mission-funding system.
The 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) will be held June 21-28 in San Jose, Calif.
In discussing a draft comment to the overture Wednesday during a morning meeting at the Brown Hotel, Frank Adams of Pensacola, Fla., the chair of the GAC Stewardship Committee, said that the overture (OVT-38) “has a bottom-line financial implication of $13 million.”
In the draft comment, COGA and the GAC state that the overture, if approved, “would create serious financial problems for the General Assembly” and that it “seeks to eliminate the historic method for funding the essential and mandated functions of the Office of the General Assembly and the General Assembly Council as an expression of our covenant community, and it does so without offering a way of underwriting these functions.”
The rationale for the overture, sponsored by Grace Presbytery, states that “the current mission-funding system of the General Assembly continues to generate less and less giving from the churches. The funding of the entirety of the church’s work is reflective of the church’s understanding of its mission and that no part of the church’s work should be separated from the church’s review of its mission (including such matters currently being funded by the General Assembly’s per capita as the holding of General Assembly meetings, ecumenical relationships, and the employment of certain administrative staff).”
The rationale states that “the elimination of the General Assembly per capita would simplify the work of mission funding and the interpretation of the church’s mission. The ‘per capita’ is inconsistently used throughout the entire church (that is, some presbyteries and synods use the per capita and others do not). The payment of the General Assembly ‘per capita’ for all church members is an expectation of the presbytery, regardless of the mission gifts received from that congregation.”
In urging disapproval of the overture, the draft comment states that the “‘per-capita apportionments’ are the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s way of making incarnate our foundational theological conviction, found in G-1.0400, a section called, ‘The radical principles of Presbyterian Church government and discipline:’
- ‘That the several different congregations of believers taken collectively constitute one Church of Christ, called emphatically the Church; that a larger part of the Church, or a presentation of it should govern a smaller, or determine matters of controversy which arise therein; that, in like manner, a representation of the whole should govern and determine in regard to every part, and to all the parts united; that is, that a majority shall govern; and consequently that appeals may be carried from lower to higher governing bodies, till they be finally decided by the collective wisdom and united voice of the whole church.’
“This radical connectional principle at the heart of our Presbyterian ecclesiology,” the draft comment states, “requires implementation through a participatory system of support in addition to a participatory system of government, and the per-capita apportionment has been our historic way of insuring this covenantal commitment’s expression as a form of stewardship of God’s gifts to all members of the Presbyterian Church (USA).”
Citing what it called “a time when there is extreme pressure on all funding systems in the church,” the draft comment states that, in addition to theological and constitutional concerns, the elimination of the General Assembly per-capita budget “would put in great jeopardy such core functions in the PCUSA as the biennial General Assemblies, our core support of ecumenical bodies, our constitutional and judicial functions, the preservation of our historical records, and the training and support of our governing body system and significant added stress on the mission budget of the GAC because that budget will need to cover these functions.”
Craig M. Kibler is the Director of Publications and Executive Editor of the Presbyterian Lay Committee.