Mission funding declines prompt proposal for 173 PCUSA fundraisers
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, September 26, 2005
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The General Assembly Council is bracing for more steep declines in funding for the mission of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
During its meeting Sept. 21-24, the council heard a number of reports warning of further declines and proposing a variety of solutions.
Without mentioning any numbers, John Detterick, the council’s executive director, said, “It now appears likely at 2007 and 2008 our revenues will be less than our current expenses.” Detterick said he and the staff already had “been through more reductions than we ever want to go through. And none of us wants to go through another budget reduction.”
But there were some numbers on the decline in mission funding. One report to the council’s Mission Support Services committee projected that funds available for the mission budget will be $113.9 million, down $30 million from 2001 and $13 million from 2004.
Another report included an emerging proposal to employ, either full-time or part-time, fundraisers (or “mission advocates”) in each of the denomination’s 173 presbyteries.
The various reports also included some frank discussion about what’s wrong and what’s necessary.
The council’s Mission Support Services committee, said, “We have all been concerned for some time about the downward trend in support of unrestricted Basic Mission Giving to the General Assembly. Most of the causes for this trend have been well documented over the years: loss of membership; lack of trust; increasing trend toward supporting local and regional projects; and failure of the more inclusive governing bodies to adequately interpret their mission needs.”
Another report was made by Reginald Kuhn and Katherine Cunningham, the leaders of the council’s Task Force on Mission Funding, the group that calls for the fundraisers in the presbyteries.
Kuhn and Cunningham said that, based on interviews with staff and some presbyteries, Presbyterian Panel data and focus groups, they had concluded that the denomination has a number of fundraising problems.
Cunningham, who is a member of the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly but was invited to serve on the council’s task force, said, “We heard there was ineffective interpretation of the mission funding center throughout the church and within the center itself.”
She cited “an inability to track gifts,” “sparse and ineffective” communication “across the whole system,” “the need for a more clearly articulated theology of giving within the church which can be thoroughly communicated churchwide,” and the need “for a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t work.”
“Funding is not the issue of relevance,” she said. “Trust is the issue, how do we trust the General Assembly?”
The Mission Support Services committee did not directly respond to membership losses and the trust factor. The committee’s report mentioned a number of efforts to improve solicitations, but said they had mixed results. Those efforts have included:
- Letters to congregations thanking them for their support and encouraging them to increase that support
- Letters to presbyteries asking them to challenge their congregations to support churchwide mission
- Creation of the Mission 20/20 program to assist presbyteries with long-range stewardship planning
- “Top Ten” awards to presbyteries in several categories of giving – presented at GA and by GAC elected members at presbytery meetings.
- Visits from the GAC Staff Leadership Team to presbytery councils
- Publication of a Basic Mission Support Stewardship Manual for presbyteries
- Action by the General Assembly to encourage each church to give at least ten percent to Basic Mission
“While some of these efforts have been fruitful, it is clear that they have not addressed the core problem,” the report said. “That problem is the lack of understanding by decision-makers within sessions about the mission programs and financial needs of their presbytery, synod and the General Assembly. That issue must be addressed at the presbytery level.”
The task force proposal goes directly to the issue of beefing up fundraising through the presbyteries. It proposes the placement of “mission advocates” in the presbyteries “to be purveyors of information to and for the church. They would be brokers of mission for the local church and the presbytery and would be part of a nationwide mission network.”
Kuhn and Cunningham said the mission advocates should be “persons who are known and trusted in their presbyteries, excellent communicators, able to promote the whole mission of the church, trained in fundraising.”
They would be “coordinated, trained and deployed across the church by a national Center for Mission and Funding” under the direction of the executive director of the General Assembly Council.
Since 2001, membership has declined by 131,645 Presbyterians, which has had a major impact on funding at all levels. If there had been no membership loss and per-capita giving averaged $1,000, the additional revenue for local congregations and higher governing bodies would have been about $393 million higher than the income for 2001-2005.