Proposed amendments reflect troubling trends
The Presbyterian Layman, May 24, 2001
Overtures that would mandate how local congregations spend the contributions of their members will be considered by the General Assembly when it meets in Louisville this June.
Overture 00-1, from Scioto Valley Presbytery, would make mandatory the per-capita assessment that sessions are now asked, but not required, to pay to the General Assembly.
Overture 00-10, from East Iowa Presbytery, asks that a proposal be sent to next year’s General Assembly that could force every congregation to contribute to the denomination’s Theological Education Fund, which supports PCUSA seminaries.
Common to both proposals is the violation of the historic right of local church sessions to determine how their congregations’ offerings, and perhaps even endowment funds, are spent.
Equally, both proposals would unconstitutionally bind the consciences of individual Presbyterians, whose gifts to local congregations would be forcibly taken from local ministries and spent on institutions, programs and publications, some of which clearly violate the teachings of Scripture and the denomination’s constitution.
Tightening the grip
Of special concern is the final line of the per-capita overture, “A presbytery should exercise care and oversight over congregations in its bounds that fail to raise or transmit such funds to the presbytery.”
In Presbyterian parlance, “may” is permissive, while “should” is directive. While not technically requiring such action by presbyteries, this overture makes it plain that if a congregation objects to paying its per-capita assessment, the presbytery will be expected to offer “care and oversight.”
That is troubling because “care and oversight” is an obvious euphemism for “administrative commission,” a Book of Order provision that allows presbyteries to replace a church session with its own appointees, who then make all decisions concerning a congregation’s finances.
An administrative commission may also be empowered to dissolve the relationship between the church and its pastor and even to dissolve the entire congregation.
It is especially noteworthy that a presbytery could appoint an administrative commission in the event that a congregation failed “to raise” the amount of money demanded by denominational headquarters.
More than simply objecting to how a session exercises its fiduciary responsibility, under this provision a presbytery would have the power to replace a session because church members did not give as much money to their local congregation as the presbytery deemed appropriate.
If approved, this overture would vastly increase the presbytery control over local congregations. But by tightening its grip on congregational purse strings, specifically by denying the historic authority of sessions regarding the distribution of church members tithes and offerings, those advocating this draconian approach may find that fewer Presbyterians, thus fewer dollars, remain within their grasp.