$40-million fundraising campaign is threatened by uncovered expenses
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, September 28, 2006
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The day of reckoning for the $40-million Joining Hearts & Hands campaign is fast approaching unless it can raise additional cash contributions to offset campaign expenses.
Through June, the five-year campaign, which began in 2002, had spent nearly $1 million more in expenses and mission grants than it had collected in cash. The campaign has had an accumulating negative cash flow from the beginning. Until this year, the General Assembly Council paid the campaign expenses out of money contributed by Presbyterians.
Jan Opdyke, the campaign director, told the council’s executive committee Tuesday that, “Pledges are being kept, but donors are choosing to designate their money rather than give it unrestricted, which is where our operating funds come from.” She said the reluctance to give undesignated money reflected a lack of trust in the denomination.
The campaign was authorized by the 2002 General Assembly to raise $20 million for worldwide missions and $20 million for new church development, with half of the church development money earmarked for racial-ethnic congregations.
That same General Assembly approved a budget reducing the denomination’s foreign mission assignments from 330 to 300. Today, with sharp declines in contributions by Presbyterians to the national church, the mission assignments are down to 230.
From the beginning of the campaign in 2002 through June 2006, the PCUSA spent $3,108,613, while cash receipts have totaled $2,422,591. That’s a $686,022 deficit. Adding two contributions totaling $262,587 to support mission personnel runs the cash-flow deficit to $948,609.
In their past presentations to the General Assembly and the General Assembly Council, the campaign’s officials have not mentioned the cash-flow deficit. They emphasize the pledges – which had accumulated to $25,585,431 at the end of June.
But the bulk of those pledges represents money presbyteries have said they will raise for new church development. Through June, according to campaign officials, the presbyteries have made pledges totaling $14.4 million. But that money is exempt from being used to help offset campaign expenses. Furthermore, the presbyteries have traditionally handled new church development through presbytery funds without the benefit of a national campaign.
The mission campaign was begun despite a report by a fund-raising consultant, Marts & Lundy, that cited the “concern within the church’s central office about the current controversies within the denomination and about the failure of the last campaign to achieve its goal. This was coupled with an underlying concern about ‘where the denomination was headed’ and whether the central governing body could inspire any focused motivation for such an undertaking, given the very real possibility of schism.”
The consultant’s report also concluded that the “larger church has been assailed by issues of human sexuality, Christology, abortion, decentralization of governance, local congregations perceiving their destinies in their own hands alone, a sensitivity to ‘colonialism’ within overseas missions, a re-imagining of God, a lack of clarity about ‘what the central church is for,’ and the absence of a unifying rallying point. In the midst of these challenges, the central church has suffered a loss of morale along with what might be called a serious ‘lack of faith’ in the denomination.”
Nonetheless, the consultants said, “Such turmoil, for the most part, has not stopped strong institutions from moving forward, albeit while making some adjustments and creating various means of reviving their fundamental mission.” They added, “Perhaps the fundamentals of mission, church growth, spiritual life in action and partnership can be used to move the denomination into a better era than the present one.”
Tom Gillespie, the retired president of Princeton Theological Seminary, urged the executive committee “to do whatever you have to do to keep this campaign going. Losing it would be devastating.”