PCUSA posts ‘articles’ favoring $400,000 gift to bail out NCC
The Layman Online, January 24, 2000
To shore up their case for $400,000 to bail the National Council of Churches out of a $3.9-million 1999 budget deficit, staff leaders of the Presbyterian Church (USA) have posted Internet “articles” on the NCC’s financial problems.
The General Assembly Council will meet on Feb. 15 to consider a bailout gift of $400,000 as proposed by Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick and GAC Executive Director John Detterick. Kirkpatrick has already committed $100,000 from the budget of the Office of the General Assembly.
The four “articles” about the ecumenical organization are NCC-friendly pieces designed to convince Presbyterians that the PCUSA, already the leading supporter of the NCC, should also take the lead in bailing the organization out of its financial hole.
An audit by consultants blamed management and “material weaknesses” with a significant risk of errors or fraud for the NCC’s financial crisis. The scope of the NCC’s problems is not addressed in the denomination’s articles about the organization. The coverage does not use the terminology “material weaknesses” — a codeword phrase in accounting for serious, uncorrected problems.
The denomination’s coverage includes four press releases.