Turning tide in $40-million fundraising effort will be tough

Turning tide in $40-million fundraising effort will be tough

By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, December 13, 2006

With a $720,000 transfusion from the General Assembly Council and a year and a half to go, the Presbyterian Church (USA) is trying to wrap up a $40-million fundraising campaign that began in 2002 despite warning signs. It has been troubled ever since.

The campaign has experienced staff turnover (three directors), shuffling of nonstaff leadership, changing objectives when targeted fundraising failed to produce the desired results, and a red-ink bottom line in cash contributions.

It is supposed to be completed in time for a final report to the 2008 General Assembly. It’s anybody’s guess whether the final numbers will warrant a victory celebration or a lament over the denomination’s growing inability to raise enough money.

Recently, the campaign enlisted two heavy hitters to provide some impetus – David Peterson, head of staff of Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church in Houston, a 4,500-member congregation with an $8.9-million budget, and Tom Gillespie, the retired president of Princeton Theological Seminary.

Both are identified with the evangelical wing of the denomination. And evangelicals are statistically more generous in their support for Christian mission. But many evangelicals are unhappy with the leftward drift of the denomination – even those committed to remaining a part of it – and it’ll be a tough sale for Peterson, Gillespie and staff.

Gillespie well understands what’s at stake – and it’s a lot more than $40 million. A campaign flop would further erode the denomination’s ability to convince Presbyterians that its mission and operating costs are worthy of support.

At Princeton, Gillespie played a key role in adding to what is – by more than double – the largest seminary endowment in the nation. Last September, he told the General Assembly Council, “There is an absolutely cardinal rule. You never, never have an unsuccessful campaign. We will regret it if you do.”

Bicentennial campaign
But a campaign failure would not be the first in recent years. A more ambitious undertaking called the Bicentennial Campaign, which sought $150 million, was halted in 1997 after reaching less than half of its goal. The results were so disappointing that a motion to declare it a success quietly died without a vote.

Actually, the cash turnover from the Bicentennial Campaign was significant. When the books were closed on Dec. 31, 1977, it had raised $74.4 million. But the campaign expenses were $22.6 million, or 30.45 percent, which exceeded the General Assembly’s 13.5 percent cap.

One of the distractions in the Bicentennial Campaign was what was called the re-imagining God conference in 1993. The event, which was sponsored primarily by the World Council of Churches, featured feminist speakers who denounced the atonement of Christ, introduced polytheism and celebrated a communion-like ceremony that differed radically from the eucharist: The re-imagining symbols were milk and honey, chosen to represent women’s sexuality and fertility.

Presbyterians in the pews were outraged, and they reacted with their feet and their wallets. The year after the women’s conference, the denomination lost 44,000 members, then the highest decline since the Southern and Northern mainline denominations reunited in 1983. And Presbyterians reduced their giving to the denomination after learning that the PCUSA had taken $66,000 from the Bicentennial Campaign to help defray the costs of the re-imagining event. The backlash has lingered.

The unheeded warnings
Undaunted by the failure of the Bicentennial Campaign, denominational leaders quickly began planning another fundraising campaign. They hired a consultant to tell them if it was viable. They picked a big-timer, Marts & Lundy, whose Web-published client list includes some of the nation’s leading universities. It also includes five seminaries. Noticeably, it does not mention the Presbyterian Church (USA), although that must have been a top-drawer client when Marts & Lundy did its workup for the $40-million campaign.

The consultant cited turmoil in the denomination, but still recommended trying to raise the $40 million. The consultant gave the PCUSA bad news and good news. First, the bad news: There was “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.”

Then the good news: “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,” the consultants said. “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.”

That was enough to launch the PCUSA gold rush.

The first strategy
As conceived by planners and ratified by the General Assembly, the campaign established a number of goals initially.

1. The money would be raised to bolster worldwide missions by $20 million and new church development by $20 million. The new church development would include $10 million for existing congregations and $10 million for racial/ethic congregations.

2. The fundraising would target wealthy Presbyterians who could write six- and seven-figure checks (make that unrestricted, please). The prospect list may have appeared glowing. As former Moderator Doug Oldenberg once told the denomination, the PCUSA had eclipsed the Episcopal Church (USA) as the denomination with the highest per-capita income in the nation.

3. Middle governing bodies and congregations would identify the best prospects and key staff people such as then GAC Executive Director John Detterick and Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick would help solicit funds.

Everyone waited for the barons to write the big checks. They did not materialize.Everybody waited for a flood of checks from the denomination’s barons – people like Sam Walton and Ross Perot. They didn’t materialize.

The second strategy
Then the campaign took a new course. It began focusing on presbyteries making pledges for new church development, a function the presbyteries had always undertaken. In effect, this tactic allowed the campaign to take credit for money that presbyteries were already raising, or were planning to raise, to fund their own church growth programs.

A similar strategy was adopted by the leaders of the foundering Bicentennial Campaign who approached major donors to Presbyterian institutions, asking them to channel payment of gifts already promised to those institutions through the Bicentennial Fund account.

On paper, the presbyteries tacked up some impressive figures. From the beginning of the campaign through the close of the third quarter of this year, the campaign says presbyteries pledged nearly $16.5 million. But there was a rub: the presbyteries made their pledges on the condition that the money would simply be listed in the campaign total, but that none would be used to defray campaign costs.

Negative church growth
There’s been no accounting of how or when the presbyteries will make good on their pledges. So far, however, there has been little evidence of a rise in new church development.

In 2002, the denomination reported that the PCUSA gained 47 congregations, including 18 resulting from mergers. Generally, mergers are really losses, the union of two struggling congregations into one. The abandoned church property goes on the auction block. That same year, the PCUSA lost 87 congregations – a net loss of 44.

In 2005, the denomination reported 47 new congregations, including 29 resulting from mergers. But 106 congregations folded and the net loss was 59. Thus, the impact of whatever money might have been spent by the presbyteries in 2005 for new church development didn’t show up in the denomination’s annual “Comparative Statistics.” To the contrary, despite the presbyteries’ having pledged millions to new church development, the denomination’s net loss of congregations was 14 higher in 2005 than it was in 2002.

Meanwhile, many presbyteries are reporting that they are strapped for funds for two reasons: In effect, the PCUSA will have lost more revenue during the campaign years than it seeks to gain through the current campaign.

1. Ultimately, the local congregations are lifeline for the presbyteries, as they are for synods and the General Assembly. In many cases, sessions in congregations with large losses are struggling to pay local church bills. And the losses have incrementally worsened. Since 2002, and including the denomination’s estimate of an 85,000 membership loss this year, the PCUSA’s membership is expected to have declined by 7.4 percent from 2002 through 2006.

The combined mission budget and per-capita apportionments for the denomination in 2001 were $157 million, or $64 per member. For 2007, those combined figures, based on the denomination’s projections, are about $114 million, or $51 per member. In effect, the PCUSA will have lost more revenue during the campaign years than it seeks to gain through the current campaign.

2. The trust factor has further eroded, particularly among evangelicals. Groups like the New Wineskins Association of Churches are openly discussing plans to help their constituencies leave the denomination. Some, such as the Global Presbyterian Fellowship, are unhappy with the denomination’s Since the campaign began, foreign missionary assignments have fallen from 334 to 251. massive cuts in world missions (down from 334 foreign mission assignments in 2002 to 251 today, a 24.8-percent plunge). Many tall-steeple evangelical churches plan to stay in the denomination, but with a lower commitment to supporting missionaries under the aegis of the denomination.

The third strategy
During its recent meeting, the steering committee of the PCUSA campaign – originally called Mission Initiative but later renamed Joining Hearts & Hands – decided to take a new tack, this time targeting large congregations whose leaders want to bring renewal to the denomination.

But the climate is no better – and probably worse – than it was in 2002 when the $40-million campaign was launched. Congregations that are considered evangelical – the 1,300 Confessing Churches, those allying with the Presbyterian Global Fellowship, the New Wineskins Association of Churches, for example – range from uneasy to outraged over the direction of the denomination.

Some of that displeasure is theological, including a backlash against the 2006 General Assembly’s authoritative interpretation that undermines the denomination’s constitutional ordination requirements.

Many donors and possible beneficiaries trying to rebuild churches destroyed by Katrina were angered by the PCUSA’s decision to parcel out its contributions for recovery through 2013. As of April 2006, the latest financial posting on the PCUSA Web site, the denomination received more than $20 million in Katrina aid and spent only $4 million.

With the “privileged and confidential” legal and administrative strategies his staff lawyers recommended, Stated Clerk Kirkpatrick’s office has implemented a coercive effort to secure congregational property for the ultimate benefit of the denomination. Even so, more than a dozen congregations have taken steps to leave the denomination and the New Wineskins Association of Churches says it will present its own dismissal suggestions at its convocation in Orlando, Fla., in February 2007.

A commitment to world missions, which are on the priority list for evangelicals, ranks low among the denomination’s budget-makers. The General Assembly that authorized the fundraising campaign in 2002 also approved an amendment to the proposal. The Mission and Budgets Committee attached the phrase requiring “the provision that the proceeds from this campaign be considered over and above the budget and not be used to weaken the church’s commitment to missions from its unrestricted budget.”

But that same General Assembly approved a reduction in foreign mission assignments from 334 to 300. Since then, the assignments have decreased to 251. And that includes, since 2004, $501,054 for missionaries through Joining Hearts & Hands. Those funds were disbursed, even with a negative cash flow, to demonstrate that the campaign was producing fruit.

Denominational turmoil continues and the same issues identified in 2002 by the consultants persist: “human sexuality, Christology, abortion, decentralizat