wfn.org | Setting Priorities Is Main GAC Task, Says New Chair

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14-August-1996 
 
 
96287  Setting Priorities Is Main GAC Task, Says New Chair 
 
                           by Gary Luhr 
               Associate Director for Communication 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.--The new chair of the General Assembly Council (GAC) says 
the Council's number one task in the next year must be to set priorities 
for its work from now to the year 2000. 
 
     "The 208th General Assembly did not restructure the GAC, but said it 
needs to improve its function," Youngil Cho of Raleigh, N.C., told members 
of the Staff Leadership Team at their July 31 meeting.  "There is a sense 
of urgency.  The church has a cancer -- it is dying inch by inch." 
 
     Cho said the Council must take seriously the messages of the General 
Assembly's immediate past moderator Marj Carpenter -- "Mission, mission, 
mission" -- and current moderator the Rev. John Buchanan -- "The church 
matters." 
 
     "The GAC has everything God gave it to glorify him [but] the GAC and 
the staff are not using God's gift," he said.  "We must train the Council 
members and the staff to take care of the church in this difficult time." 
 
     Budget priorities must be the Council's top concern, he said.  Cho 
said he would like to see the GAC identify the 70 percent of its budget 
that it regards as the most important and the 30 percent it considers less 
important.  He would then invite future General Assemblies to make changes 
in the budget as a way of taking more ownership in Council programs, but 
make it clear that money for new or expanded programs would come from the 
lesser 30 percent of the budget.  At most, he predicted, an Assembly might 
change 1 percent of the total mission budget. 
 
     In setting priorities, Cho said, the GAC must respond to local church 
needs.  "Don't make programs  supply side,' where if you have the money you 
do it," he said.  "Make them  demand side,' to provide what a local church 
needs.  If you do, the money [for programs] will come in.  If you don't 
nurture the local church, it will die." 
 
     The GAC "can earn credibility by being responsive," he said.  "We 
can't simply ask [the church] to trust us." 
 
     Another goal, Cho said, is to carve out a clearer role for the GAC at 
future General Assemblies. "Right now," he said, "there is no role for the 
executive director, the division directors or the [GAC] chair." 

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