wfn.org | Budget Group Works to Meet the Challenges

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17-December-1997 
97478 
 
    Budget Group Works to Meet the Challenges 
    of the Next Century 
 
    by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.--Though a $123 million General Assembly mission budget for 
1999 was reviewed in a broadly representative consultation here Dec. 12, 
participants made it clear that setting mission priorities beyond that date 
is complicated work. 
 
    With the mission budget of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) being 
reshaped by increasing funds for donor-directed projects and by a decline 
in unrestricted giving,  historically hard-to-set priorities are slowly 
getting set.  Furthermore, the General Assembly ordered that accumulated 
income from long-term endowments be spent down, eliminating a traditional 
cushion for budget builders. 
 
     For planners expecting the mission and structure of the church to be 
different in the year 2000 than it is now, the challenge becomes how to 
plan ministries that are adaptable to changing needs and how to pay for 
them. 
 
    "The trend is changing and we need to change with the trend," said 
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) interim executive director the Rev. Frank Diaz 
after the consultation.  "Things we've been funding for the last 50 years 
are not necessarily what the majority [sees] as a ministry to fund [now]." 
 
    A projected $500,000 surplus is putting the proposed 1999 budget back 
in the hands of the Staff Leadership Team (SLT) so that currently unfunded 
General Assembly programs can be prioritized and considered for inclusion. 
Recommendations include $1 million for racial/ethnic church development, 
$60,000 for bilingual resources and Hispanic/Asian leader development, and 
$105,000 for family and men's ministries.  The SLT includes Diaz, the three 
ministry division directors and the director of the Technology and Finance 
Office (TAFO). 
 
    The anticipated surplus, according to Diaz, comes not from an increase 
in revenue, but from a less-than-expected decline in income. 
 
    The SLT will make recommendations about currently unfunded priorities 
to TAFO; then the proposals will go to the General Assembly Council 
Executive Committee and the Council itself before going to the 210th 
General Assembly in Charlotte, N.C., June 13-20. 
 
    But planners say that changes coming with the 21st century -- and 
expected shortfalls in revenue -- ought to be more sweeping than merely 
scrambling to find funds for newly mandated programs and projects.  The 
loss of members is a consistent trend that, according to PC(USA) controller 
Nagy Tawfik, needs to be factored into decisions about the financially 
changing future. 
 
    Tawfik told planners that Presbyterians' giving actually rose 4.6 
percent in 1996.  However, congregations are retaining more money for local 
mission, including their presbyteries, while gifts to the General Assembly 
have declined. 
 
    With current program, structure and funding formulas intact, projected 
budgets beyond 2000 anticipate varying deficits, from nearly $3 million in 
2002, to $1.5 million in 2003. 
 
    "We're faced with the dilemma of not knowing what 10 years down the 
road holds for us.  The only fact [we're certain of] is the need to be 
flexible enough to change," Diaz told the Presbyterian News Service.  "We 
need to shed the organizational straitjacket. ... 
 
    "So the question becomes how do we not compartmentalize ourselves?  How 
do we leave ourselves open to do mission in creative ways?" 
 
    Help in setting priorities is expected from the Toward 2000 group, a 
GAC task force that is working with all levels of governing bodies to set 
"tasks" to begin reorganizing program and budget.  Toward 2000 spokesperson 
Sandra Hawley told consultation participants that the group intends to 
report "tasks" to the 210th General Assembly that should be accomplished at 
the national church level. 
 
    "We're defining tasks, not program," said Hawley, who chairs the GAC 
National Ministries Division Committee.  "If we define the tasks, then we 
define the program." 
 
    Hawley said the goal is to draft work plans around the "tasks" and 
assign multiyear budgets to the work plans.  Consultations toward that goal 
are under way now with staff.  Synod representatives will meet with the 
committee Jan. 16-18 in Tampa, Fla., and then GAC input will be gathered at 
the Council's February 11-13 meeting here. "`1999," she said, "will 
hopefully be the last year we have to deal with the budget [process as it 
is now]." 
 
    TAFO chair the Rev. Hugh Burroughs sees it this way: "The Toward 2000 
process is going to upset the applecart as it now exists.  We're asking 
people to identify priorities for mission and redefine and rebuild program 
around those priorities. 
 
    "The national church," he said, "may or may not look like it does now 
by the year 2000." 
 
    GAC chair Fred Denson thinks the shift will probably be more gradual, 
since most donor gifts still fall within the Assembly's  broad mission 
categories of evangelism, justice, partnership and spiritual formation. 
"Those goals," he said, "aren't set by the GAC.  They're cast in stone by 
the GA.  We can do variations on a theme.  But the themes stay until the GA 
changes them. 
 
    "There's a whole new concept on its way with the Toward 2000 group. 
But it is not fully birthed yet." 
 
    What is changing already is a General Assembly mandate that some 
restricted funds not currently committed to annual mission budgets by 
Assembly entities be made available to qualifying sessions, presbyteries 
and synods.  A second phase of that mandate will place more mission funds 
on that table and a third phase even more. 
 
    "It would appear that the GAC is going to have to compete for those 
funds with the rest of the church," said David Greer, who came to the 
consultation on behalf of the restricted funds task force, the body charged 
with reviewing funding applications.  "And that has some pretty serious 
implications for the GAC. ..." 
 
    Greer said the task force allocated $725,000 to other entities in early 
December -- but it had requests totaling over $8 million.  No funds will be 
distributed until after GAC approval in February.   A larger list of 
several hundred available funds will be published in the spring. 
 
    Synod of the Northeast executive the Rev. Robert White told planners 
that he wonders whether the new allocation process will instill competition 
between church entities rather than foster partnership.  Citing the 
requests for over $8 million, he expressed concern for the vast number of 
requests that were not met.  "There's a danger, " he said, "in increasing 
expectations unless there is a good [possibility] that you can deliver on 
those expectatations." 
 
    Apparently meeting expectations are the national and international 
volunteer programs that create opportunities for short-term service in the 
U.S. and abroad.  National Ministries is budgeting $562,075 for the 1999 
budget for such work, and Worldwide Ministries, $1.5 million. 
 
    Donor-directed funds are still primarily directed toward traditional 
forms of mission.  However, dollars to pay for administrative costs and 
staff services are on a continual decline.  Eugene McKelvey, Worldwide 
Ministries Division (WMD) Committee chair, is pushing for WMD's staff of 84 
to be expanded to accommodate inordinate workloads -- with only two 
staffers relating to all of Africa, one to Europe, one to East Asia and 
another to the entire Middle East.  Also, TAFO interim director Robert 
McKee says he needs more salary money to retain highly specialized 
financial experts. 
 
    "It's a process of continual assessment," WMD director Marian McClure 
told the Presbyterian News Service.  "And it is also a sense of waiting ... 
there's a feeling that we're only a couple of years away from larger 
changes and we need to think that through." 
 
    She said most planners are still confident that Presbyterians do 
respond to good ideas in mission and that they can agree on what are high 
priorities for the denomination's ministries.  "They will understand," she 
said, "that no organization can give quality and sustained attention to 
mission without funds to attend to staff and infrastructure." 

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