wfn.org | NCC continues budget transition process

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

March 1, 2000	News media contact: Linda Bloom·(212) 870-3803·New York
10-21-71B{108}

NEW YORK (UMNS) - The National Council of Churches' executive board
continued to address the council's transition to a new budget process and
revamped structure during its Feb. 27-29 meeting.

The NCC's new leaders were among the participants. The Rev. Robert Edgar, a
United Methodist, became top executive on Jan. 1, and the Rev. Andrew Young,
the United Church of Christ pastor and former U.S. ambassador, was
inaugurated as president in November.

Under the guidance of a transitional management team established by the
executive board last October, the council has worked toward "a transition in
staff, structure and financial oversight, which would enable the council to
resolve the approved but unbudgeted costs in 1999, manage the substantial
potential deficit in 1999, develop a sustainable structure for the future
and offer clarity to the member communions regarding the financial status of
the council," according to the team's final report. The executive board
approved the report during the meeting.

The board also approved changing the council's fiscal year from Jan. 1
through Dec. 31 to July 1 through June 30. It accepted a transitional 2000
budget to use for guidance until the 2000-2001 budget year begins July 1. A
new budget is expected to be approved during the executive board's May 21-23
meeting in Washington.

The new budget will be representative of the new administration, Edgar told
United Methodist News Service. "The May budget will be presented as our
vision of the future," he said.

The budget will come from the executive board's administration and finance
committee, which meets later in March. New United Methodist members of that
committee are Clare Chapman, an executive with the United Methodist
Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns, and John Goolsby,
an executive with the denomination's General Council on Finance and
Administration.

The committee had reviewed the interim budget presented at the February
meeting but had not reached agreement about it, Chapman said. "We should
have a proposed budget with enough information and clarity that we will be
able to make an actual recommendation to the board (in May)," she added.

Edgar also expressed confidence in the recovery plan to repay unbudgeted but
approved expenses from 1999. He said nearly $2 million has been pledged by
member communions, with more than $800,000 already in hand - including
donations of $300,000 each from the Episcopal Church and Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America.

Another $1.4 million for the financial recovery plan will come from a grant
by Church World Service and Witness. The return from an investment
settlement will bring about $400,000.

United Methodist Bishop William Boyd Grove, ecumenical officer of the
denomination's council of bishops, announced a commitment of $700,000 from
United Methodists during a meeting last fall, assuming that certain
conditions of financial accounting were met.

The grant has yet to be made. "We do not yet have the necessary decision in
our own church related to this gift," Grove explained. However, he said he's
convinced "the United Methodist Church will, as it always has, provide its
appropriate share of the necessary funding for the financial recovery plan."

Some communions - such as the Presbyterians, who recently approved $500,000
- have made their donations for financial recovery contingent upon gifts
being received from other members.

Last October, the Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns
temporarily suspended NCC funding from the United Methodist Church's
Interdenominational Cooperation Fund until it received more information
about the NCC's fiscal policies and management. That suspension was lifted
in December.

Commission executive Anne Marshall, a member of the NCC board and its
transition management team, said she had hoped the 2000 budget process would
have been more accurate and simplified by now, but added, "I think they're
putting out a concentrated effort to fill in the gaps."

She believes the NCC is still in transition and expressed concern that the
vision of unity "should be at the center and core of the council."

In its adoption of program priorities for 2000-2001, the executive board
voted to give priorities of unity the status that other concentrations -
such as education, justice and public policy - will have at the NCC.

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United Methodist News Service
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