wfn.org | UMNS# 04554-Agencies plan emergency pension help for central

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Agencies plan emergency pension help for central conference clergy 

Nov. 23, 2004	 News media contact:   Tim  Tanton * (615) 7425470* 
Nashville {04554}

NOTE: Related resources are available online at http://umns.umc.org.

By Tim Tanton*

SKOKIE, Ill. (UMNS) - For the retired Mozambican minister and his wife, the
"golden years" had nothing to do with gold and everything to do with trying
to survive on a $120 annual pension.

During a 2003 trip to Mozambique, a United Methodist team found that the
couple exemplified the need for pension programs not only in Africa but other
parts of the world. 

After a career in the church, the minister had reached the end of life with
barely enough pension income to buy a few bags of food.

"He and his wife were forced to live with their son and his five children in
their two-room home," said Barbara Boigegrain, a member of the fact-finding
team and top staff executive of the denomination's Board of Pension and
Health Benefits. "It was not a retirement with dignity."

"All my life," the man told the team, "I have preached heaven, and now I am
in hell."

"He said he had a heart condition," Boigegrain recalled, "and we got word
about a month later that he had passed away." 

In parts of the world where the United Methodist Church enjoys its strongest
growth - Africa, the Philippines, Eastern Europe - pastors who are building
the flocks are finding themselves with little to live on in retirement. 

That's where the Central Conference Pension Initiative comes in. The
initiative is a multi-agency effort to establish models for permanent pension
coverage in the church's regions -or conferences - in Africa, Asia and parts
of Europe. Providing those models for each conference is still several years
away, so in the interim, the agencies are working under a mandate from the
2004 General Conference to develop emergency funding for regions most in
need. 

Governing members of the Board of Pension and Health Benefits discussed the
initiative during their Nov. 19-20 meeting in Skokie. Representatives of the
board and four other United Methodist agencies sit on the committee that
oversees the program.
 
Those agencies are the Board of Global Ministries, the United Methodist
Publishing House, the General Council on Finance and Administration, and
United Methodist Communications. 

Last May, General Conference authorized the pension agency to create and
administer funding for the programs of the initiative, in consultation with
the finance agency and supported by the partner agencies. General Conference
also directed the Board of Global Ministries to make emergency grants for
retired clergy and spouses in central conferences where extreme need exists.
The emergency funding will enable those conferences to reach a point where
they can eventually start their own plans, and it will be separate from the
country-specific programs that the initiative is developing.

The Central Conference Pension Committee is focusing on three countries
initially:  Mozambique, Liberia and Zimbabwe. A study team will visit those
countries next spring and summer. 

The committee is developing different models for each country's
circumstances, trying to determine how best to support a national
infrastructure like Mozambique's, which offers social security; support an
existing church pension system, such as Zimbabwe's; and provide coverage from
scratch where no system exists, as in Liberia.

After addressing emergency pension funding in Africa, the committee will
focus on Russia and Eastern Europe, then the Philippines, Boigegrain said. 
 
The church's central conference pension initiative fund already has received
$716,000 for the permanent program. The initiative's funds are kept separate
from the pension plans of U.S. clergy and lay employees, so the U.S. plans
are not affected in any way.

So far, support for the initiative's fund has come primarily from U.S. annual
conferences redirecting the yearly checks that they receive from the United
Methodist Publishing House to augment their clergy pensions. Since the 1700s,
the Publishing House has provided a portion of its earnings for that purpose,
carrying on a tradition with spiritual roots reaching back to Methodism's
founder, John Wesley, who emphasized the need to care for retired pastors and
their dependents.

Redirecting those yearly checks is a good way for annual conferences to
support the initiative, said Bishop Ben Chamness, chairperson of the pension
agency and the Central Conference Pension Committee. 

"I would certainly encourage more of our conferences to do that," he said.
"We really need all of them to participate so that we can do the funding that
we need."

In the past two years, 34 of the denomination's 63 U.S. conferences have
contributed their checks. The remainder of the $716,000 has come from other
donors. It's a lot of money but a small fraction of the total needed.

"We need to raise $20 (million) to $25 million," Boigegrain said. She
described that as a rough estimate of what is needed to provide a sustainable
program.

Updating her board directors, Boigegrain said the Central Conference Pension
Committee is focusing immediately on fund raising and education. 

The education and communication process will include speaking with groups
around the church, such as the jurisdictional colleges of bishops, the
Connectional Table, conference treasurers and the top executives at other
general agencies. The Central Conference Pension Committee will emphasize
that it will not compete for church dollars already allocated to other
purposes. The fund-raising work will involve seeing where and how money can
be raised. 

The funding element is one of the most pressing needs, Chamness said in an
interview. "We really can't make a lot of decisions about the pension program
until we are able to see what kind of funding we can raise, so that's going
to be one of our concentrated efforts during this quadrennium. And we do plan
to go beyond United Methodist Publishing House funds for other funds. We have
a team that is working on designing that approach for funding." 

In 2000, the committee's predecessor task force set a 12-year time frame for
the planning and other work necessary for permanent funding. However, that
doesn't mean the permanent funding will be in place by 2012, board officials
said.

Not all of the central conferences are in dire straits. The Northern Europe
Conference, for example, is affluent, and its annual conferences have strong
pension systems. 

The Rev. Vidar Sten Bjerkseth, a board member from Norway, said he would seek
support for the pension initiative when he returns home to his annual
conference, and he would contact neighboring conferences about providing
support too.

"It is necessary for the rich annual conferences in the central conferences
in Europe to get a lot of information about this work and also see if they
have possibilities to give contributions to raise the funding of this central
conference pension plan," he said. If those annual conferences start giving
their contributions from the Publishing House, "that would be a good start."

More information about the initiative can be found at www.gbophb.org online.
# # #
*Tanton is managing editor of United Methodist News Service.

News media contact: Tim Tanton, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or
newsdesk@umcom.org.

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United Methodist News Service