You are currently subscribed to the PCUSANEWS listserv of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
============================================================
This story located at: http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2006/06636.htm
06636 December 1, 2006
Final Mission Initiative push focuses on large congregations
Former Princeton president Tom Gillespie named honorary campaign chair
by Jerry Van Marter
HOUSTON - With just $14.5 million of its $40 million goal left to be raised by June 2008, the steering committee of the Mission Initiative: Joining Hearts and Hands (MIJHH) is focusing its final push on the largest Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations.
"We'll be reaching out personally to those congregations that have the capacity to make campaign gifts of $250,000 or more," said David York, an Atlanta elder who is the MIJHH campaign director.
To help with the appeal to those churches, the committee at its Nov. 29-30 meeting here named the Rev. Thomas Gillespie, who formerly served as pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Burlingame, CA, and president of Princeton Theological Seminary, as honorary chair of the campaign until it concludes at the 218th General Assembly (2008).
The campaign was mandated by the 2002 General Assembly to raise $40 million for new mission personnel overseas and for church development in this country, particularly racial ethnic and immigrant congregations.
"[Gillespie's appointment comes as very good news," said steering committee member the Rev. John Huffman of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, CA, "based on Tom's enthusiastic endorsement of completing the campaign at the [General Assembly Council] meeting in September."
Gillespie, who is highly respected in the PC(USA)'s conservative evangelical community, should be an effective "door-opener" to many of the target churches, Huffman said.
"There's tons of energy for foreign mission [in these churches] and they are totally committed to the Great Ends of the Church; but they are deeply distrustful of the denomination," Huffman said. "I tell them that what they want to do is the Mission Initiative and they just shrug. The money's there and some of them are still approachable but the estrangement is so great *that it's going to very tough to get them on board."
The steering committee spent considerable time going name-by-name through a list of the PC(USA)'s 100 largest churches, identifying those with which committee members and others involved in the campaign have established relationships.
The campaign's end-game strategy is a return to its original goal of being a major gifts campaign aimed at individuals and churches. But difficulty in identifying potential donors early on led the MIJHH to change its focus to presbyteries that were already contemplating capital campaigns.
To date, 76 percent of the campaign's pledges have come from seven presbyteries that have included the MIJHH in their efforts - Los Ranchos, Santa Fe, Mid-Kentucky, Santa Barbara, Peace River, North Central Iowa and West Jersey. Two other presbyteries - Des Moines and Minnesota Valleys - have made pledges to the campaign.
Two results of that shift - from individuals to presbyteries - are that far more money has been raised for new church development than for mission personnel and just about all the money pledged to date has been restricted.
At that GAC meeting, MIJHH co-chair the Rev. David Peterson, pastor of Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church here, had warned that the campaign did not have enough operating funds - drawn from unrestricted gifts - to continue beyond the middle of 2007.
"No one was more vocal than Tom Gillespie that we must complete this campaign and complete it successfully," noted Manley Olson, a steering committee member from Twin Cities Area Presbytery.
Completion of the campaign is now assured. GAC chair Allison Seed told the steering committee that she will recommend that the council establish an escrow account of $700,000 that the MIJHH can draw upon as needed to cover the remaining operating expenses of the campaign, which has a staff of just three persons plus two part-time consultants.
The council's Executive Committee will act on that recommendation at its Dec. 7 telephone conference-call meeting.
The steering committee agreed to deduct a 5 percent "administrative fee" - which is standard procedure for all other PC(USA) fundraising efforts - from all future pledges to the campaign. That fee had previously been waived with the expectation that sufficient unrestricted gifts would come to the campaign from which to draw operating expenses.
The GAC funded all of the MIJHH expenses for the first three years of the campaign and half of the 2005 expenses - a total of just under $2.4 million. Beginning this year the campaign was to have covered all of its own expenses.
Huffman and Peterson - who also have strong ties to the conservative evangelical community that is represented in the PC(USA) by many of its largest churches and whose congregations have contributed heavily to the campaign - expressed confidence that the appeal to large churches would put the MIJHH campaign over the top.
"There is unifying potential here that is not present anywhere else in the church," Peterson said.
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Foundation officials Robert E. Leech and Mark Klemm, said the campaign has produced other financial benefits. Klemm said the foundation has identified more than $4 million that has come into permanent PC(USA) accounts as a result of interest generated by MIJHH activities. Those funds, he said, "are generating about a $220,000 annual income stream into the GAC's mission budget."
MIJHH campaign co-chair the Rev. Joanna Adams of Atlanta praised the partnership between the campaign and the foundation. "Collaboration with the Foundation is absolutely essential if we're going to raise money not just for this campaign but to permanently undergird the mission of our church."
Leech added: "There's a perception that Presbyterians are not giving to the church. Our numbers have not gone down. Presbyterians may be giving differently, but they continue to give generously and consistently."
============================================================
You are currently subscribed to the PCUSANEWS listserv of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to
mailto:PCUSANEWS-unsubscribe-request@halak.pcusa.org.
To update your email address, send your old email address and your new one to mailto:PCUSANEWS-owner@halak.pcusa.org.
For questions or comments, send an email to mailto:PCUSANEWS-owner@halak.pcusa.org.
To learn more, visit http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 100 Witherspoon Street Louisville, KY 40202 (888) 728-7228