wfn.org | WCC Membership Funds Are a Sensitive Issue With Hope For Change

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17-October-1996 
 
 
96386         WCC Membership Funds Are a Sensitive  
                    Issue With Hope For Change 
 
                         by Edmund Doogue 
                  Ecumenical News International 
 
GENEVA--Following the circulation of a controversial document about the 
financial crisis faced by the World Council of Churches (WCC), a senior 
staff member at the organization has announced that some WCC member 
churches are responding to appeals for help. 
 
     The WCC's 156-member Central Committee, from member churches around 
the world, ended a 10-day meeting in Geneva Sept. 20. One of the most 
sensitive issues during the meeting was a document -- titled "The Ten Most 
Important Questions You Always Wanted to Ask About WCC Income" and released 
by the WCC's Office for Income Coordination and Development (OICD) -- 
giving easy-to-understand graphs and lists explaining the WCC's finances in 
1995. Most sensitive of all were lists of the 10 biggest member churches 
that paid no contribution fees to the Council in 1995. Several major 
Orthodox churches in Eastern Europe and several large black churches in the 
United States and in Africa were on the list. The document showed that in 
1995 only 155 churches out of the then total membership of 326 paid 
membership contributions. 
 
     While some members of the Central Committee have privately complained 
about the publication of the information, others have told OICD staff that 
"it was the best thing ever tabled during a Central Committee." 
 
     Gunter Rath, OICD director, told ENI yesterday that the figures 
released last month had long been public, since they had been published in 
the WCC's 1995 Financial Report. However, he was anxious to point out that 
some of the churches listed as prominent nonpayers in the document released 
last week had since 1995 made a contribution. 
 
     In particular he singled out the Russian Orthodox Church, the WCC's 
biggest member church.  Although the church had not paid membership fees 
for several years, it paid a fee this year -- 20,000 Swiss francs (about 
$16,000). The minimum membership obligation recommended by the WCC is 1,000 
Swiss francs. 
 
     Rath told ENI that another important Orthodox church, the Armenian 
Apostolic Church in Lebanon, had paid contributions for this year and last 
year, and the Orthodox churches in Romania and Bulgaria "are making an 
effort and have inquired about what they can do." (The Romanian and 
Bulgarian Orthodox churches were both on the list of big nonpayers for 
1995.) 
 
     Gunter Rath and Peter Tallon, also with OICD, welcomed moves from the 
churches to pay their membership contributions. Tallon said that at a 
consultation held by OICD last year, some of the major donor agencies 
supporting WCC work had pointed out the "gaps" in the list of "paying 
churches" and said that more churches had to contribute if the main donors 
were to increase their commitments. 
 
     Rath also thanked churches that had made other contributions to WCC 
funds,  including a fund to pay for the WCC's next assembly and a fund to 
pay severance packages for WCC staff who are leaving the organization 
because of the present financial difficulties. Of the assembly fund, Rath 
said churches often found it easier to contribute to a "one time" fund of 
this kind.  Of the fund to pay severance packages, he particularly thanked 
churches in Germany, the U.S.A. and The Netherlands, and some Presbyterian 
churches around the world for their contributions.  
 
     But Rath stressed the seriousness of the WCC's overall financial 
problems. He pointed to the "eroding financial basis in the longer term of 
the churches in the north" -- northern Europe, especially Germany, and 
North America -- which have always been the WCC's main financial 
supporters. "Times are changing," Rath said. "There are now churches in the 
south that are rich, and churches in the north are getting poorer." 

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