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14-June-1997 
GA97003 
 
                          GAC Updates 
 
                      by Jerry Van Marter 
 
 
            Foundation, Worldwide Ministries Heads elected 
 
SYRACUSE--The council voted to concur with the reelection of Larry Carr to 
a second four-year term as president of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 
Foundation.  The council also elected the Rev. Marian McClure to be 
director of the Worldwide Ministries Division, succeeding the Rev. Clifton 
Kirkpatrick, who left the post last year when he was elected General 
Assembly stated clerk.  McClure is currently coordinator for global 
education and leadership development in the division and formerly served as 
a fund-raiser for the denomination's mission funding office, working with 
private and corporate foundations and other funding organizations.  The 
elections of both Carr and McClure must still be confirmed by the General 
Assembly. 
 
          Response to Arthur Andersen management study formulated 
 
    The council spent a considerable portion of its three-day meeting 
composing its response to the Arthur Andersen consulting firm's management 
study of the General Assembly's agencies.  The study was mandated by last 
year's Assembly as part of its approval of the report of the Quadrennial 
Review Committee.  After defeating a motion to ask the Assembly to give the 
council another year to detail its response to the Arthur Andersen report, 
the council adopted a paper that proposes the dismantling of the Corporate 
and Administrative Services office with an associate director for finance 
and technology being established under the council's executive director; 
the probable creation of an office of Deputy Executive Director to 
coordinate program, planning and mission funding; and the election of a 
15-member Special Committee for Review of the General  Assembly to reassess 
the role of the General Assembly and the interrelationships of its entities 
and to devise a process "to produce and communicate a compelling and 
unified vision statement for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)." 
 
               Financial bailout of Bicentennial Fund okayed 
 
    The council approved a recommendation from its Corporate and 
Administrative Services Committee that $6 million be transferred from the 
denomination's unrestricted reserves to a "committed reserve" to pay off 
outstanding Bicentennial Fund loans.  If the reserve is needed to pay off 
Bicentennial Loans, it will bring to $13.3 million the amount of reserves 
that have been used to pay off Bicentennial Fund expenses.  Total campaign 
receipts are now estimated to be about $80 million. 
 
           Barber-Scotia loan okayed, more aid for Montreat denied 
 
    The council voted to borrow $1.8 million in order to aid the 
financially ailing Barber- Scotia College in Concord, North Carolina. It 
also agreed to accelerate payments that are made regularly to undergird the 
PCUSA-related historically black college. Barber-Scotia and Mary Holmes 
College in Mississippi are the only two remaining church-related schools 
whose property is owned by the denomination.  The council voted to pursue 
agreements transferring ownership to the two colleges' boards of trustees. 
 
    The council refused, however, to loan an additional $1 million to 
Montreat Conference Center in North Carolina.  The council had earlier lent 
$1.5 million to Montreat and agreed to extend the deadline for repayment of 
that loan from the end of June to the end of October this year.  Fred 
Denson said the denial of the loan request is "not permanent--Montreat is 
free to come back if they can answer our questions--the door is not 
closed."  Corporate and Administrative Services Committee members said they 
were not satisfied that Montreat has an adequate long-range business plan 
to overcome its current financial difficulties. 
 
         Assembly will be asked to prayer for Congo (formerly Zaire) 
 
    The council voted to ask the General Assembly to pause for prayer for 
the people and churches of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly 
Zaire.  All 14 Presbyterian missionaries in the country are back on duty. 
Some of them temporarily fled the Congo when fighting between forces loyal 
to longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and those allied with rebel leader 
Laurent Kabila reached its zenith late this spring.  Presbyterians in the 
Congo, while elated that the Mobutu regime has been overthrown, are fearful 
that Kabila's government will not implement promised democratic reforms. 
Several international human rights organizations have alleged that Kabila's 
advancing army committed atrocities against civilians, particularly 
refugees from nearby Rwanda, as it overran Mobutu's forces during the last 
year. 
 
         Preliminary racial ethnic membership growth plans approved 
 
    The council approved an interim report to this year's General Assembly 
from its National Ministries Division partially implementing last year's 
Assembly mandate to increase the racial ethnic membership of the 
Presbyterian Church to 10 percent by 2005 and to 20 percent by the year 
2010.  Current racial ethnic membership of the denomination is about 3 
percent. 
 
    The strategy calls on presbyteries and synods to train racial ethnic 
church leaders in evangelism and Christian education, to encourage growing 
racial ethnic churches to start other new churches in their regions, and to 
publicize fast-growing racial ethnic churches as inspirational models for 
others. It also asks church growth officials to target synods and 
presbyteries with large racial ethnic populations for special efforts in 
racial ethnic new church development and asks the church's racial ethnic 
caucuses to help identify "hot spots" for new racial ethnic church 
developments. 
 
          National Ministries spars with PHEWA over Amendment B dissent 
 
    The National Ministries Division Committee grappled with the terms of 
its Covenant of Agreement with the Presbyterian Health, Education and 
Welfare Association, or PHEWA.  While the covenant grants PHEWA the right 
to dissent from General Assembly policies that affect the health, education 
and welfare ministries of the church, PHEWA's actions in dissent from the 
passage of Amendment B, the commonly-called "fidelity and chastity" 
amendment, clearly left a number of committee members uncomfortable.  In 
February, the PHEWA board of directors endorsed "The 1997 Declaration of 
the Reformed Faith," a statement drawn up by a group of amendment 
opponents, despite advice from the National Ministries Division not to. 
 
    Recently the group adopted a "Resolution on Continued Prayer and 
Dialogue," the tenor of which is dissent from Amendment B, conceded Mary 
Elva Smith, chair of the division sub-committee that deals directly with 
PHEWA.  A motion to advise PHEWA that the pressing of its resolution as a 
possible commissioners' resolution to this General Assembly "is 
ill-advised" narrowly failed and the division committee then adopted a 
motion stating that "no mutually acceptable resolution of the dispute 
between the PHEWA and the division over the prayer and dialogue resolution 
was arrived at."  The council approved the report. 
 
        Executive director search committee about ready for applications 
 
    The executive director search committee, headed by Lynda Ardan, who 
will become vice-chair of the council at the conclusion of this General 
Assembly, reported that it is about ready to receive applications for the 
top programmatic staff position in the denomination.  The post was left 
vacant last year when the 1996 Assembly refused to confirm the Rev. James 
D. Brown to a second four-year term.  The Rev. Frank Diaz, Brown's chief 
deputy, has been serving as interim executive director since then.  Ardan 
said applications for the job will be received from September 1 until 
October 31 of this year.  The committee, she said, plans to present a 
candidate for election by the council at its pre-Assembly meeting next June 
and confirmation by the Assembly, which will meet in Charlotte, North 
Carolina. 
 
                Stony Point renovations are fully funded 
 
    Congregational Ministries Division director the Rev. Eunice Poethig, 
announced that the $1 million needed to renovate Gilmore-Sloan House at the 
Stony Point Conference Center in New York has been raised, guaranteeing 
that the work will be completed, including the addition of a chapel to the 
centerpiece building there.  Poethig also said that the search committee 
for a new director for Stony Point has chosen a candidate for election by 
the Stony Point board of directors. 

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