wfn.org | Money Is Running Out, COCU Finance Chief Warns

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28-January-1999 
99040 
 
    Money Is Running Out, COCU Finance Chief Warns 
 
    by Jean Caffey Lyles 
 
ST. LOUIS - While delegates from nine U.S. churches have approved an active 
future for the Consultation on Church Union (COCU), funding for the 
enterprise is assured only through 1999, a COCU finance official pointed 
out on Jan. 24. 
 
    According to the Rev. George Pike, of Green Valley, Ariz., COCU's 
retiring finance committee chair, the unity-seeking organization is 
operating on a $205,444 annual budget, of which $194,000 is to be provided 
by member churches. The rest will come from reserve funds, individual 
contributions and sales of materials. 
 
    Pike delivered his report near the close of COCU's 18th Plenary 
meeting, during which representatives of the participating churches 
approved a plan to form a new relationship under the banner of "Churches 
Uniting in Christ" in January 2002. The proposal requires approval by top 
decision-making assemblies of the member churches. 
 
    The COCU churches have not made hard-and-fast funding commitments for 
2000 and beyond, said Pike, a retired Presbyterian Church (USA) official. 
 
    The consultation, founded in the 1960s, once had adequate funding to 
support a full-time general secretary, an associate general secretary and a 
number of support staff workers. But it has found itself in reduced 
circumstances in recent years because of shrinking denominational budgets, 
Pike said. 
 
     After the Rev. Daniell C. Hamby resigned in July after a four-year 
stint as general secretary to become rector of St. Andrew's Episcopal 
Church in Yardley, Pa., COCU secured an interim general secretary, the Rev. 
Lewis H. Lancaster Jr., to serve half-time. 
 
    In addition to Lancaster, a retired Presbyterian ecumenical officer who 
works at Presbyterian Church (USA) offices in Louisville, the staff at 
COCU's offices in Princeton, N.J., now consists of an administrative 
assistant and a part-time secretary. 
 
    "Churches are going to have to support the Consultation at an increased 
level," Pike said, because budget reserves will be exhausted by the end of 
1999. 
 
    "We cannot let funding, or the lack of it, be the reason for the demise 
of this organization," he declared. 
 
    President Vivian U. Robinson, of Augusta, Ga., told the plenary 
delegates, "He (Pike) just wanted you to know to get your pocketbooks 
ready." 

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