wfn.org | PC(USA) Weighs $500,000 Rescue of National Council of Churches

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

30-November-1999 
99398 
 
    PC(USA) Weighs $500,000 Rescue of 
    National Council of Churches 
 
    Bailout money would come with (purse)strings attached 
 
    by John Filiatreau 
    and Jerry L. Van Marter 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is weighing a $500,000 
contribution to the financially troubled National Council of Churches of 
Christ in the U.S.A.(NCC) - provided that the ecumenical organization takes 
steps to reduce its debt load, restore its depleted reserves and begin 
operating in the black. 
 
    The Committee on the Office of the General Assembly has already 
approved a grant of $100,000, and the General Assembly Council is 
considering a proposal that it contribute an additional $400,000.  The NCC 
had requested a total of $600,000 from the PC(USA). 
 
    However, the GAC's Executive Committee did not bring the matter to a 
vote during its Nov. 29 conference call.  Instead the committee decided to 
place the proposed NCC special contribution on the docket for the regularly 
scheduled GAC meeting in February. 
 
    "Other churches won't be deciding on their share of the financial 
rescue before late-February," GAC executive director John Detterick told 
the Presbyterian News Service (PNS) in a Nov. 30 interview, "so we see no 
need to accelerate our process - we'll bring it to a vote of the full 
council in February." 
 
    The NCC, struggling with a $4 million budget deficit for 1999, is in 
the midst of what its leaders have called a "fiscal transformation 
process."  At its recent 50th anniversary celebration the council's General 
Assembly approved a massive restructuring that included reduction of the 
NCC staff by one-third. 
 
    The NCC has an annual budget of about $60 million - 85 percent of it 
representing the operations of Church World Service and Witness (CWS), the 
relief and development arm of the council through which Presbyterian 
Disaster Assistance channels much of its disaster aid.  Under the 
restructuring plan, CWS will have greater autonomy within the NCC 
"umbrella." 
 
    The PC(USA) contributes $408,000 a year to the NCC's operating budget. 
 
    The deficit - which NCC officials call "authorized but unanticipated 
expenses" - is attributable to $2.4 million in consulting fees to the 
Pappas Group, which helped design the restructure over an 18-month period; 
a $330,000 misallocation of funds from the NCC's "Burned Churches Fund" to 
its racial justice program which must be restored; a one-time contribution 
of about $500,000 to the NCC's pension fund due to a missed payment several 
years ago; and overexpenditure of the General Secretary's budget for the 
year, especially the mission to Yugoslavia last spring to rescue three U.S. 
soldiers held captive by the Yugoslav government and the costs of 
administering the $11.8 million "Burned Churches Fund," which provided 
emergency aid to scores of African-American congregations whose churches 
had been destroyed by arson fires. 
 
    The Rev. Cliff Kirkpatrick, the PC(USA)'s stated clerk, said the 
denomination has not wavered in its support of the NCC, which he said "has 
made a huge contribution to the churches of this nation ... and the world." 
 
    The Rev. Margaret J. Thomas, the NCC's treasurer, told the PNS the NCC 
sometimes paid little attention to financial and "infrastructure" matters, 
because it "wanted all resources to go to the mission." 
 
    "When something arises in society, and the churches say, `Help us,' the 
council naturally responds to the crisis - which usually demands a large 
influx of money," said Thomas, synod executive for the PC(USA)'s Synod of 
Lakes and Prairies. "The council's financial procedures were inadequate and 
outdated, and by the end of '98 our unrestricted reserve was depleted. So 
we had to use board-restricted funds for cash-flow purposes." 
 
    "A deeper problem," Kirkpatrick added, "is one that the council shares 
with all the Protestant, mainline churches - a general decline in growth 
and in support - not a major, sudden decline, but a slow, step-by-step 
decline, not unlike the situation we're facing as a denomination." 
 
    Kirkpatrick also pointed out that the NCC is about to undergo a 
"transition in leadership" - the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, the 
controversial general secretary for the last eight years, leaves office 
Dec. 31.  She will be succeeded by the Rev. Robert Edgar, a Methodist 
minister and former U.S. congressman with a proven track record as a 
fund-raiser.  He will be joined in the NCC's new leadership by Andrew J. 
Young, a disciple of Martin Luther King Jr., who served with Edgar in the 
U.S. House of Representatives and has also been mayor of Atlanta and U.S. 
ambassador to the United Nations. 
 
    The NCC already has a new general manager and a new controller in 
place. 
 
    Though it has pledged $700,000 to the deficit reduction, the United 
Methodist Church (UMC) voted on Oct. 10 to suspend all of its financial 
support for the NCC, including the bailout, because of concerns about its 
fiscal practices. Officials said the funding will be restored when 
questions "related to past and future fiscal policies and management" are 
answered  and the NCC has implemented a plan that "will ensure a viable 
financial future." 
 
    The UMC's delegation to the 50th anniversary Assembly said immediately 
after the Assembly that the plan approved there is insufficient and so the 
UMC suspension is still in effect. 
 
    "We're hopeful and expectant that this suspension will be very brief," 
said Bishop William Boyd Grove, ecumenical officer for the United Methodist 
Council of Bishops. 
 
    "With the information presented, we had to exercise our fiduciary 
responsibility on behalf of the United Methodist Church and in faithfulness 
to those who give the dollars in our local churches," said the Rev. 
Patricia M. Toschak, vice president of the UMN commission. "It is my hope 
that this can be expediently resolved." 
 
    Dan Rift, associate director for Global Service and Witness in the 
Worldwide Ministries division, told the PNS that any PC(USA) contribution 
to the NCC would come with "a very similar set of conditions" as the UMC's 
and would not be "an unconditional grant." 
 
    Rift said the NCC's recovery depends on two things - its ability to 
"redesign itself with better financial policies and controls, and the 
re-commitment of its member communions." 
 
    He also pointed out that contributions to the NCC for "restricted" and 
"designated funds" - those made with a specific purpose in mind - have 
actually increased. It is unrestricted funds that are on the decline. 
 
    Despite the budget deficit, the NCC went ahead with a gala 
50th-anniversary celebration  Nov. 9-12 in Cleveland, Ohio, where the 
nation's largest ecumenical organization - with 35 member churches 
representing 52 million Christians - was born in 1950. The event's $300,000 
cost is not part of the NCC operating budget, but has been underwritten by 
the NCC's member churches and a number of Cleveland-area supporters.  The 
PC(USA) contributed $25,000 and the UMC $50,000 to the celebration.   

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