wfn.org | UCC leaders asks for $1 billion annually

[powellb@ucc.org]

United Church of Christ
Newsroom
Friday, July 11, 2003
newsroom@ucc.org
http://www.ucc.org

By William C. Winslow

MINNEAPOLIS?One billion dollars.

Can a small denomination like the 1.3 million-member United Church of
Christ raise that kind of money in annual giving? The Rev. John H. Thomas,
General Minister and President, thinks it can.

During Thursday afternoon's opening session of the UCC's General Synod,
Thomas challenged the membership to increase its annual giving to $1
billion annually?by 2007, the 50th anniversary of the church's historic
union in 1957. Like the church's forebears, "we are invited to a love for
Jesus that makes us daring," Thomas told the 2,000-plus delegates and
visitors. "We are called to an amazing generosity," he said.

UCC members now give $850 million annually through their local churches.
Over 90 percent never leaves the local setting, but the remaining balance
goes to the work of the wider church through Conferences and the Covenanted
Ministries of the national setting. The increase could turn the church
around in the face of declining membership rolls and a diminished national
and global missions program, Thomas thinks.

New money will bring in new members by strengthening local churches and
building new ones, explains Thomas. "We will be able to send more
missionaries and volunteers overseas and into our communities," he adds,
along with increasing support to partners doing the work of reconciliation
and justice.

Thomas lifted up the denomination's pilot emphasis on expanding the UCC's
name-brand identity through modern advertising and marketing. "With one
billion dollars we can launch an identity campaign so that every household
in America will one day know our name, the United Church of Christ," Thomas
said proudly.

Thomas framed his vision and its challenge by juxtaposing the images of two
ships. The aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, Thomas said, is a vessel that
"conjures and proposes an imagination in which the fear prompted by
terrorist attacks is manipulated to pursue vengeance and domination," while
the freedom schooner Amistad overcame violence to "remind us of forebears
who imagined freedom rather than bondage."

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