The Assembly Council’s March meeting began with presentations from three ministers working in thriving churches. It continued with a time of silence the next morning; and times of discernment and prayer were woven throughout the two days of business and reports.
The focus on discernment came from a motion passed at the November 2012 meeting, which asked for “a time of sacred discernment on God’s will for our church” at the next meeting.
“All of the decision-making at Assembly Council seeks to be guided and led by God’s will for the church,” the planning group said in its brief report. “It is the council’s hope and prayer that a vision and mission statement for the Presbyterian Church in Canada will grow out of this process of discernment.”
As the final time for discernment wound to its close, Heather Crisp, convener, said she was glad the council “didn’t decide to finish and put a bow” on the process by creating a statement to bring to this year’s assembly. Instead, the council opted to report on what has been done so far and allow the process to continue.
In the past few years, calls for a national vision and renewed focus on congregations have resonated on the floor of the General Assembly.
A series of overtures asked the council, which is responsible for carrying out the assembly’s work throughout the year, to create a plan to restructure national organizations and finances so they are sustainable in a time of shrinking revenues and struggling congregations.
At its November 2012 meeting, the Assembly Council approved a set of budget principles to be used in planning the church’s finances beginning in 2014. These include moving to biennial assemblies and reducing the expected income from Presbyterians Sharing, the main mission and ministry fund of the national church.
Matters of vision, structure and the renewal of congregations “have been in the forefront” as it crafted the budget principles, the council said in its finance committee report. “Of course during a time in which the need to significantly reduce expenditures is very real, this is difficult work.”
2014 Budget
“The 2014 budget is only one step in the process of shifting the structures of the church to best meet the needs of the denomination during a time of reduced resources,” reads the report of the finance committee. “From 2011 through 2016 it is envisioned that there will be approximately 12 per cent fewer staff supported by Presbyterians Sharing (this will be achieved through retirements). Departments will be amalgamated, and work consolidated. At the same time all the programs, particularly in Canadian Ministries, that support congregations will remain a top priority. Funds related to renewing and developing new congregations remain available, and increased funds for conferences and local initiatives will also be made available to the church.” The budget will be presented to General Assembly when it meets May 31st to June 3rd.
Biennial Assemblies
The proposed budget assumes biennial General Assemblies will begin in 2016. “This leaves sufficient time to make sure that appropriate legislation is in place, and that committees of the church, staff at the national office and the church at large is ready for this change,” the executive committee of the council said.
Each meeting of the church’s highest court costs about $300,000, although the expense varies depending on where the assembly is held and how far the majority of commissioners must travel.
The council plans to ask this year’s General Assembly to approve a proposal for biennial assemblies in principle. The proposal document will be circulated to the committees and courts of the church for study and report. Changes to church polity would still need to be approved by future assemblies.
In response to a report circulated in 2009, 69 courts and national committees supported biennial assemblies and 52 were opposed. The council at that time decided to reaffirm the practice of annual assemblies and the General Assembly agreed.
Rev. Dr. Rick Horst, minister of St. Andrew’s, Barrie, Ont., and moderator of the 2011 assembly, said he had changed his mind about the biennial meetings. He suggested meeting annually may not be good stewardship of resources and may not be necessary “in a day when communication is so immediate.”
Rev. Dr. John Vissers, moderator of the 2012 assembly, suggested the council should now “test the will of the church” by putting its proposal forward this year. “I think we should let the church decide,” he said.
The Presbytery of Vancouver Island has offered to host the 2015 General Assembly.
Regional Programming
The Women’s Missionary Society announced 2014 will be the last year it will provide $200,000 for synods to use for regional staff or programs.
“We did look at our financial situation and the original purpose of regional staff before we made that decision,” said Joan Smith, outgoing president of the WMS. “At that time they [the regional staff] took over for what was called our educational consultants, so the focus was on education. Now we’re focused more on mission and justice, so it doesn’t really fit in with what the WMS does.”
The Life and Mission Agency has provided about $500,000 a year in addition to the WMS’ $200,000 to help synods hire staff people to work with the churches and presbyteries within their bounds. Late last year, the LMA and WMS agreed to allow synods that wish to do so to use the funds for conferences or other programs instead of staff salaries and travel expenses.
The LMA’s grant for regional resourcing is calculated each year and divided among the synods using a formula developed by the synod conveners in 2009. The LMA plans to continue to provide the grant.
Smith reported that a finance and future task force was created at the WMS’ May executive council meeting. Its conclusions “will have a major impact on the WMS,” she said.
Presbyterians Sharing
The council’s guiding principles included lowering the budgeted revenue from Presbyterians Sharing, the main mission and ministry fund of the national church, to $7.5 million in 2014, down from $8 million in 2013.
The majority of departments of the LMA that rely on Presbyterians Sharing donations have trimmed their budgets for 2014.
Some of those reductions include:
Canadian Ministries’ funding to university chaplaincy programs is expected to discontinue in 2014. “This decision is related to declining revenue, and in no way comments on the valuable work done on campuses by chaplains,” Rev. Ian McDonald, the associate secretary, wrote in a letter to university chaplains and others. Two dozen chaplaincies receive grants of up to $5,000 a year from Canadian Ministries. The LMA has asked the department to work with presbyteries and synods to find alternative sources of funding.
$18,000 is to be cut from an annual grant to Kairos, an ecumenical social justice group. The grant administered through Justice Ministries is expected to be $42,700 in 2014.
The Communications office is reducing its quarterly PCPak to three mailings each year. The resources and materials contained in the PCPak are available on the Presbyterian Church’s website where they can be downloaded and printed on demand.
The budget for International Ministries has been reduced, for the most part, through salary expenses as missionaries retired or returned to Canada.
A New Formula
A new formula for calculating suggested allocations to Presbyterians Sharing will be presented to the assembly. Based on the biblical idea of tithing, it will ask each congregation to contribute 10 per cent of their dollar base (or the congregation’s income in a given year, minus any money donated to missions or used to repay debts.)
If all congregations contributed 10 per cent of their dollar bases, it would raise about $10 million each year.
The current formula is also based on a congregation’s dollar base, but many consider the suggested allocations to be unreasonable. Currently, congregations are asked for 13 per cent of the first $50,000, 18 per cent of the next $50,000 and 21.5 per cent of the remainder.
If all congregations met their current suggested allocations, the national fund would receive about $18 million a year.
The EAP and Conferences
The LMA agreed to extend the Employee Assistance Program until 2017 using $62,500 from two of the agency’s five mission connection funds—the growing churches fund and the mission connections fund.
The EAP provides ministers, church employees and their families with confidential counseling about a variety of concerns such as stress, depression, relationships and financial and legal matters.
Assembly Council also gave permission for the LMA to move $300,000 to the conference support fund, which was depleted at the end of 2012. The money will be moved from the renewing ministries capital fund, which helps congregations seeking to renew their ministries through a capital project. That fund had a balance of over $2.6 million at the end of 2012.
“The Assembly Council remains committed to listening to the church and values not only the kind of input it has received through the 2014 budget process but further input from the church on all of these matters,” it said in the finance report.
