Episcopal Press and News
$43.5 Million Budget Approved; National Staff Cuts Imminent
Episcopal News Service. July 25, 1991 [91154]
Jim Thrall, Steve Weston
Both houses of General Convention adopted the $43,470,000 General Church program Budget for 1992 with little debate. The General Convention Program Budget also was approved separately and contains a three-year appropriation of $8,263,895. The general budget reflects a decrease both in diocesan contributions to the national budget and in funds available for national staff.
The vote was unanimous in both houses, except for the single abstention of Bishop Robert D. Rowley, Jr., of Northwestern Pennsylvania, who said that since his diocese would not be able to meet its full assessment this year or in 1992, he felt he should not vote on a budget he knew he could not completely financially support.
Deputies asked for clarification on the extent of 10 percent across-the-board spending reductions indicated by the budget Harry W. Havemeyer, chair of the Committee on Program, Budget, and Finance, told deputies that such a budget "can only take effect if we at all levels take stewardship seriously." When parishes and missions respond to the standard of giving adopted by General Convention "time and time again," Havemeyer said, "the mission of our church we are planning today will be accomplished. But if we don't, and the flow of dollars does not come from the parishes and dioceses to the national church, all will suffer." He said the persons the farthest away from the visible church, "whom we have the hardest time seeing, will suffer the most."
Doing fewer things better
The major reductions required by the budget "obviously affect the Episcopal Church Center in a way that is going to take a great deal of planning and a great of strategizing," Presiding Bishop Edmond L Browning said following the vote in the House of Bishops.
Staff at the church center have been working since April "to look at how we might need to restructure in light of both the priorities and the resources that are going to be available," Browning said. It is clear, he added, that that will mean both "reducing staff' and "cutting out some programs that cannot be supported. We have to learn to do fewer things better."
While painful, the process is simply "sharing in the struggles that each diocese is struggling with in terms of financing your programs," Browning said. "The national church center has to be a part of that." At the same time, he said, "we're all the national church, and we all have deep accountability for the programs that you say are priorities that you ask me and the staff at the center to carry out."
The staff at the church center is "fully aware" of the upcoming cuts, Browning said, but there is still a "lot of anxiety about who's going to be there at the beginning of 1992." His central concern, he said, is "how do we take care of those who will indeed lose their positions at the center?"
Browning said he hopes planning for adjustments can be completed by October, in order to give the staff who do lose their jobs time as much time as possible to find new positions.
The 1992 budget is not "a business as usual" proposal, said Bishop George Hunt of Rhode Island, chair of the committee's program section, but a fresh attempt to address the primary arena for mission: dioceses and congregations. "We will give the maximum support possible to those programs which most directly enhance and support the ministry delivery of our dioceses and congregations," said Hunt, "with special attention to minimizing any possible collateral damage to other current programs and agencies."
The new initiatives focus on evangelism and congregational development, racism, the environment, AIDS ministry education, creation of new Jubilee Ministry centers, Asiamerican youth ministry development, and new ministry assistance for the Episcopal Council on Indian Ministries.
While most programs experienced cuts of 5 to 10 percent, a number of Advocacy, Witness, and Justice Ministries programs were given slight increases or maintained at 1991 funding levels. One in particular, Native American Ministries, had a quantum leap: bounding from $219,603 to $1,240,722. This was not actually an increase, said Hunt, but a transfer to the ECIM account of Coalition-14 funds that were intended for Native American ministry.
Founded in 1970 as a coalition of 14 western dioceses, Coalition-14 now includes 16 dioceses and serves to channel funds to missions in rural areas. In recent years it has included major new work with Native Americans.
Bishop Don Wimberly of Lexington, Kentucky, chair of the assessment section of the committee, said the $8,263,895 General Convention expense budget for the next triennium was developed with a careful eye to adhering to prudent stewardship and management guidelines. "In the spirit of those guidelines," said Wimberly, "all meeting and travel expense in this budget is estimated on the assumption that meetings will occur over weekends and/or in conference centers."
The convention expense budget is meant to cover the costs of General Convention committees meeting between conventions and those of the offices of the presiding bishop and the president of the House of Deputies. The assessment section of the committee is proposing a diocesan assessment for General Convention, he said, of.027 percent to cover the projected increased cost of $450,000 for the 1994 convention in Indianapolis.
In other budgetary and stewardship matters, the convention passed the following resolutions:
- Adopt a definition of stewardship as it relates to a theology of mission (A-185a).
- Adopt a new charge for the Standing Commission on Stewardship and Development (A-184a).
- Remind clergy to educate their congregations on the necessary execution of wills and provision when possible of bequests for religious and charitable uses (A-186a).
- Reaffirm "50/50 giving," a policy adopted at the 69th General Convention which mandates that dioceses and parishes spend at least as much on others as on themselves (A-188).
- Reaffirm resolution D-165 of the last General Convention, urging each Episcopalian household to tithe 10 percent of its income to the church (A-189).
- Affirm the value of the Every Member Canvass in the development of stewardship in the church (A-190).
- Ask that clergy instruct their congregations in the requirements of Christian stewardship (A192).
- Commend seminaries for stewardship education (A-197).
- Request Executive Council to develop a coordinated program of extrabudgetary giving to further enable the mission of the church (A-200).
- Review restrictions and conditions under which endowment funds are received (A-202).
- Urge all dioceses and congregations to review the restrictions, conditions, and purposes under which their endowed gifts were received (A-202).
- Commend the Diocese of Western Massachusetts for its development and use of a consolidated cash management system (A-204).
- Commend the narrative budget as described in the current series, "The Star System for Stewardship" (A-203).
- Reevaluate the Church Pension Fund to include survivor benefit options for single lay and clerical employees (D-015s).
- Accept Church Pension Fund report, "Freeing Our Ministers to Minister" (D-185).