LOUISVILLE —
The executive committee of the General Assembly Council (GAC)
voted Tuesday to approve a recommendation that a new special offering
not be established in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
The suggestion came from a Special Offerings Review Task Force
elected by last year’s 215th General Assembly to consider
two overtures calling for a Witness Season Offering to support
international mission personnel and new-church development.
If the full council agrees in its meeting later this week, the
PC(USA) will continue receiving the four existing offerings —
the One Great Hour of Sharing, the Peacemaking Offering, the Christmas
Joy Offering and the Pentecost Offering.
“The feedback we got indicates that congregations will
support four offerings, prefer three, and definitely do not want
five,” said the task force chair, the Rev. Karl Travis,
a pastor in Grosse Ile, MI. “And their primary interest
is in youth and at-risk children’s ministry — not
national or international mission.”
That could be
explained in part
by the fact that
the denomination
already has embarked
on a five-year,
$40 million campaign —
the Mission Initiative:
Joining Hearts & Hands — to
support overseas
missions and new-church
development and
congregational
transformations
in this country,
especially in racial-ethnic
and immigrant
congregations.
“It simply makes no sense to overlap a new special offering
with the Mission Initiative,” Travis said.
The task force also is recommending changes in the Christmas
Joy Offering, which now is divided 50-50 between Board of Pensions
assistance programs and the church’s racial-ethnic schools
and colleges.
The recommended change would allow the Board of Pensions to
allocate its portion in response to immediate needs, and let officials
of the National Ministries Division (NMD) explore using some of
its share “to support racial-ethnic education and leadership
training beyond the historically racial-ethnic schools and colleges.”
Travis said Bloomfield (NJ) College — a PC(USA)-related
institution with a significant racial-ethnic population, but not
one of the eight historic racial-ethnic schools — had sought
offering funds for its racial-ethnic educational and leadership-development
programs. The task force referred the request to NMD
Another factor involved in the school-funding recommendation
was the closing last fall of one of the traditional beneficiaries
of the offering — Mary Holmes College in West Point, MS.
The task force is also recommending a permanent shift in the
distribution of the One Great Hour of Sharing Offering —
now divided among the Presbyterian Hunger Program, 32 per cent;
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA), 36 percent; and Self-Development
of People (SDOP), 32 percent — to reflect actual practice.
For years, 4 percent of the offering has been dedicated to ministries
to the homeless run by the Presbyterian Hunger Program but funded
from the PDA share. Under the new formula, PDA and SDOP each will
receive 32 percent of the offering, and the Hunger Program will
get 36 percent.
In other actions, the GAC executive committee:
- Endorsed several recommendations from the Independent Committee
of Inquiry (ICI) that investigated sexual abuses of children
by Presbyterian missionary Bill Pruitt in the Congo between
1945 and 1985. Among the ICI recommendations: a retreat for
survivors, to be held next month; maintenance of a hotline and
Web site to receive additional complaints, if any; the naming
of a new panel to investigate allegations of abuse in Cameroon
and Egypt between the 1950s and 1970s; and 10 changes in The
Book of Order to strengthen the church’s disciplinary
procedures in cases of abuse.
- Approved a recommendation from another task force that the
Office of Stewardship in the Congregational Ministries Division
(CMD) and the Mission Funding and Development Office in the
GAC deputy executive director’s office be merged into
a new Office of Stewardship and Mission Funding.
The new office will be responsible for stewardship education
and training; development of stewardship resources; consulting
with governing bodies and congregations on visioning, strategic
planning and capital campaigns; development of multiple channels
for Presbyterian contributions to mission; and relationships with
middle governing bodies and validated mission support groups.
- Approved a rationale providing for 420 staff members at this
year’s General Assembly in Richmond, VA, about the same
number as in 2002 and 2003.
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