LOUISVILLE— The General
Assembly Council (GAC) has approved a revised plan to recover the
cost of administering restricted funds from those funds rather than
pay the costs from unrestricted accounts. The cost recovery is called
“contribution to shared mission costs.”
The plan adjusts contributions depending on the entity whose funds
are being tapped. Normally, the amount would be capped at 5 percent,
but validated mission support groups—Presbyterian Frontier
Fellowship, the Medical Benevolence Foundation and the Outreach
Foundation—would contribute just 1 percent.
The formula also takes into account the various programs’
own administrative expenses. The contribution from Presbyterian
Disaster Assistance (PDA) would be capped at 5 percent of average
PDA revenues for the previous five years.
The plan incorporates changes made after the GAC’s meeting
last fall, when the proposal proved controversial. Representatives
of the three validated mission support groups vigorously opposed
the measure, saying it would hamper their fundraising efforts
for church causes.
And the Rev. Louis Weeks, president of Union/PSCE Theological
Seminary and the liaison to the GAC from the Committee on Theological
Education (COTE), raised strong objections to paying administrative
costs from the Theological Education Fund (TEF).
After that meeting, GAC staff met with the plan’s critics
and came up with the revised proposal.
Dottie Hedgepeth, associate director of theological education,
told the Congregational Ministries Division sub-committee on theology
and worship/spiritual formation that the TEF would barely have
been affected in 2003 under the revised plan. Because the TEF
paid 4.92 percent in administrative expenses, she said, the additional
levy under the plan would have been just 0.08 percent, or about
$2,000.
Phil Butin, the president of San Francisco Theological Seminary
and the liaison from COTE to this GAC meeting, supported the revised
plan on Wednesday, but on Saturday supported an amendment that
would have removed the TEF from the list of funds from which administrative
costs would have been drawn. The amendment was defeated.
“I’m equally committed to the financial flourishing
of the denomination and to the good of the seminaries, and we
need a way of doing this that doesn’t pit one against the
other,” he said in support of the amendment.
In an interview after the vote, he said he hopes the current
debate will lead congregations to increase their giving for theological
education.
Butin had told the theology and subcommittee earlier, “The
level of support (of seminaries by congregations) in the 1960s
was 20 to 25 percent of the seminaries’ budgets,”
but seminaries now “receive very little support” from
congregations through the TEF. He said TEF contributions range
from less than 1 percent of the Princeton Theological Seminary
budget to 21 percent of the Johnson C. Smith Theological Seminary
budget. He said 78 percent of congregations don’t contribute
to the fund, although some give directly to individual seminaries.
Hedgepeth told the subcommittee, “The goal is to have congregations
that depend on seminaries to provide their pastoral leadership
understand that it is not likely to be paid for by anybody else.”
David Hackett, associate director for denominational relations
for the Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship (PFF), said in an interview
that he had reservations about the plan.
“This has been a very hard one for us,” he said.
“I’m not necessarily feeling that the conclusions
they reached were good ones. We’re not sure that the different
percentage rates will come across well for the public. We’ve
already received some pressure from some other funds that want
to be classified as Frontier mission projects and pay the 1 percent
rather than the 5 percent.
“We’ve also gotten word from some other donors that
they will send their hundred-thousand dollar chunks through other
means to recipients” so that the 1 percent won't be taken
out.
“I think the bigger question is whether this kind of ‘patch’
to what has already been called a broken mission funding system
is advisable at this time,” Hackett said. “This could
have some negative repercussions.”
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