LOUISVILLE — Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)-related Johnson C. Smith Theological Seminary manages to educate and equip up-and-coming church leaders without owning a single building.
Its dean, the Rev. David Wallace, also figures out how to raise the $800,000 needed annually to meet the seminary’s $1.2 million budget.
“Each year I’m on pins and needles, wondering whether or not I’m going to meet that budget,” he said during a recent meeting of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly Council (GAC).
Biblically speaking, the historically black institution founded in 1867 miraculously continues to turn water into wine.
“God gives you the gifts and the graces to get the job done,” Wallace proclaimed.
Yet the struggle to survive is fierce. And it’s a battle Wallace contends could be easily won if more PC(USA) congregations contributed to the denomination’s Theological Education Fund (TEF).
Wallace made his case to the GAC’s Congregational Ministries Division Committee, gathered as part of the full GAC meeting here April 26-29.
“TEF really could do more for us if we could find a way to convince our 11,000 churches that more of them need to give,” he said.
In 2005, only 2,150 PC(USA) congregations contributed to the fund — the only denomination-wide source of funding for the church’s 10 related seminaries.
The small number of churches contributing “really says that the balance of those churches have not thought about the need to really seriously put the ministry of theological education at a higher level of concern in the life of the church,” Wallace said.
Along with Johnson C. Smith, the TEF supports Austin Presbyterian, Columbia, University of Dubuque, Louisville Presbyterian, McCormick, Pittsburgh, Princeton, San Francisco and Union theological seminaries. The fund also supports the Evangelical Seminary of Puerto Rico through a covenant agreement with the PC(USA).
One other seminary in covenant agreement with the PC(USA), Auburn Theological Seminary in New York, does not receive TEF funds.
In 2005, the 2,150 donating congregations contributed $2,195,767 to the TEF, a decrease of $168,491 from 2004. Fund giving has decreased every year since 2001.
The Rev. Lee Hinson-Hasty, the PC(USA)’s coordinator for theological education and seminary relations, said the fund is fortunate to have gotten the donations it did in ’05, given Hurricane Katrina and other appeals that pulled on donors’ purse strings.
Oregon’s Cascades Presbytery reported the largest increase in TEF receipts last year — $15,492 — followed by West Virginia Presbytery’s $11,603.
Hinson-Hasty also credited an endowment that came in at the end of the year with allowing the TEF “to meet the pledges to our seminaries this year.”
Yet he also said between $15 million and $17 million a year would flow into the fund if each PC(USA) congregation dedicated 1 percent of its local operating budget to the TEF each year. That was the goal when the TEF was approved with the establishment of the Committee on Theological Education (COTE) at the 1986 General Assembly.
“We continue to hope that would happen,” Hinson-Hasty said.
Stepping up giving to the TEF certainly would make a difference at Johnson C. Smith, which is in the midst of a $15 million fundraising campaign. About 14 percent, or $170,000, of the seminary’s yearly budget currently comes from TEF.
Wallace said $8 million of the $15 million being raised would go to build and endow the seminary’s first-ever building on the campus of Atlanta’s Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC) where Johnson C. Smith is located. The remaining $7 million would go to “scholastic aid” for students.
“Over 30 years we have rented space from the other denominations” housed at the ITC, he said. “In a sense we are homeless.”
The ITC is a consortium of denominational seminaries, such as United Methodist-run Gammon Theological Seminary and Baptist-run Morehouse School of Religion. The seminaries share resources in order to educate Christian leaders.
“Johnson C. Smith deserves its own home there at ITC,” said Wallace. “We deserve our own identity there.”
Hinson-Hasty said Johnson C. Smith and the other PC(USA) seminaries are independent institutions with strong historic ties to the denomination.
These are “valuable” and “unique institutions” that are doing their part through their affiliation to the PC(USA), he said.
“It’s time for us to do our part and say thank you.”
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