Mission drive tops $8 million

Major gift from Santa Fe Presbytery is big boost for campaign

by Jerry L. Van Marter

LOUISVILLE — A $1.7 million pledge from Santa Fe Presbytery has lifted the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s Mission Initiative: Joining Hearts and Hands campaign above the $8 million mark.

Just over a year into the five-year, $40 million effort to raise funds for overseas mission personnel and for new churches in this country, especially in racial-ethnic and immigrant communities, campaign director Jan Opdyke said: “It’s going very well.”

“Have there been fits and starts? Yes,” she conceded. “But we’re organized and efficient, and we have a huge volunteer force that’s producing huge cost savings.”

The Mission Initiative was launched by the 2002 General Assembly and within six months had a staff in place, including founding director Ron Lundeen and Opdyke as his chief deputy. But Lundeen abruptly resigned last summer to take a teaching post at Hartford Seminary. The campaign’s steering committee named Opdyke acting director and then, after a brief search, gave her the job permanently.

Through it all, the campaign has continued to pick up steam, which Opdyke attributed to the skill and dedication of the steering committee and staff and to “the overwhelming response of Presbyterians all around the country.”

Despite budget crunches in Louisville, individuals, congregations and governing bodies are expressing support for the campaign “because they believe this is something we can all do as Presbyterians,” Opdyke told the Presbyterian News Service in a March 24 interview.

“The needs are there, and everyone knows the needs are there,” she said. “Worldwide Ministries has a long list of missionary positions they’re ready to fill as soon as they get the money. And most presbyteries have new churches and immigrant fellowships just waiting for additional support so they can take their next steps. It’s clear to me that we don’t have to try and convince people of the need.

“We just have to match the particular needs with the people who have passion to meet those particular needs.”

That means every Presbyterian will have the chance to contribute, she added. “I don’t want anyone to think this is just a ‘major gifts campaign.’ We’re doing a campaign, and right now we’re in a deliberate phase of nurturing larger gifts to propel us forward, but by 2007 we’ll certainly want every Presbyterian involved.”

The bulk of the initial $8.1 million has come from three individual donors and two presbyteries – Los Ranchos and Santa Fe. The interest of presbyteries — not initially anticipated for campaign — makes sense, Opdyke said: “We’re attractive to presbyteries like Los Ranchos and Santa Fe because they have local needs that fit well within this campaign.”

Three-quarters of Los Ranchos’ $4.5 million pledge and half of Santa Fe’s commitment will remain in those presbyteries. Such designated giving, part of a long-standing trend in the PC(USA), is to be expected, Opdyke said, predicting the same 70 percent-to-30 percent split between restricted and unrestricted contributions that is characteristic of overall mission giving in the church.

“People are very interested in this campaign, but they like to designate because they have a particular heart for a certain place or a specific kind of mission,” she said. “That’s fine with us, because there’s plenty of needs out there.”

Perhaps the greatest blessing to the campaign has been the enlistment of 17 volunteers — all former regional representatives of the Presbyterian Foundation — to work on the campaign. “These are committed Presbyterians who’ve served and loved the church their whole lives who want to help because they love the church,” Opdyke said.

The volunteers, who live all around the United States, “will be talking to people whose names they’ve been given by the Mission Initiative steering committee,” she said, adding that an extensive list of prospects has been developed “almost from scratch” in the past year.

Opdyke said she shares the desire of General Assembly Council officials that a whole new way of thinking about and funding the mission of the church will emerge from the Mission Initiative campaign.

“Our tagline is ‘A campaign to renew the church for mission,’” she said. “This is really the heart and soul of the campaign, to move people’s thinking from scarcity to abundance. Let’s face it: Presbyterians have abundant resources. Collectively we have more than enough to fund all our mission”

Clearly, mission is Opdyke’s personal passion. “I’m the product of Presbyterian mission,” she declared. As a pre-schooler in Sarasota, FL, she said, “My parents put me in a Presbyterian-sponsored kindergarten because there wasn’t a public one. From there I started Sunday School, so I grew up hearing stories about Presbyterian mission. How many kids today don’t have that who ... need to hear what I’ve heard, and know about the gospel?

“Presbyterians got it right when I was a kid and all my life,” she concluded. “There need to be Presbyterian churches here and there and in every neighborhood all around the world.”