 $40-million fundraising campaign endorsed By Parker T. Williamson The Layman Online Thursday, June 20, 2002
After conducting a feasibility study, the consulting firm Marts and Lundy encouraged church leaders to limit campaign objectives to two well-defined and popular programs within the General Assembly budget. The consultants also suggested that this not be a broad-spectrum campaign, but that it target a limited number of high-income potential donor foundations, corporations and individuals. Campaign beneficiaries will be the denomination's Worldwide Ministries Division, which hopes to field 45 full-time missionaries for a period of 10 years, and the National Ministries Division, which hopes to establish 50 new churches with enhanced grant and loan funds. During committee deliberations, no objections were raised to the campaign itself, but some concerns were expressed that a different and potentially dangerous approach to mission funding could result from the initiative. The Rev. Russell McKee, a commissioner from Greater Atlanta Presbytery, suggested that it would be unhealthy if the denomination's highest priority programs were funded, not by the budgeted contributions of member congregations, but by special campaigns conducted among an elite group of donors. Mission priorities ought to control the entire budgeting process, he said. McKee pointed to state legislatures that allow lotteries and casino gambling in order to enhance funding for education. When gambling income begins to flow into the state treasury, legislators are tempted to cut public funding for education, he said. Following McKee's warning, the Mission and Budgets Committee attached a phrase to its recommendation that the campaign be approved: "with the provision that the proceeds from this campaign be considered over and above the budget and not be used to weaken the church's commitment to missions from its unrestricted budget." Congregations already are restricting most of the money that they send to the General Assembly. Two-thirds of the denomination's income is donor restricted, with most of it going to mission projects at home and abroad. The General Assembly Council has sought to resuscitate its less popular programs – like the denomination's political lobby in Washington – by allocating to them high percentages of its unrestricted budget income. From each unrestricted dollar that is received by Louisville headquarters, the General Assembly Council allocates only three cents to fund international missionaries, which Presbyterians consistently have named as their highest priority. |
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