Staff cure for shrinkage: Develop more churches By John H. Adams The Layman Online Thursday, January 16, 2003 LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The cure for the membership decline in the Presbyterian Church (USA) is to develop congregations that bring in new members faster than the other congregations are shrinking, according to Curtis Kearns, staff director of the National Ministries Division. He used that argument in a Jan. 16 pitch for the "Mission Initiative" fund-raising campaign to the General Assembly Council's committee that oversees the work of his division. The Mission Initiative seeks to raise $40 million, primarily from wealthy Presbyterians, to fund new church development, church growth, foreign missions and other programs that will stimulate church growth nationally and internationally. After Kearns presented a slide show that addressed the issues of membership loss and the plan to compensate for it, Ron Lundine, the new director of the campaign, told the committee that one of the principal targets of the campaign will be elderly women who have substantial assets. Kearns urged committee members, "It would be a mistake to think of this as a fund-raising campaign. It is not an attempt to raise funds, primarily. It is a plan to allow us to do the things we need to do - "make God's deeds known" [from Psalm 105]. He reviewed the denomination's membership decline from 1990-2000 - from 2.98 million to 2.4 million - and said the slide primarily was due to the denomination's inability to develop new congregations. With 50 new church developments a year, Kearns contended, the denomination could have kept membership level. But the PCUSA had only enough money - for training and support - to initiate an average of 35 new church developments a year, he said. The money from the Mission Initiative, if it is successful, would provide resources to develop 50 new PCUSA congregations a year, he said. Kearns also emphasized that resources throughout the 1990s were limited and, from 1990 through 2000, the denomination undertook only 292 new church developments. He compared that with the decade of the 1950s when the PCUSA and its predecessor denominations started 1,350 new congregations. From the beginning of the Presbyterian church in America in 1640 until 1965, the number of Presbyterians in the nation increased steadily, reaching 4.2 million in 1965. The spiral downward began in 1965 when the Northern wing of the church began debating what became the Confession of 1967 - a marked departure from the Westminster Confession of Faith. The denomination has lost more than 1.7 million members since 1965. The shrinkage in 2002 has not been reported, but budget-makers are estimating that 35,000 more members will come off the rolls. In large part, the leaders of the PCUSA have blamed the membership losses on the social upheaval in the 1960s when young people began leaving the church. But they offer little explanation as to why other denominations - including Southern Baptists and the Assemblies of God - have had spectacular growth in America and around the globe since the 1960s. And they rarely mention that two whole denominations that were formed by congregations that left the PCUSA - the Presbyterian Church in America and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church - are exhibiting strong growth. Doug Wilson, also a member of the staff of the National Ministries Division, outlined how the division's $11.1-million share of the $40 million will be disbursed: $2.6 million for church development; $1 million to boost racial-ethnic and new immigrant "fellowships" that would be classified as "pre-church;" $1 million for specialized ministries, such as presbytery-wide youth programs; and $6.5 million for loans to help churches build facilities. A sizeable portion of that money would be used to hire additional staff to implement those efforts. Wilson said the 99-percent vote in favor of the Mission Initiative campaign was evidence that it has widespread support in the denomination. That vote came in tandem with the commissioners' vote to cut the Louisville staff and foreign mission assignments by 10 percent. A small number of the commissioners argued that Presbyterians would prefer that cuts be made in contributions to the World Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches, the Washington Office of the denomination and other controversial programs that may be contributing to membership losses. Lundine, who previously served as vice president of development at San Francisco Theological Seminary, emphasized putting a positive spin on the $40-million campaign. "The direction of the development for the Mission Initiative is about the gospel of Jesus Christ," he said. "The money is a means to an end. It cannot be an end to itself." Lundine called for help in the campaign, especially from people who are not likely to speak "disparagingly" about the PCUSA. "We're looking particularly at women whom God has entrusted with extraordinary resources," he said, "particularly women in their 60s. Think about people who support the arts." But Lundine said many Presbyterians are potential donors because "the average Presbyterian is more wealthy than 98 percent of the people on this planet." Kearns, Lundine and Wilson did not refer to a consultants' report that concluded that the $40-million campaign could succeed - with a caveat. That report cited the divisive debates in the denomination over a number of issues, which may have heightened since a wave of constitutional defiance began intensifying the turmoil in the PCUSA.

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