BicentennialFund Campaign ends, reaching less than half its goal

30.45% administrative expenses exceeded General Assembly limit of 13.5%

LOUISVILLE, Ky.–"It’s time to end the Bicentennial Fund Campaign and have a celebration," stewardship associate Claude Godwin told members of the General Assembly Council in a Feb. 11 report. But when campaign results were shared with the council, no one appeared to be in a party mood.

At its close on December 31, 1997, the fund reported gross receipts of $74,358,304, less than half of its $150 million goal. Campaign expenses totaling $22,643,419 of the money that was raised, a whopping 30.45 percent, exceeded the General Assembly mandated 13.5 percent cap, making the Bicentennial Fund one of the most expensive campaigns in the history of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Included in the campaign’s administrative costs were write-offs on two loans, one to a commercial bank for $4 million and an internal loan from the denomination’s reserve fund for $3,336,283.

Campaign chairman Robert Bohl, minister of the Prairie Village (Kan.) Presbyterian Church, nevertheless has declared the campaign a success. Bohl told commissioners to the 1993 General Assembly that the Bicentennial effort was producing numerous intangible benefits that would not show up on a balance sheet. He also said that the denominational effort sparked local and regional fund-raising campaigns whose results are not recorded in Bicentennial Fund totals.

But a General Assembly Council audit committee report now shows that local and regional campaign receipts of $25,278,804 were, in fact, included in the Bicentennial Fund Campaign total, and that actual funds received by the denominational office in Louisville amounted to only $49,079,500.

The Bicentennial Fund Campaign experienced problems from its outset in 1988. Facing what then General Assembly Council Executive Director David Stoner described as "a financial cliff," the Council was desperate for an infusion of new money. Years of deficit spending had drained most of the denomination’s cash reserves, and the prospect of falling revenues from congregations had created a crisis atmosphere in Louisville. That was the context in which the special campaign was suggested.

Warning Ignored
Council leaders were warned by the fund-raising firm of Marts and Lundy in 1985 not to undertake the proposed campaign. Field testing by the firm’s consultants revealed widespread disaffection with the national church leadership, largely due to its perceived preoccupation with a liberal political agenda and its failure to honor the denomination’s spiritual and evangelical priorities. Marts and Lundy recommended that a major campaign not be undertaken until after this estrangement between national church leaders and the Presbyterian public had been addressed.

Faced with a major funding shortfall, the Council voted to proceed with the proposed campaign, assuring the General Assembly that the administrative costs incurred in this effort would not exceed ten percent. (In a mid-campaign report Chairman Bohl told the Assembly that the effort’s costs were exceeding expectations, and the Assembly increased the administrative cost limit to 13.5 percent.)

ReImagining God
Then came the ReImagining God conference in the fall of 1993. Atte nded by more than 20 Presbyterian Church (USA) staff members, planned by national staff director Mary Ann Lundy and members of her Women’s Ministry Unit, and partially funded with a $66,000 grant from the Bicentennial Fund, the conference denied the transcendence of God, rejected the atonement, suggested that God is merely the product of human imagination, and celebrated the integrity of lesbian relationships.

News of the ReImagining Conference rocked the Presbyterian Church (USA) and had disastrous consequences for the already shaky Bicentennial Fund Campaign. Local church sessions not only refused to participate in the campaign, but mounted a mushrooming movement to withhold, restrict or redirect all church offerings that had formerly gone to national headquarters. Chairman Bohl, campaigning not only for the beleaguered Bicentennial Fund but also for his own election to the office of General Assembly Moderator (which he won in 1994), called these financial protests "ecclesiastical sin."

Deficit remains
Although a great deal of water has gone under the Presbyterian Church (USA) bridge since 1993, including the departure of key national staff leaders who promoted ReImagining ideologies and the arrival of new leadership who have prodded the denomination toward a more evangelical direction, the Bicentennial Fund Campaign never recovered. At the end of 1997 the campaign books showed total assets of $2,052,775, including $1,333,951 pledges receivable. It also showed liabilities of $14,355,226, including two loans totaling $7,018,943. This has resulted in a year-end deficit of $12,302,451.

During its February meeting, the General Assembly Council was unanimous in concurring with Mr. Godwin’s recommendation that the campaign be officially closed. But his suggestion that the effort warranted a celebration produced no audible response.

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