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A UMNS Report
By Heather Hahn*
7:00 P.M. EST August 9, 2011
A UMNS photo illustration by Mike DuBose.
A recommended budget of $603 million for the 2013-2016 operations of
the denomination’s general agencies will go before General Conference
in 2012.
The figure represents a 6.04 percent reduction from the previous
four years and marks the first time a smaller budget will go before the
church’s top legislative body for approval. General Conference could
adjust the recommendation when it next meets April 24-May 4 in Tampa, Fla.
In a separate action, General Conference will take up two
constitutional amendments that would allow the body to empower a unit
of the denomination to make budget adjustments between conference
sessions. At present, after General Conference adjourns, no entity can
make changes to the allocated budgets.
To be ratified, constitutional amendments must win a two-thirds
majority at General Conference and next must be approved by at least
two-thirds of the members voting during annual conferences. By
contrast, the budget requires a majority vote by General Conference.
Impact of budget reductions
The 40-member board of the General Council on Finance and Administration and the 60-member Connectional Table in May gave provisional approval for the budget for all seven general apportionments, including the World Service Fund that supports most general agencies.
After a review during their July 27-29 meeting, the two groups agreed to send the proposed budget to General Conference.
As it stands, the recommended budget will mean “reductions in
programming or staff depending on how the individual agencies react to
reductions in funding,” said John Goolsbey, an executive of the General
Council on Finance and Administration.
Reductions in the number of members in U.S. congregations and
declining revenue already have forced general agencies to eliminate
some staff positions and programs. The number of staff positions in 13
general agencies has decreased every year, from 3,139 in 1971 to 1,384
in 2010.
The Rev. Andy Langford, pastor of Central United Methodist Church
in Concord, N.C., and a member of the Connectional Table, said most of
the denomination’s money is spent at the annual conference and local
church level.
Rev. Andy Langford
“I personally think that the majority of the work in our
denomination in dollars and everything else is done not in the seven
funds but in the rest of (the denomination),” he said. “That $603
million is only 3 percent of the total expenditures of the
denomination.”
The reduced budget should provide some relief to congregations and annual (regional) conferences, Langford said.
“What the annual conferences are going to say is, ‘My goodness,
we’re going to have more flexibility with what we do,’” he said. “And
the local churches are going to say, ‘We will have more flexibility in
what we do.’ I think this could actually help the church.”
Factors that go into budget projections include: church
membership, inflation, per-capita disposable income, “giving
elasticity” (the percent of giving from increased revenue), net
spending and the U.S. gross domestic product. What church leaders
ultimately are trying to predict is what church members will be able
and willing to give in the coming four years.
The recent volatility in the U.S. stock market illustrates why the
long-term prospect for giving is often difficult to anticipate.
Impact of constitutional amendments
The proposed constitutional amendments are trying to address some of
that unpredictability, Langford said. He is the secretary of the
Apportionment Structure Study Group, which first suggested the
amendments that the council endorsed.
“We need a body that can say if we need to spend more money on
advocacy than a program, we can shift stuff around. Right now, that
cannot happen,” he said. “What we have is an organization that we set
it on a course and they have to follow this same track for the next four
years and you can’t lay any new track.”
The General Council on Finance and Administration did not support two
study group proposals: One to combine the seven general apportioned
funds into one fund and one to restructure the apportionment formula to
move from an expenditure-based model to an income-based model.
The council did support the study group’s recommendation to emphasize stewardship as a spiritual discipline.
“I feel that there is a need to refocus on the practice of giving as
a spiritual discipline in the church,” Goolsbey said. “We’re focusing
so much on cutting expenditures, and we’re not really addressing the
fact that United Methodists and religious people in general have not
been as generous as they have been in the past. Perhaps we need to focus
on that as well.”
*Hahn is a multimedia news reporter for United Methodist News Service.
News media contact: Heather Hahn, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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