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A UMNS Report
By Linda Bloom*
3:00 P.M. ET Aug. 9, 2012
Jim Winkler, top executive of the United Methodist Board of Church and
Society, stands outside the agency’s headquarters at the historic United
Methodist Building on Capitol Hill in Washington. A UMNS Photo by Jay
Mallin.
View in Photo Gallery
Cut back, hang tough, shift priorities.
The United Methodist Church’s general agencies will employ those
strategies over the next four years to deal with reduced budgets,
smaller boards and new directions in mission.
As the largest program agency, the Board of Global Ministries cut
back by reducing its board of directors by nearly two-thirds, from 92
to 32, with an additional five at-large members. The number of bishops
on the board has dropped from 10 to three.
In May, the mission agency also cut back by offering many of its 201
full-time staff the option of participating in a “voluntary separation
program.” The deadline for a final decision over the buyout was Aug. 6;
38 employees have chosen to leave by December or earlier.
The Board of Church and Society decided to hang tough with a
62-member board of directors after concluding that reducing size does
not necessarily improve governance or competency. But, the social
justice agency already had cut back meeting costs by an estimated 40
percent and pared its staff over the past decade to 22 full-time
employees.
Two smaller commissions that would have merged into a “committee on inclusiveness” under Plan UMC
— the Status and Role of Women and Religion and Race — remain intact
but are taking a new look at priorities for their advocacy roles.
Also retaining its status is the Commission on Archives and History,
which Plan UMC had relegated to a committee within the General Council
on Finance and Administration. The Commission on Christian Unity and
Interreligious Concerns, by its own design, has lost its independence
and is re-forming as an office of the denomination’s Council of
Bishops.
Most agencies will face a 10 percent cut in funding. The
recently-concluded General Conference, the denomination’s top lawmaking
body, approved a budget of $603.1 million for the denomination’s seven general church funds during the 2013-16 period. That total is 6.03 percent less than the amount apportioned for the previous four-year period.
In addition, delegates redirected $12 million in the World Service
Fund toward theological education in central conferences and the
recruitment and training of young clergy in the United States. The
World Service Fund, one of the seven apportioned funds, supports much of
the general agency operations.
Thomas Kemper, top executive for Global Ministries,
expects his smaller board to take on more responsibility,
concentrating on oversight and goal setting. “We are very conscious of
where we want to go with a smaller structure,” he said. “One of the
results will be that the voices of the central conferences will be
stronger.”
A third of the directors on the downsized board represent the church
in Africa, Asia and Europe. “Some of our (U.S.) jurisdictional
directors were struggling with this,” Kemper admitted, “but, in the end,
everybody agreed that we have to reduce some representation from the
U.S. if Global Ministries wants to be the global agency for the global
church.”
International mission work and multicultural, racial-ethnic programs
in the United States will take priority. Other U.S. work will be
downscaled and some tasks eliminated, such as the board’s research
office. “It is valuable, but it’s purely U.S.,” he explained. “It’s
something we just can’t afford anymore.”
The mission agency is planning four or five pilot projects in
different contexts under the working title, “mission celebrations,”
Kemper said, “where we try to revive mission spirits,” specifically in
the United States. The pilot projects offer opportunities to engage in
mission through the United Methodist Committee on Relief, Mission
Volunteers, New Church Starts and Mission Initiatives.
‘Our program is really our staff’
At the Board of Church and Society,
adjusting to the 10 percent reduction in funding will mean finding
“additional savings” over the next four years, said Jim Winkler, top
executive. That probably translates into fewer training events and
seminars and holding the line on travel, postage and grants to local
church ministries.
What he does not want to do is cut the agency’s 22 full-time staff
members — down from 40 just 12 years ago. “I’ve learned from experience,
our program is really our staff,” he explained. “I believe we have to
do everything possible to maintain the staff size that we have now.”
Winkler said he has spent his 12 years as agency head keeping annual
expenditures under budget, trimming publication costs by shifting
communications online, raising some $300,000 for a new endowment fund
and obtaining more than $500,000 in outside grants over the past four
years.
For the last 15 years, the agency has spent millions in needed
improvements to its headquarters, the historic United Methodist Building
on Capitol Hill and, “consequently, it produces more income for the
board than it used to,” he noted.
In total, according to Church and Society’s report to the 2012
General Conference, “the agency has increased its operating income
separately from the World Service receipts by more than $3 million
during this (2009-12) quadrennium.”
For 2012, Winkler stretched his staff capacity by hiring six
organizers, on a yearlong contract, to strengthen networks among local
churches on specific issues.
While local churches excel at “feeding the hungry, clothing the
naked and sheltering the homeless,” as prescribed in Luke, Winkler noted
that “freeing the oppressed, which is the other part of that passage
in Luke, that’s the hard part.”
It is easier, for example, to run homeless shelters than advocate
for affordable housing at city hall. “A lot of our organizing and
training is developing that kind of skills and, frankly, that kind of
courage, in our folks,” he explained.
Reconfiguring and holding the line
The Board of Higher Education and Ministry
expects to reduce its meeting costs by $115,000 each year through
downsizing from 64 to 22 board members and limited full meetings to an
annual on-site fall meeting and spring teleconference, said the Rev. Kim
Cape, top executive.
The agency, which conducted an efficiency study last year to
reconfigure its full-time staff of 56, expects the 2013 budget — to be
presented to the new board in October — will reflect priorities and
goals for the next four years.
The Rev. Kim Cape, top executive of the United Methodist Board of Higher
Education and Ministry, speaks during the church’s 2012 General
Conference in Tampa, Fla. A UMNS file photo by Mike DuBose.
View in Photo Gallery
“We do not expect an immediate reduction in staff but will look to reduce staff over time through attrition,” Cape said.
Higher Education and Ministry will work with other agencies,
seminaries and church leaders as the lead agency for two initiatives
recently approved by General Conference on young clergy and central
conference theological education.
For the Board of Discipleship, a reduction from 58 to 22 board members reflects solidarity “with the goals of the Call to Action,” explained the Rev. Karen Greenwaldt, top executive.
“We believe that a smaller board with specialized skills in
governance (fiduciary and strategic), along with a deep commitment to
GBOD’s role to support vital congregations, will allow the
agency to more quickly adapt to changes in the church and proactively
put in place strategic directions that reflect those changes,” she
said.
The Board of Discipleship anticipated budget reductions and
currently plans no reductions of its staff of about 160, Greenwaldt
said.
Still needed
Even as the Commissions on Religion and Race and the Status and Role of Women
cut the size of their boards in half, their top executives remain
convinced that institutional racism and sexism still pervade the
denomination.
At Religion and Race, Erin Hawkins expects her 21-member board to
determine priorities and their impact on budget allocations. Despite
the funding cut, she hopes to add to the commission’s nine-member
full-time staff. “We’re not at full staff capacity right now,” she
explained.
The commission originally was established as a regulatory body at
the denominational level, she noted, monitoring employment, due process
and pay equity issues at the agency and annual (regional) conference
level. “While that work is still important and necessary, what we will
be doing is figuring out how to shape our work in such a way that those
conversations are connected and relevant to people in the pews,” she
said.
This expanded focus means resourcing churches where communities are
changing across racial and ethnic lines or the increasing number of
racial-ethnic clergy may be serving mostly white congregations. “That
has raised a lot of stories of transformation, but there (are) also a
lot of stories of pain as folks from different cultures try to come
together,” Hawkins said. “All of our churches, no matter what their
makeup, should be able to engage in ministry across cultures.”
With a June retirement, the Commission on the Status and Role of
Women has only four full-time staff at present. M. Garlinda Burton, the
top executive, plans to make a new hire, but will be reconfiguring
duties and “shifting the way we’re spending our money.” Burton will leave the commission at the end of the year.
During the September organizing meeting, Burton expects her new
19-member board to consider “four top priorities” that can really have
an impact. “We’re really clear that the work confronting sexism in the
church is not done,” she said.
If The United Methodist Church wants to transform the whole world,
it must recognize that goal as a systemic mandate, not an individual
option. “We talk about being a global church but we need to have global
accountability,” she explained. “We’re not a regional club; we’re a
body of Christ and our witness has to be consistent with regard to
justice.”
Partnerships for training
At United Methodist Communications,
the 27-member board, reduced in size about eight years ago, already
had implemented a strategy to concentrate on the denomination’s “four areas of focus.”
The Rev. Larry Hollon, top executive, said the budget for
non-related work will be reduced and practical cost savings —
distributing more materials electronically rather than in print,
reducing travel and using more online training and webinars —
implemented.
Training has become a key component of the agency’s work. Currently,
training events are scheduled in Africa, Europe and the Philippines
through the beginning of next year, using local resources as well as
staff and materials from the church’s other agencies.
Other new projects include building an online network to provide
training for a volunteer-in-mission group planning to establish
internet cafes in Haiti and investigating the most cost-effective way to
connect church members in Europe and the United States through online
webinars.
Partnerships with the church’s central conferences are crucial. “We
don’t have to do all of that work, but we can bring the people together
and be part of the combined sharing of money or staff or skills,”
Hollon said.
The Commission on Archives and History also provides some materials and training to the central conferences, said the Rev. Robert Williams, top executive.
Charged with collecting, preserving and making available key
historic documents, the commission, which does not receive World Service
dollars, ended up with about a 3.8 percent budget reduction after
$25,000 was restored to support the African-American Heritage Center.
The 24-member board of directors, which was already downsized, meets once a year.
“We won’t experience significant operational decline in this
quadrennium because we had built up good reserves over many, many
years,” Williams said, but he added that any future reductions would
cause concern. “We have almost no wiggle room to cut a program.
Somehow, hopefully, the denomination will stay committed to having a
professionally run archives.”
The task for the Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns
is to find new life within the Council of Bishops as its Office of
Christian Unity and Interreligious Relationships. A transition team
will meet again Aug. 13-15 in Pasadena, Calif., to help facilitate the
transfer.
The Rev. Stephen J. Sidorak Jr., the commission’s top executive, is
hopeful the office’s new 11-member steering committee will have its
first meeting in January, perhaps during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.
He also expects some supporting ad-hoc work groups to be formed.
“We’re going to try to identify the leadership we need,” he said.
*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service multimedia reporter based in New York. Follow her at http://twitter.com/umcscribe.
News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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