3 Province IV Dioceses Give Big Push to Venture
Episcopal News Service. June 1, 1978 [78166]
NEW YORK, N. Y. -- Three southern dioceses have given a big boost to the Episcopal Church's Venture in Mission this Spring when two reported oversubscribing their pilot campaigns and the third threw its priorities to the national goals.
In Mississippi, a Special Council of the Diocese voted overwhelmingly to participate in the Venture effort and also agreed that the first $400,000 raised beyond expenses be sent to the national program. The total goal set in Mississippi was $850,000 and the Council further agreed that if the goal was not met, that priority would still be to the national projects.
The gift to the national Venture in Mission will be undesignated although, in presenting the report of the diocesan Venture in Mission committee, the Rev. D. S. Luckett, Jr., of Meridian pointed to sample projects in areas of parish growth, aging, family life, lay ministry and criminal rehabilitation.
The Council voted to engage the fund raising consultant firm of Ward, Dreshman and Reinhardt -- the firm employed in the national drive -- to provide professional services for the effort which will be centered around a campaign in 1979 to produce three-year pledges from participants.
At the end of May, both the Diocese of Atlanta and the Diocese of South Carolina -- which had started from very different places -- were able to report that their Venture pilot programs had been oversubscribed and that every parish and mission in both dioceses had participated in producing nearly $4,367,000 with $750,000 designated for the national effort.
Atlanta -- which expects to exceed its $2.5 million goal by $500,000 before the year is out -- had planned a capital drive even before the 1976 General Convention authorized Venture in Mission. The Diocese was quick to retool and with the campaign theme of "Toward Tomorrow: Diocesan Development Fund" joined in and agreed to increase what had originally been intended as a tithe for the national Church.
$450,000 will be sent to the national effort with most of the local projects centered around development and urban ministry with the disadvantaged.
By contrast, South Carolina's Bishop Gray Temple had been reluctant to commit the Church to the Venture without strong proof of local support. Once that was obtained, South Carolina turned around and became the first diocese to plan a Venture campaign.
In his jubilant telegram to the Episcopal Church Center in late May, Bishop Temple wrote: "It took 300 years, but we made it!" The $300,000 national portion was designated to a project in evangelism and specified work in Latin America.
In his pastoral letter announcing the results to the diocese, Atlanta's Bishop Bennett J. Sims wrote: "Rejoice with me. A once-distant dream has been realized. We have mustered the love and the money to do in our time and place what generations before us have done in theirs to upbuild the Church and extend the Christian mission."
Both Dioceses used Ward, Dreshman and Reinhardt as their financial consultants. The volunteer co-chairmen in South Carolina's "Mission and Renewal" drive were John C. Wilson of Charleston and W. W. Dukes, Jr. of Orangeburg. The Atlanta drive was chaired by Dr. James E. Boyd, a retired university administrator.