Bishop Seeks Clarification
Episcopal News Service. December 8, 1993 [93125C_Z]
Responding to what he contends is a false impression of the Diocese of California in "deep financial trouble," Bishop William Swing insists that "the people of the Diocese of California are extraordinarily generous and the clergy situation is not dispirited with dire prospects. It is a vital and healthy place," Swing wrote in response to comments by the Rev. Canon William Geisler, controller of the Diocese of California, in an October 22 ENS story ("Diocesan administrators call for reform of national apportionment"). In his rebuttal of Geisler, Swing noted that the diocese had paid its national assessment in full for the past 14 years; that it has succeeded in developing a $400,000 surplus in its regular budget to avoid paying interest payments on cash flow; that in four years its planned giving department wrote $23 million in gifts; that the rate of assessment payments from missions and parishes to the diocese in the past 14 years has averaged more than 97 percent paid in full; and that the diocese is presently embarked on various construction and startup projects that come to a total of $156 million of which $139 million has already been given or pledged.