Search the Episcopal Press and News

Budget 'Stops Bleeding, Focuses on Mission'

Episcopal News Service. August 6, 1997 [97-1908]

(ENS) The Episcopal Church is on sound financial footing and has a new, unified funding formula offering some relief to smaller dioceses.

The $114 million, three-year budget approved by the 72nd General Convention in Philadelphia focuses on mission and "stops the bleeding," said Episcopal Church treasurer Stephen Duggan.

Rocked by an embezzlement scandal two years ago, the church has struggled to regain financial credibility and overcome an $8 million shortfall in income against budgeted expenditures resulting in budget cuts.

Duggan said the balanced budget was essentially "flat," based on current actual income, with only a very slight increase for inflation.

The budget sets a new assessment rate of 21 percent of diocesan income to support national church ministries and programs. The new unified budget includes operations for the national church program and for General Convention -- in the past assessed at different rates.

The new higher rate is offset by a $100,000 standard deduction called an "episcopal exclusion," initiated because the committee recognized "one thing every diocese needs is a bishop."

During the past three years, support from dioceses has ranged from payments below 16 percent to above 20 percent of diocesan income, Duggan said.

The new formula means 30 dioceses -- generally smaller, rural ones -- will be asked to pay less during the next three years. Forty dioceses will be asked to increase their giving by less than $10,000 per year.

Larger dioceses will be asked for greater support, due to a clarification of rules regarding diocesan endowment income, Duggan said.

Diocesan support for the budget is projected to be $78.7 million, Vincent Currie of the Diocese of Central Gulf Coast said that while there is not much new money in the budget, everything was looked at from the point of view of enabling the mission of the church. Currie serves as chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Program, Budget and Finance (PB&F) which developed the budget.

A time for leadership

Calling for renewed efforts in stewardship, the bishops said this is a time for leadership.

"The budget will not mean a thing unless we are behind it and make the funding happen,"

Bishop Edward Jones of the Diocese of Indianapolis said. "It is up to us. It is time to exercise leadership."

"The world needs the ministry our church can give," Bishop David Joslin of the Diocese of Central New York said.

The Rev. John Hiers of the Diocese of Southwest Florida warned giving that will not increase if the program and ministry of the national church is not known in the parishes. "If my people are going to give, communications have to improve," he said.

The result was a resolution calling for creating in each province a committee for national mission to communicate and promote financial support for the church's mission.

The core of these committees will be the provincial members of the committee on Program, Budget and Finance, and the provincial members of the Executive Council.

Other actions

In addition to numerous line-item appropriations, the convention determined the following policies:

  • requiring resolutions with funding implications to be referred to the Joint Standing Commission on Program, Budget and Finance or to the Executive Council, and electing Duggan as treasurer of General Convention;
  • clarifying that the treasurer elected at every meeting of the General Convention may also be treasurer of the Domestic & Foreign Missionary Society and of the Executive Council;
  • authorizing the church's treasurer to borrow funds to defray the cost of General Convention; and
  • establishing audit and reporting standards for the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society.

Convention also approved stewardship legislation

  • affirming "the tithe as the minimum standard of individual giving for Episcopalians;"
  • calling for an education program on Planned Giving;
  • advocating consistent congregational giving for the care of people in the congregations;
  • integrating Episcopal and Lutheran stewardship education;
  • adopting the theme "Stewardship, Our Covenant with God/Mayordomia, Nuestro Pacto con Dios" as the theme for the Office of Stewardship Resources;
  • supporting stewardship education for Latino members, with a video, training manuals and regional training events.
  • authorizing a study to determine if membership and giving increase when a congregation incorporates ecological concerns into its program; and
  • directing the Planned Giving Ministries of the Episcopal Church and the Episcopal Church Foundation to include The Book of Common Prayer rubric on the importance of wills in their materials.