New NCC dollar woes

Christian Century, Oct 24, 2001 by John Dart

THE FINANCIALLY struggling National Council of Churches, despite painting a recovery picture early this year, finished the fiscal year with a deficit of $1.75 million and will take another hard look in mid-November at its future. NCC officials, in closed sessions October 1-2, created a special task force to recommend actions to the National Council's executive committee and General Assembly when they meet in Oakland, California.

"Like any other organization, if balancing the budget to the revenues can't be done, then the council could fold," said Clare Chapman, one of the six members of the financial task force, according to the United Methodist News Service. News of the council's latest money concerns first arose at the annual meeting of the United Methodist Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns, held in Los Angeles October 11-14. Chapman is a staff executive with the commission.

Commission members also heard budget details from fellow United Methodist Spencer Bates, the NCC's interim executive for administration and finance. Bates reported the NCC's $1.75 million budget deficit was for the fiscal year that ended June 30. But a report that reserve funds were used to cover the deficit was false, NCC General Secretary Bob Edgar told the CENTURY.

"We've not taken any money from the reserves other than 5 percent off long-term investments," Edgar said. "And we've had balanced budgets in July, August and September," he said, adding: "I'm pretty satisfied we are moving in the right direction. And I think the Methodists, Presbyterians and other major funders of the council are doing the right thing by watching as closely as they do."

Indeed, the Methodist commission voted in Los Angeles to delay action on any future allocations to the 50-year-old ecumenical agency until the task force makes recommendations to the November 12-16 meetings of the NCC executive committee and General Assembly. Chapman said that the task force was formed "to adjust the [2001-2002] budget to match income levels and bring the National Council of Churches to financial health."

In a letter from Edgar dated October 3 and requested by the Methodist commission, the NCC chief executive reviewed examples of progress. His points included reducing staff from 102 to just under 50 employees as of October 1; establishing a development office to seek individual donor gifts and foundation grants; streamlining business functions and accounting procedures, and raising the number of member denominations that contribute financially from 22 to 26. The council has a total of 36 member communions.

The United Methodist Church and other mainline denominations completed a $2 million rescue of the NCC late last year. The Methodists had suspended funding temporarily, pending a better picture of financial reform. Eventually the suspension was lifted and the Methodists contributed $700,000, including a large advance, said the United Methodist News Service.

Edgar said that once the bailout seemed assured last November, the New York-based NCC had fashioned a spending plan for 2001 that would permit a budget of about $7 million without dipping into the reserve funds.

Edgar, interviewed October 17, said that the operating deficit of $1.75 million was partly due to technical difficulties, such as $194,000 wrongly listed as a pledged amount and problems associated with the adminstrative separation of Church World Service from the NCC. About $500,000 in expenses were incurred, he said, in unanticipated costs in shutting down a volunteer service program linked to the federal Americorps program. "We would have been in far greater financial trouble if we had continued with it," he said.

The former congressman praised Bates, who was his financial officer at the Claremont School of Theology before Edgar left the presidency of that seminary to take the NCC job one year ago. The seminary greatly improved its financial standing under their management. "Spencer Bates is a conservative Republican and the Methodists appreciate his `tough love' attitude," Edgar said.

Edgar said the National Council is still on track to transform itself beyond its basic Protestant-Orthodox constituency to one with Catholic and evangelical links to cooperate on poverty projects and the like. He conceded, however, that in an economic downturn member communions have their own belt-tightening to do. More staff reduction is likely at the NCC's business office, and reserve funds have been affected by the bear stock market, he said.

Coincidentally, as the NCC executive board met in New York on the first of October, a constant critic of the council--the conservative Institute on Religion and Democracy, based in Washington--was celebrating its 20th anniversary and fired another salvo. IRD chairman and United Methodist Thomas Oden, a theologian at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, declared at the organization's banquet that the mainline churches should withhold donations from "old ecumenism" organizations. "It is time to call the mainline denominations that are subsidizing the prolonged malingering of the National Council of Churches and World Council of Churches to withdraw their financial support altogether, and seek a new ecumenism grounded in classical ecumencial teaching," said Oden.