Amid Uncertainty, Finance Board Plans for New Day

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Aug. 13, 2024 | FRANKLIN, Tenn. (UM News)

Key Points:

  • The board of the United Methodist finance agency held its organizing meeting for its work over the next four years.
  • During its inaugural meeting, the new board elected officers and granted funding to help with a tough situation in Nigeria.
  • The board also received an update on giving, which has seen a worrying drop over the past two months compared to the same period last year.

The new board of The United Methodist Church’s finance agency began its work of shepherding denominational funds over the next four years while still facing concerns about what that funding will look like.

The General Council on Finance and Administration board held its organizing meeting Aug. 6-9 in the Nashville suburb of Franklin, Tennessee. The gathering was the board’s first since most of its members were elected at the historic General Conference that also ended longtime denomination-wide bans on gay clergy and same-sex marriage.

The same General Conference also approved a historically low denomination-wide budget and reduced the number of U.S. bishops after the departure of about a quarter of U.S. churches between 2019 and 2023.

The new denominational budget, which starts on Jan. 1, has a bottom line of between $353 and $373 million for ministry funding over the next four years. That’s about 40% less than the previous General Conference approved when it met in 2016.

The GCFA board has the responsibility of ensuring that the budgeted funds are used as General Conference approved. The board also must deal with the financial fallout of General Conference decisions as well as church disaffiliations. United Methodist congregations in the U.S. support the bulk of denominational funding, and much remains unknown about what their giving capacity will be in the coming years.

United Methodists are living through a period of change, the Rev. Stephen Handy said during the board meeting’s opening worship.

“In this season, we are part of ‘Generation T’ — the generation of transition,” preached Handy, lead pastor of McKendree United Methodist Church in downtown Nashville. Still, he added that for Christians, this is nothing new.

“Let’s be real. We follow this Palestinian Jewish rabbi. If you follow him, you’re always in transition. Transition is a way of life that doesn’t discriminate or define us, but it makes us stronger, more resilient.”

To lead during this time of flux, the board elected its new officers:

  • Bishop David Graves as president.
  • The Rev. Reggie Clemons, senior pastor at First United Methodist Church in Pearland, Texas, as vice president.
  • LaToya Redd Thompson of the Mississippi Conference as secretary.

Graves is going through a transition himself. He currently leads the Alabama-West Florida and South Georgia conferences. Starting Sept. 1, he will lead the Kentucky, Tennessee-Western Kentucky and Central Appalachian Missionary conferences.

The board also re-elected the Rev. Moses Kumar as the top executive of the General Council on Finance and Administration.

After the recent General Conference, Kumar told the board that he feels “a momentum of hope.”

“Going into this quadrennium, we hope that the work we do collectively will generate more hope,” he said. “We are united in ministry, mission and impact.”

Update on giving

Kumar also sounded a note of caution. Apportionment collections were down as of the end of July compared to the same time last year.

To fund denominational ministries, the finance agency collects apportionments — shares of giving — from annual conferences. These regional bodies in turn ask for apportionments from the local churches within their borders.

As of the end of July, the apportionment collection rate from U.S. conferences was 31.4% compared to 32.7% in 2023. The collection rate from church regions in Africa, the Philippines and Europe was 20.5% compared to 23.3% last year. Five episcopal areas outside the U.S. have not paid any apportionments.

Those receipts included $3.7 million from five U.S. conferences collected as part of church disaffiliations. Departing churches were required to pay their conferences at least two years of apportionments as part of their exit agreement to leave with property.

More about the board

The General Council on Finance and Administration board has 21 members — 16 nominated by the Council of Bishops and then elected by General Conference, as well as five elected by the board itself.

At its organizing meeting, the board’s first action was to elect these five additional members, who were nominated by agency leaders to bring special knowledge, experience and diversity to the board’s work. The five are the Rev. David Bell, Sharon Dean, Lisa Gafford, Robert Mallett and Angela Thomas.

The other 16 board members are: The Rev. Shelia Ahler, the Rev. Danita Anderson, Bishop Thomas Bickerton, Bill Brownson, the Rev. Reggie Clemons, Kai-Uwe Dannenberg, Regan De Guzman, John Esquivel, Bishop David Graves, the Rev. Samuel Hong, the Rev. Stephen Love, the Rev. Francisco Bernardo Neto, Ken Ow, LaToya Redd Thompson, the Rev. Alex Shanks and the Rev. William Williams.

In addition to the 21 board members, 18 additional United Methodists serve with voice and vote on the board’s six committees — three to each committee. These 18, chosen to bring expertise to the committee’s work, do not have vote during the board plenaries when the board makes final decisions on whatever its committees recommend.

During General Conference, some delegates raised concerns that the initial slate of board members had only four women. The full board now has seven women and 14 men. With the additional committee members, the gender breakdown is 22 women and 17 men.

Christine Dodson, treasurer of the North Carolina Conference and the GCFA board’s previous vice president, served on the nominations committee and presented the names of the additional board and committee members. She told the new GCFA board that the nominations committee sought to bring expertise, diversity and inclusion to the board’s work.

“The work that was done in the nominations committee to bring committee members on as well as to invite board members onto certain committees was done in prayerful discernment,” said Dodson, who will continue her service as a committee member herself.

“Each of those committees has a very important role,” she added. “None are more important than the other. No members are more important than the others because we’re bringing the gifts that God has given to us to bring in service to The United Methodist Church.”

Read GCFA press release

The finance agency also received apportionments from disaffiliating churches last year, but not every conference informed the agency what part of their giving came from the churches that have now left.

Altogether, collections through July are $6.1 million less than in 2023. More than $5 million of that shortfall has occurred in the previous two months.

The denomination is still operating under the higher apportionment requests that General Conference passed in 2016 as part of the denominational budget. Since 2020, a number of conferences have been paying lower apportionments based on the lower budget initially proposed to General Conference, which the COVID pandemic delayed to 2024.

However, the trend in collections, especially in June and July, is worse than during the previous three years, and GCFA staff do not know why.

“August is going to be a pivotal month for us, and we’ll be watching that closely to see where we land,” said the Rev. Sheila Ahler, chair of the board’s General Agency and Episcopal Matters Committee that deals with budgetary matters. Ahler became a licensed local pastor after 40 years working as a certified public accountant.

Of particular concern for the board is what the lower collections mean for the sustainability of the Episcopal Fund, which supports the work of bishops. The General Council on Finance and Administration has budgeted the Episcopal Fund with the assumption of at least an 85% apportionment collection rate. If the current trend continues, that collection rate could be closer to 80%.

Even with the reduction of U.S. active bishops from 46 in 2016 to 32 starting Sept. 1, that big a drop in collections could put the fund at risk.

Because of the uncertainty around revenue, Ahler explained that the General Agency and Episcopal Matters committee delayed making any recommendations about bishops’ salaries for next year until the board’s November meeting. The delay also puts the vote on bishop salaries on the same timeline as when the finance agency board votes on the annual spending plans of the agencies that receive funding through apportionments.

In the meantime, the committee recommended, and the board approved, a 2% increase to the grants that support bishops’ office staff and to keeping housing grants the same for each episcopal area. Conferences request that decisions about office grants and housing allowances happen in August to help with their budgeting.

Each 1% increase in office grants affects the Episcopal Fund by $45,000 annually. The housing grants are $10,000 for each episcopal area in the U.S. and vary by episcopal area outside the U.S.

Support for Nigerians

The finance agency board also took steps to support Nigerians who are remaining part of The United Methodist Church.

Recently, after years of conflict, Bishop John Wesley Yohanna announced that he was leaving The United Methodist Church for the Global Methodist Church, a breakaway denomination launched in 2022 by former United Methodists wanting a more conservative church. While most of Yohanna’s cabinet and other members left with him, a sizable number of Nigerians are opting to remain United Methodist.

The GCFA board approved a grant from the denomination’s General Administrative Contingency Fund to support bishops providing interim leadership in the West African country. The Council of Bishops has named Bishops John Schol, Eben Nhiwatiwa, Patrick Streiff and David Yemba to provide episcopal oversight until elections for a new bishop are held in December.

The board’s Committee on Legal Responsibilities and Corporate Governance also approved a $22,000 grant request submitted by Schol to help cover legal expenses incurred, and to be incurred, in protecting United Methodist property in the country.

Other actions

During its organizing meeting, the board also:

  • Approved a 12.9% increase in medical benefit premiums for participants in the general agency benefits program. This is the first time in seven years that employee premiums have been raised, during which time domestic medical inflation has risen by more than 25%.
  • Learned that Sharah Dass, currently serving in the agency’s episcopal services department, will be business manager for General Conference starting Sept. 1. The business manager handles many of the logistics of the international legislative assembly.

On its final meeting day, the board also received greetings from Council of Bishops President Tracy S. Malone. She currently leads the East Ohio Conference and will lead the Indiana Conference starting Sept. 1.

She encouraged the new board to move forward in a spirit of collaboration with other United Methodist leaders. Specifically, she mentioned that the board has partners in the Council of Bishops and the Connectional Table, which works with the GCFA board in approving agency spending plans and developing the denominational budget that goes before General Conference delegates.

“We are on the same team, all working toward the same end of fulfilling the mission,” she said. “We are Team UMC. … We all have different roles and responsibilities. But it is so important, especially in this time in the life of the church, that we move together.”

Heather Hahn is assistant news editor for UM News.