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Lynette Wilson
November 21, 2009
The one-day 233rd Diocesan Convention at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine – at which two hundred clergy and 206 lay delegates were seated -- voted overwhelmingly on Saturday, Nov. 21 to permanently reduce the amount of money each parish pays to the Diocese annually and to adopt new “consequences” for parishes in default of those payments.
The Convention also passed a $10 million budget for 2010, reflecting tough economic times.
In his convention address , Bishop Mark Sisk expressed his gratitude for the 232nd convention’s “confidence and trust” for passing a budget “that we all knew could not be met.” That 2009, $12.8 million dollar, budget was later reduced by about $2 million, or 15 percent, and the Diocese’s Board of Trustees, in response to economic crisis, also approved an across the board 20 percent reduction in the 2009 parish assessment.
Change in Funding Program of the Diocese
In a vote by “orders” -- meaning clergy and lay deputies voted separately with a two-thirds vote in favor required for the resolution to pass -- both bodies voted
to amend Canon 18, or the Funding Program of the Diocese, to reduce the assessment formula percentages and change the brackets, and to permit a multi-step process that could end in the conversion of a parish to a mission congregation if a congregation is in default of its assessment and unwilling to work with the Adjustment Board over three consecutive conventions.
(Mission status takes all independence from the parish (dissolving the vestry) and places it under the control of the diocese, and the diocesan bishop appoints a priest.)
The resolution, proposed by the Rev. Canon Susan Harriss and Walcott “Dick” Dunham, Jr., co-chairs of the Special Committee on the Diocesan Budget Process and Assessment that was formed after the 232nd convention to examine the entire diocesan budget and assessment process (and more recently appointed by Bishop Sisk to be co-chairs of the newly reformed Adjustment Board), was the only convention resolution discussed on the floor.
According to the Special Committee's report, of the Diocese’s 148 parishes with assessments, 71 parishes (48 percent) paid in full through June 30, while another 34 paid reduced amounts. 43 parishes haven’t made any contributions at all to the diocesan budget (two parishes refuse to contribute to the diocese in protest of certain actions of the Episcopal Church). The current economic recession, which economists agree began in 2007, has parishes large and small struggling to make ends meet.
Before Harriss offered the resolution to convention, she pointed out that the report found that many people in the diocese do not know what the diocesan budget is for, or how the diocese itself operates, she said, a subject Bishop Sick talked about in his address.
The Rev. Stephen Holton, rector of St. Paul’s on-the-Hill in Ossining, rose “to support the extraordinarily pastoral nature of this resolution,” he said.
The Rev. Canon George W. Brandt, Jr., rector of St. Michael’s Church in Manhattan, spoke against the resolution, saying that the assessment formula (even as reduced) inhibits growth in large parishes. “Twenty percent of $500,000 in a large parish is staff,” he said, adding that large parishes need staff to support and nurture growth, and that churches cannot depend on volunteers as they did in the past. (According to the diocesan assessment formula, parishes reporting an average operating income greater than $500,000 over the two years measured pay a 20 percent assessment on the margin above that figure. Prior to the passage of this resolution, parishes paid a 25 percent assessment in this bracket.). In regard to consequences for parishes in default of assessment, Brandt said: “penalties dragged out over three years are an invitation to bureaucracy.”
The Rev. Rhonda Rubinson, interim priest at St. Philip’s Church in Harlem, spoke about her church’s struggle to pay its assessment. St. Philip’s didn’t pay for
two years, she said; finally, after working with the Adjustment Board, it began making monthly payments, which had allowed St. Philip’s to “fold its assessment into its bills.”
The budget
The $10 million assessment budget was presented by the Rev. Michael Phillips, chairman of the Budget and Finance Committee, and was approved overwhelmingly and without discussion.
Phillips explained that revenue is down in all four income categories – assessments from congregations, CSP income, investment funds and rental income and increase in reserve for doubtful receivables.
Some CSP parishes will not receive funding in 2010, he said.(The CSP was cut by $873,268 from 2009 to 2010 (budget line 44)), and only four diocesan-supported programs would be funded at 2009 levels: Social Concerns, Congregational Life and Mission, Christian Formation and Rural and Migrant Ministry.
Phillips also explained that the budget and finance committee did not consider requests for funds from program directors as has been customary. “We were not sure there would be funding aside from the bare bones,” he said, adding that the 2010 budget is a “best guess” estimate at this time, which will require new ways of working, creativity, renewed vision and new energy. “We do what we’ve always done so long as we can afford it.”
