Mennonite Church USA

Executive Board reviews Mennonite Church USA’s priorities and budget

by Marathana Prothro

LOS ANGELES – The Mennonite Church USA Executive Board met and examined the denomination’s priorities and progress toward them at its meeting Feb. 2 through 5 in Los Angeles.

In addition to its regular agenda, the Executive Board met with boards from Mennonite Mission Network and Pacific Southwest Mennonite Conference. The board also reviewed the denomination’s current financial situation, and as a result, it restated Mennonite Church USA’s priorities and called Executive Leadership staff to explore how its finances could be organized to better reflect those goals.

In response to a plea from Pacific Southwest Mennonite Conference, Executive Leadership also will take a closer look at the Mennonite Church USA Delegate Assembly Churchwide statement on immigration and how the denomination should respond in light of pending legislation that will affect undocumented pastors and members in Pacific Southwest Mennonite Conference as well as other Mennonite Church USA constituents. Executive Leadership staff expect to have a suggested plan of action ready in the next month.

The Executive Board also passed a financial resolution calling on staff to lead a systems-wide collaborative process to identify and propose changes in the churchwide financial and resource generations system. Progress on this process will be presented at each of the board’s meetings through July 2007.

The assessment will take the churchwide priorities into account, as well as the denomination’s missional purpose. Mennonite Church USA’s churchwide missional purpose – to join God’s activity in the world by developing and nurturing missional Mennonite congregations of many cultures – includes the following priorities: witness, anti-racism, leadership development and global connections.

“We have just completed our fourth budget year of the new Mennonite Church USA and are beginning to get a feeling of what ‘normal’ is and what trends happen,” said Executive Board member Jim Harder. “Now we’re just beginning to see that emerging.”

Board members took action in light of a continuing decline in giving to the denomination during the last four years, which were also its first four years in existence. The approved bottom line budget for Executive Leadership, one of five churchwide ministries, for the 2006 fiscal year of about $2 million, is 6.1 percent less than in 2005.

In December, Executive Leadership sent a financial request to congregations via area conferences on behalf of all of Mennonite Church USA. At that time, many parts of the denomination, including churchwide agencies and area conferences, were not on track to meet budget goals for 2005.

While some churchwide agencies have reported better than average end-of-year giving for 2005, the general long-term downward trend in churchwide and conference giving has continued since the transformation of the General Conference Mennonite Church and the Mennonite Church. During the last four years, Executive Leadership, Mennonite Education Agency, Mennonite Publishing Network, Mennonite Mission Network and The Mennonite have seen a combined reduction in giving “through the offering plate” of about $250,000 per year.

Board members weighed how the trend would particularly affect its churchwide role to provide Executive Leadership ministries – which include Congregational and Ministerial Leadership and Intercultural Relations among others – to the denomination. As part of the 6.1 percent reduction in its overall budget for 2006, Executive Leadership was forced to reduce staff time by about two full-time employees as well as trim current programs in each of its ministry areas.

“One of the things we don’t want to conclude is that (reduced giving) is a referendum against Mennonite Church USA,” said Harder, a member of the board’s Church Resources Committee. “We know that part of what is happening is a shift of resources toward more local ministry, not necessarily a reduction in overall giving in our congregations.”

The Executive Board’s next meeting will be in late June in Denver, Colo. Part of that meeting will be held concurrently with the Mennonite Education Agency Board of Directors.