GAC outlines budget cuts. 44 staff positions eliminated.

Excerpted from article by Leslie Scanlon, Outlook national reporter. Cmplete link is below.
Friday, 27 March 2009 20:08

LOUISVILLE – The latest round of budget cuts for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) means that 14 more employees from the denomination’s national staff have lost their jobs. The National Health Ministries Office has been closed down, and ministries for college students and youth have been consolidated. Other changes connected to this $4 million cutback and reorganization are taking place as well.

The Multicultural Ministry Office has been renamed Multicultural Congregational Support and moved into the Racial Ethnic and Women’s Ministries division. A new environmental ministries office is being created, following a directive of the 2008 General Assembly. The PC(USA) likely will not reach a previously-stated goal of having 215 international mission co-workers in the field by the end of 2009.
After all the shifting around is done, the General Assembly Council – the mission staff of the denomination – will end up with just over 400 employees, not counting international mission co-workers or those working at Presbyterian conference centers and some other entities related to the council. Here’s how the math works out. Starting in the spring of last year, 56 positions (some of them vacant) have been eliminated and 12 new ones added back in – for a net decline of 44 positions.

The changes are partly the result of poor economic conditions – basic mission support from congregations and presbyteries is down $1.7 million from what had been expected for 2009; designated giving from congregations and presbyteries dropped by $700,000 from projections and churchwide special offerings by $1.41 million.

But strategic decisions are mixed in there too.

“The church, like corporations, not-for-profits, government agencies, are all affected by this economic crisis which is causing us to have to make cost reductions,” Linda Valentine, executive director of the General Assembly Council, said in an interview March 27, after details of the cost-cutting plan were announced.

“At the same time, we’ve been engaged in a lot of strategic work. And many of the changes that we’re making now are one that are strategic reshapings of ministries that we might have done whether or not there’s an economic downturn . . . We didn’t do just an across-the-board, take out of everything (cutback) but really did implement some of the strategic reshapings that we’ve been about for some time now.”

Click here for the entire Outlook Magazine article: http://www.adjix.com/hp86
Click here for GAC staff reductions lists: http://www.adjix.com/x6tu