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Conference churches rise to 2002 Dues challenge
March, 2003
Local churches increased their Fellowship Dues payments – which support the work of the Massachusetts Conference – by an unprecedented 28.5 percent in 2002.
The increase was the result of a 2001 Annual Meeting vote to increase Dues by an extra $3 per member in order to fund substantial 2002 pay increases for Conference staff, whose salaries had lagged behind the market and inflation in recent years.
“It was a remarkable success. We need to thank our churches for coming through,” said Dawn Hammond, Associate Conference Minister for Policy and Finance. “It was a real vote of confidence in our staff and in the Conference.”
The Board of Directors, which had originally proposed phasing the $3 increase in over three years, considered it a leap of faith when they went ahead with the salary increases – which ranged from 12 to 23½ percent – at the start of 2002.
“Board members concluded that the justice and competitiveness issues
were compelling enough to warrant some risk,” Hammond said at the
time.
As large as the increase in Dues payments was, however, it was not as large
as was needed to fully fund the budget approved by Annual Meeting; which called
for a 36 percent Dues increase.
In addition, giving to Our Church’s Wider Mission Basic Support dropped by 1.2 percent in 2002.
Those two factors combined resulted in a $70,000 shortfall in the 2002
budget and a decrease in the amount of funds passed on to the national
setting of
the United Church of Christ, which receives 60 percent of Basic Support
contributions.
Hammond said the decrease in Basic Support is likely due to a number of
factors, including the Dues increase and the decline in most church endowments.
“A decrease like this is typical when the economy is down,” she said. “And when you consider that giving to Fellowship Dues and Basic Support combined was up by six percent, that really is impressive.”
The $70,000 shortfall in 2002 prompted the Board of Directors to cut
the 2003 budget by level-funding salaries and reducing program spending
by
$60,000.
The most substantial program cuts are the scaling back of plans for
new part-time staff positions: a new Associate for Young Adult Ministry
position
that was
planned for half-time has now been reduced to fewer hours; and a plan
to hire a part-time
Mission and Justice coordinator, to work with mission and justice coaches,
has been postponed.
“These were part-time positions which had not been filled. The Board
also trimmed the budget in other areas. The program staff worked together
to
recommend ways
of making the cuts with the least impact on the churches,” Hammond
said.
