Trimmer's Thoughts

Trimmer's Thoughts

Apportionments, Appointment, and the Local Church

Did you notice in the Feb. 17 edition of The Connector the 376 churches (of approx. 600 churches in the Conference) that paid their full apportionments were listed?  Yhea!  What about the approx. 225 churches that did not pay their full apportionments, should we list them, like newspapers do with those who don’t pay their property taxes?  Or call out the pastors or lay delegates on the floor of annual conference to explain to the body why the churches they were appointed to have not paid their apportionments?

Did you realize that 10 churches make up approx. 1/3 of the apportionment dollar amount NOT PAID and another 25 Churches make up another 1/3 of apportionments not paid?  That’s right 35 churches make up about 2/3 of the approx 2.6 million apportionment dollars not paid.  So slightly less than 200 churches did not pay the remaining 1/3 of apportionments.

While each church context is different and each annual conference context is different, it is clear (at least to me) that the Bishops, esp. the Bishops of the Southeastern Jurisdiction, are going to do a lot more than has been done previously to address the apportionment issue and hold pastors and local churches accountable. 

How does one hold pastors and churches accountable for apportionments besides trying to shame them into paying?  Some Bishops are saying to large churches, if you cannot pay your apportionments we will NOT appointment other pastors to your church.  Take the salary you are paying the deacons or elders and pay your apportionments!  Another way being discussed is not allowing a church that owes apportionments to give their pastor any kind of raise until apportionments are fully paid.  Also being mentioned is right sizing appointments where a church must be able to show it can really afford a full-time pastor.  I know several conferences that are now tracking whether apportionments were paid during the pastor’s leadership in that congregation, suggesting payment of apportionments will be taken into account during the appointment process.  It will be interesting to see if Bishop’s (and Cabinets) will really do what many of them are saying, that we will hold pastoral leadership and local churches accountable (with consequences) for the payment of apportionments. 

None the less a change in the apportionment structure is really needed.  As some of you know the TN Conference has been having listening sessions to get ideas about the apportionment issues.  Simply put you cannot expect, as we have for many years, for a stable or shrinking number of people to give more and more money to growing budgets.  We need to dramatically increase our giving base or dramatically shrink our expenditures.  This could be a major issue at our annual conference this year. 

The Bishops (and others) have ideas in place about growing our revenue base through the Call to Action Plan but it may be years before the fruits of this new emphasis are seen.

So how should we “shrink” our expenditures?  The North Carolina Conference has gotten rid of District Offices with District Superintendents now working from home and all calls that would have gone to a district building, secretary etc.  being handled at the Conference Office.  The Western North Carolina Conference with over 1,000 churches has decided to cut its districts in half from 15 to 8 greatly reducing expenditures but adding significant work load to the DS that remain.  Perhaps we take Wesley Foundations, Martin Methodist, Lake Junaluska, Black College, Africa University, Miriam’s Promise, and Camps all of which are apportioned funds and make them all non-apportioned funds as a few annual conferences have done.   Since we currently have an expenditure based apportionment system (your apportionments tend to go up the more you spend), perhaps we should shift to a revenue based system which may more accurately show the financial situation at a church. 

What ideas do you have?  Whatever we decide it will have consequences for years to come for the Mission and Ministry of the TN Conference of the United Methodist Church.  But change is need and change is often very hard! 

That’s what I think, how about you?  Rev. Dr. Ed Trimmer likes to play with numbers can be reached at etrimmer@martinmethodist.edu and is available on Facebook at the Center for Church Leadership.

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