Home : The Voice : August 2002 

Assembly Gives Wholehearted
Support To Mission Initiative

by Jerry Van Marter

$40 million campaign gets 97 percent approval

By a vote of 426-8, the 214th General Assembly gave its approval on June 22 to the Mission Initiative, a five-year, $40 million campaign to raise money from major donors for international mission personnel and new church developments — particularly racial ethnic and new immigrant congregations.

Elder William Pohlmann of Pittsburgh Presbytery, moderator of the Assembly Committee on Mission Coordination and Budgets, which brought the recommendation, called the Mission Initiative “well thought-out, visionary and exciting.” Plans for the campaign call for $21.5 million to go for 115 new full-time missionaries and mission volunteers, to be deployed over the next 10 years. Four hundred mission personnel currently serve the PC(USA) overseas.

The other $18.5 million will fund the start up of 50 new churches each year over the five years of the campaign, a 40 percent increase in new church developments over current levels. Support for the campaign was enthusiastic.

Following its action on the Mission Initiative — with budgeted administrative expenses of $1 million — the Assembly approved a 2003 General Assembly mission budget totaling $130,123,844. This year’s Assembly added $26,000 of expenses to the budget through the actions it took.