Reports of the Actions of the 225th General Assembly
Reflections of 225th GA Commissioners from The Highlands Presbytery
General Assembly Commissioners Video Reflections on the 225th General Assembly
General Assembly Reports and Actions
Additional General Assembly Information Coming Soon
Special Committee on Per Capita and Financial Sustainability
As you may have noticed, if you are a General Assembly geek, that the 225th General Assembly met online last week. This Assembly covered a lot of ground. Actually, they cover four years’ worth of documents, minutes,  reports, recommendations, overture and commissioner resolutions.
Over the next few weeks, we will be highlighting what the GA approved.
The overture and subsequent recommendations that I and our presbytery have been involved with for the last five years finally was acted on and approved at this Assembly.
In 2017 the Presbytery of Newton (now part of The Highlands Presbytery) was working on developing a long-range financial sustainability plan for the Presbytery. Part of the sustainability plan included how to project our portion of the Per Capita, the funding system used by the denomination since 1857 and probably even earlier. Per Capita is based membership of the presbytery’s congregations as of December 31 of the previous year. The number we used in 2022 is based on the congregation’s membership at the end of 2020. The issue is the number is not based on real time and it doesn’t consider those who participate but are not members or are part of  faith communities or New Church developments. There were many more issues that were out of touch with the times and realities in which we live.
Our conclusion as a Funds Development team was Per Capita was not financially sustainable.
Elder Keith Woods, New Vernon Church, recommended that we overture the General Assembly to change the funding system.  I wasn’t sure we could. But he encouraged us to ask the question none the less.
It was not an easy task. But we did it.
We overtured 223rd General Assembly (2018) to appoint a task group to review the Per Capita funding system and make recommendations on experiments and models for a possible new system. The GA agreed.
The Co-Moderators that year appointed the task group and merged it with another group tasked with reviewing the financial sustainability of all the General Assembly agencies. I was appointed to be part of that committee.
The Special Committee for the Per Capita Review and Financial Sustainability did a lot of work listening and gathering data for the next assembly. The first report was ready for the 224th General Assembly mid-February 2020 and then…
The 224th GA did not act on our recommendations ( or any others) and allowed for more time for the committees to review, change, adapt their recommendations in light of the pandemic. In that time our team gathered more data and did some more listening and revised their recommendations to the 225th General Assembly.
The Special Committee recommended that the GA, 1) form a Commission to unify the Presbyterian Mission Agency and the Office of the General Assembly and to 2) develop models and experiments for a new funding model. The GA committee reviewing the recommendations changed it from a commission to a task group however the Assembly, itself,  changed it back to a commission.
What will be the new funding model is yet to be determined. This will be the first time in that denomination taken on this task. All because a Presbytery in Northwest New Jersey asked the question.
Additional Information about Per Capita and Financial Sustainability
