Hah! Mrs Schori used the word “andragogy”. Not very politically correct, that. Bonnie’s 15% take from dioceses seems better thought-out as regards the inevitable and much-deserved decline in TEC revenues. It’s better to just recognize and adapt to the reality of the TEC death-spiral rather than pretend that the truth is not true.

One question: are people better off or worse off because of that 100 million dollar budget? The PB answers that correctly at first,

The presiding bishop said that too often the church has unintentionally kept some people and partner organizations “in dependent relationships by the way we have doled out resources.” She added that she was not talking just about money. “We have not offered enough of ourselves in terms of sharing people resources, skills, missionaries, finances to help people to grow up into the full stature of Christ.”

She misses her own point, and that is the fact that TEc’s “skills” do more harm than simple dependancy.

An alternative presented to the Western NC diocesan convention was 10-10-10 in which parishes give 10 per cent of receipts to the diocese and the diocese gives 10 per cent of receipts to the national church. That is a little more than half 815’s 18 per cent and a third less than the President of the House of Deputies 15 per cent.  The diocese is getting on a voluntary giving system about 10 per cent of parish plate and pledge and at the expense of other programs paying its 18 per cent share to 815. We also have a debt on a conference center bought in the time of the previous bishop and a capital funds drive to reduce that debt. 

I was ordained in 1966 and paid attention to national church matters   since high school about 10 years earlier, but like Bishop Sauls I did not know of all the various ways the national church spent its money.

10-10-10 is also the formula that leaders of the Diocese of South Carolina insist has been one of the factors in their diocesan revival.

“One scenario calls for asking dioceses to contribute 19 percent of their income and the other calls for dioceses contributing 15 percent. The larger income would be $103.6 million and the 15 percent-asking budget would be reduced by approximately $13.5 million, according to Treasurer Kurt Barnes.”

This is all fine, but it reads as though these options (15 or 19%) are somehow able to be linked to budget reductions, when in fact a diocese can give whatever they wish.