November 13, 1999

CLEVELAND—The General Assembly of the National Council of Churches (NCC) yesterday approved a sweeping restructuring plan that reduces the 50-year-old organization's New York City headquarters staff by one-third and radically changes the face of the NCC's operations.

The restructuring plan calls for Church World Service and Witness (CWSW) to become semi-autonomous—accountable directly to the NCC's General Assembly with its administration and management handled internally—and for the bulk of the Council's programmatic activity to be housed in a single unit called "Unity and Justice."

According to Bishop Melvin Talbert of the United Methodist Church, programs of the NCC will no longer have their own "self-contained" staff, but will be administered by a "matrix staff" of generalists who will function in various configurations depending upon the priorities set by the Council's Executive Board.

The restructuring plan, developed by a Transition Management Team of the Executive Board, calls for the elimination of 34 positions from the 122-member New York staff, with 44 positions, including some part-time and contract positions affected on the whole. (Another 250 NCC staff are based outside New York City.) The staff cuts range from top to bottom—three associate general secretary and four director positions are among those eliminated.

The restructuring plan is so complex and fluid that no 2000 budget has yet been developed. Instead, the Assembly endorsed what NCC treasurer Margaret Thomas of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) called "a fiscal framework."

Built into the framework is a 10 percent "set aside" to replenish the financial reserves of the NCC, which have been totally depleted in recent years.

The financial framework does not include, Bishop Talbert said, provisions for erasing a 1999 shortfall of $4 million.

The shortfall resulted from "authorized but unbudgeted" expenses that include $2.4 million in management consulting fees since March 1998, a one-time contribution of about $550,000 to the NCC's Pension Fund due to a missed payment several years ago, $330,000 to the Burned Churches Fund, and overexpenditures in the 1999 budgets of several departments in the NCC General Secretariat.

Ms. Thomas said nearly $3 million of the shortfall has been tentatively pledged—the United Methodists, for instance, are awaiting requested financial data before they release any more funds to the NCC—and the Assembly concurred with a Transition Management Team recommendation that Clifton Kirkpatrick of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and Richard Hamm of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) be designated to appeal to member churches for additional funds to cover the shortfall.