GA227 commissioners approve a unified budget for 2027 and 2028

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MILWAUKEE — By a margin of 386-15, commissioners to the 227th General Assembly approved FIN-01, the unified budget for 2027 and 2028 for Presbyterian Life & Witness and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), A Corporation, which includes the Administrative Services Group.

The approved amounts for the balanced budget are $90,454,606 for 2027 and $97,921,505 for 2028.

With the actions taken by the Assembly this week, the General Assembly portion of per-capita giving will be $13.04 in 2027 and $12.72 in 2028. More information on the approved unified budget is here.

Ian Hall, A Corporation president, said that commissioners to the last Assembly approved per capita increases of 10.6% for 2025 and 3.9% for 2026. Increases for 2027 and 2028 will be 15.8% and 2.5%, respectively, Hall noted.

When asked what a “rainy day” will look like in the coming years, Hall said that “we brought to the 227th General Assembly a balanced budget with a relatively conservative approach. It’s raining when that prediction doesn’t happen,” he said. “Right now, it’s not raining.”

Per capita “continues to be the way that we fund the shared life and work as a denomination together,” said the Rev. Jihyun Oh, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly and Executive Director of Presbyterian Life & Witness. “Everyone across the denomination, no matter where they are located” or what they are able to afford to do ministry, “can share in that so we can be the church together.”

Hall said that about 60% of each year’s budget comes from restricted funds with 40% unrestricted. The unified budget includes 321 full-time and 37 part-time staff.

During a time for questions and debate, the Rev. Rick Atkerson of the Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley told fellow commissioners, “you might ask, how can we pay for all this?” The better question, Atkerson said, is, “how can we not?”

“Our job here isn’t done,” said Ruling Elder Linda Lovins of the Presbytery of Florida, “until we explain our decisions to our presbyteries and congregations.”

In addition to expenses, some questions focused on the income side of the ledger. The Rev. Jeromey Howard, co-moderator of the Funding Model Development Team, said two field studies are underway. One is a percentage-based model in which mid councils remit a percentage of their per-capita income. The other focuses on maintaining per capita as it is. “We hope to find out what could be possible recommendations to this body” at the 228th General Assembly (2028), Howard said.

Hall said that the current collection rate from mid councils is 88%.

“Every presbytery is trying to deal with what they need to do to support congregations, faith leaders and other faith communities in their midst,” Oh said. Some presbyteries forward only the amount their congregations send them, she said. Some presbyteries send 100% of per-capita funds regardless of what they’ve received from congregations. “Some do something in the middle,” Oh said. “It’s a systemic question we are asking right now.”

Oh expressed gratitude for the work of commissioners and advisory delegates.

“As with all of the Assemblies I’ve been a part of, we eventually got there. We wander a bit, but we get there as we attend to the movement of the Spirit,” she said.

“Based on the amount of time we spent talking about financial implications and per capita, you can probably tell we need to keep having conversations about the financial system that undergirds our work together,” Oh said. “It is also a fact that many faithful Presbyterians who have been generous for hundreds of years never imagined we would have to work” on issues including generative artificial intelligence or the work of reparative action “and accounting for some of the harm the PC(USA) has been part of.”

“The gifts that were given faithfully and generously were shaped by the priority of those times,” Oh said. It’s increasingly important “to keep imagining supporting and funding the work of diverse needs in our common life of the whole church together,” she said. “We are called to resist the temptation of either/or thinking.”

“How do we build now the communion we will be in 50 or 100 years from now? God is not done with us. We have important witness to give,” she said to applause. “We need to have conversations about the financial system and what is our identity — to learn how to be grounded in that core so we can move with resilience toward God’s wholeness.”

We will “need to keep building our capacity to be an intercultural denomination,” she said, telling the Assembly “you have done good work encouraging the denomination to live into those values.” Included in that development will be “all of us doing our own cultural work to be able to tell a more honest story about our church and our nation,” language Oh borrowed from the 1980 statement, “Peacemaking: The Believer’s Calling.”

That will “require us to do the work that allows people to see more clearly God’s love and justice lived out in our lives together for the sake of God’s beloved world.”