At a Stated Meeting on Saturday, February 5, 2001, Ohio Presbytery passed an overture to the 39th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America that would discontinue Administrative Committee funding of byFaith and byFaithOnline.com and encourage the AC to help byFaith obtain independent funding for its work.
The language of this overture is the same as a proposal that will be presented to Central Indiana Presbytery when it meets on February 11. The full text read as follows:
Overture Concerning the funding of ByFaithMagazine and ByFaithOnline
Whereas, the congregations of the PCA are called to support the Church in its worship
and work to the best of their abilities; and
Whereas, each congregation should freely and voluntarily give to the Permanent Committees and Agencies of the General Assembly; and
Whereas, the Administrative Committee in years past has struggled to raise and receive support from Presbyteries and local congregations; and
Whereas, in the past five years between fifteen (15) and twenty-six (26) percent of the Administrative Committee’s budget includes a subscription magazine called byFaith and its web magazine byFaithOnline.com, and
Whereas, the Administrative Committee is coming up short of its budget between thirteen (13) and seventeen (17) percent each year of the last five (5) years; and
Whereas, since its beginning byFaith has struggled to attain a consistent number of over 10,000 subscribers; and
Whereas, in 1990 the denomination’s news magazine “PCA Messenger” struggled with approximately 10,000 subscribers and stated that to be viable there would be a need for 20,000-25,000 subscribers; and
Whereas, in 1994 CE/P asked to be relieved of their duty of supporting financially the work of the PCA’s news magazine because of the burden it had on the committee’s budget of which it was then passed to the Administrative Committee to which it is a burden now; and
Whereas, if byFaith was allowed to stand on its own outside of the support of the Administrative Committee’s budget the Administrative Committee would be able to meet their budget each year according to past years;
Therefore, be it resolved that Ohio Presbytery overtures the 39th General Assembly of the PCA to encourage the Administrative Committee within the next year to equip, to the best of its ability, byFaithOnline and byFaith Magazine to financially stand on its own outside the support of the Administrative Committee, and
Therefore, be it further resolved that at the end of this one year period, before the time of the 2012 40th PCA General Assembly, that the Administrative Committee no longer support financially byFaith Magazine or byFaithOnline.
Adopted February 5, 2011
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