Financial Picture Brightens for ELCA

     PHILADELPHIA (ELCA) -- After nearly a decade of budget cuts and belt-tightening, the largest Lutheran denomination in the United States and Caribbean appears to have achieved fiscal stability.  Voting members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, meeting here Aug. 14-20 in the ELCA's fifth biennial Churchwide Assembly, were told that income from congregations and synods is finally on the upswing.
    In the ten years of its history the 5.2-million-member ELCA has seen its annual churchwide budget plummet from $87.2 million in 1989 (of which only $81 million was actually received) to a low of $75.3 million four years later (still $1 million above actual receipts).  Since then revenues have inched upward and increases now appear to be the pattern.
    Voting members approved a 1998 spending plan of $77.5 million and of $78.2 million for 1999.  The ELCA approves its annual budgets two at a time, since the biennial assemblies must approve them in advance.
    Following approval of the budget for 1998, ELCA Presiding Bishop H. George Anderson called it "a strong affirmation of the program and the stewardship of [this] church."
    Support for the ELCA's churchwide ministry -- much of which funds global mission work, the theological education of new pastors, and the planting of new U.S. congregations -- originates in nearly 11,000 Lutheran congregations.  Funds are sent to 65 regional synods, each of which forwards an average of 55 percent to the ELCA for its budgeted programs.

For information contact:

Ann Hafften, Director (773) 380-2958 or NEWS@ELCA.ORG
http://www.elca.org/co/news/current.html