Overture 2

<typohead type="2">Single Assessment Levy</typohead>

At St Andrew's Church Te Puke, on 8 June 2004, the Presbytery of Bay of Plenty met and was constituted.

<typohead type="4">Among other things:</typohead>

The Presbytery agreed unanimously to adopt and transmit the following overture to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand appointed to meet in Christchurch at St Andrew´s College on 19 September to 24 September 2004.

Whereas less than ten years ago General Assembly agreed that healthy congregations were a key sign of life and health in the Church, and the concept of "inverting the triangle" was warmly embraced, and

And whereas mission best takes place in and through the local congregations, not the national church structures, and

And whereas the single assessment (Assembly Assessment) levy has forced the Bay of Plenty Presbytery to shelve a planned Enabler Ministry mission initiative, and

And whereas the single assessment model is imposing a modernist value of supporting the institution on a post-modernist, more relationally driven culture and church, and

And whereas people today prefer to focus their giving on particular mission projects rather than giving to a largely anonymous institutional fund, and

And whereas very little quality information is made available to parishes on where such institutional funds are spent, and

And whereas the scriptural view of giving is that it should be generous, regular and voluntary (2 Cor 8:7-8), not made under compulsion (2 Cor 9:7), and

And whereas it is a mistake to combine three very different types of operating cost (employment costs like the beneficiary and seniority levies which self regulate according to the number of ministers; national church overheads which have to be closely monitored and reduced if the Presbyterian Church continues to shrink in size; and mission and ministry which is discretionary and should be divested more and more to parishes)

And whereas the Assembly Assessment fails to provide any method of constraint, having no upper limit to what a parish might be expected to pay, and

And whereas there was inadequate presentation and debate of the philosophy of a single assessment levy at Assembly, and

And whereas all Bay of Plenty commissioners to the 2002 Assembly who were at the Presbytery meeting of 11 February 2003 were of the understanding that the whole concept of the single assessment levy was subject to the responses received from Presbyteries/UDC´s Sessions and Parish Councils, and yet the Tutahi Tatou consultation process assumed the single assessment was already approved and only the means of calculating the levy had to be resolved.

<typohead type="4">It is hereby overtured:</typohead>

That this Assembly discontinue with the practice of single assessment, renamed Assembly Assessment, as implemented from July 1 2004.

That Assembly direct Financial Services to move to a separate National Services Levy and voluntary and Ministry Fund.

</typolist>

Or that the General Assembly determine otherwise as in its wisdom it shall consider best.

The Presbytery appointed the Rev Jim Wallace and the Rev Lance Thomas to support the overture before the Assembly.

Extracted from the records of the Presbytery by

Phil Aiken
Presbytery Clerk