By Jeffrey Walton, Juicy Ecumenism. (image: Larm Rmah/Unsplash)
The Birmingham News has coverage this week of the Presbyterian Church (USA) firing missionaries around the world and ending its foreign mission agency. The 1.09 million member mainline Protestant denomination counted more than 3 million members at the merger of its predecessor bodies in 1983 and has experienced a membership decline of nearly 65 percent since that time.
Birmingham News Reporter Greg Garrison writes that the PC(USA) has drastically cut its mission staff from about 60 missionaries. As recently as 2010, the denomination supported about 200 missionaries worldwide. The recent cuts are reflective of broader continued mainline Protestant decline also seen in recent reorganizations within the United Methodist and Episcopal churches, among others.
The total PC(USA) mission budget for 2025, passed at the 2024 biennial General Assembly, is $95 million.
Earlier last year, Stated Clerk The Rev. Jihyun Oh, the denomination’s top executive, signalled what was ahead while announcing changes to achieve a balanced 2025–26 budget, including $5 million in cuts.
“We shared information with World Mission staff as well as partners around the world that we anticipate significant changes to how we engage our partners in the future, and we are in the process of examining how our organization will be structured in 2025,” Oh disclosed in November 2024. “We anticipate that there will also be reductions in 2025, once that process is completed.”