To make this possible, the World Service Fund must be broken up as a block fund and uncoupled from conference benevolences. We recommend that the Discipline be changed to delete any reference to a unified World Service Fund. Rather than combining the general agency budgets into one, let each general agency, commission, and council be a separate line item. At the same time, allow each annual conference to accept, reject, or revise the general apportioned funds with or without reduction throughout a quadrennium, as well as allow conference benevolences to be considered by local congregations separately. This is not as radical as it may sound.
Most people still have a basic tendency to support institutions where they are members.
Yet no segment of the church should any longer assume, simply because it has achieved the status of a line item in the apportionments, that it need no longer interpret itself and its work to the congregations. At present, charge conferences are simply told by the annual conference, which is told by the general church, what their apportionments are. Surely a message is being sent that calls for a reassessment of this system. Our General Conference continues blindly approving budgets that have no chance under the present system of being fully funded. We believe that each charge conference ought to have the opportunity to decide whether or not to pay for the funds of the connectional church.