Money shortage forces change in approach

Dr Marelle Harisun, chair of the Coolamon College Council, on July 8 told members of Uniting Church’s 11th Assembly the college delivered distance education courses in over 100 subjects to 665 students around Australia and overseas, with some courses being available in two or four other languages.

The Rev. Lee Levett-Olson, principal of the college, reminded members of Assembly that was all done with a full-time staff of three.

Coolamon is one of the 17 Uniting Church agencies that presented a report to Assembly. While the agencies’ report was overwhelmingly positive, showcasing the many and varied ways the work of the Uniting Church was carried out, that positiveness masked a crisis of under-resourcing, as agencies attempted to meet the church’s expectations.

In the 1990s, an increase in levels of funding led to the establishment of new work in a number of areas that have proven to be unsustainable.

The changes over the last triennium leading to the demise of Uniting Education were a partial attempt to respond to fiscal realities. However, the Rev. Terence Corkin, general secretary of the Assembly, admitted the church was still stretched too thin.

“We have a range of historical commitments and passions that continue to be followed, but agencies are unable to fulfil their stated mandate,” he said.

Where agencies did meet or even exceeded their mandates, that was only achieved by enormous commitment to extra work by staff, which Mr Corkin said was “not good practice on a number of levels”.

The work of most Assembly agencies was supported by a full-time director and part-time support staff. The lack of discretionary funding — money not already allocated to grants or staffing — meant staff had little or no budget for travel or the resources needed fulfil their mission.

Mr Corkin said the establishment of the Assembly Capital Fund was one way to address financial issues. However, there was a need to develop a partnership model of agencies supporting and enhancing the work already done by synods, he said.

“What I would like is for other parts of the church to see what we are doing as enhancing the work they do, and they’ll partner with us, and we’ll be able to do more by cooperation.”

Mr Corkin pointed to Coolamon College as a best practice partnership model for other agencies which were attempting to fulfil their mandates while dealing with stretched resources.

As a distance education college, Coolamon was a non-geographical community which made good use of communication technology.

“Coolamon couldn’t exist if there wasn’t a partnership with the rest of the church,” Mr Corkin said. At the same time, the individual synods would not be able to develop the same high-quality resources if they were operating alone.

Mr Corkin described that model as a “symbiotic” partnership model.

That kind of partnership needed to be improved across all the agencies, with Assembly operating as a facilitator to coordinate work done by synods and presbyteries in different parts of the county.

As a national body, Assembly was able to pick up topics of interest that might be of interest to only a minority of people within one part of the church but strongly supported but a synod elsewhere.

“Assembly creates a space for a new set of relationships,” Mr Corkin said.