| Plans for one-stop stewardship program approved By David E. Bohnert UMConnection Correspondent Plans are now underway to provide comprehensive, one-stop stewardship services to local churches in the Baltimore-Washington Conference. The move for a major restructuring of agencies relating to stewardship, adoption of a conference budget and a report that membership declined last year were highlights of the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference June 8 plenary session. Lay and clergy conference members adopted a motion to endorse recommendations in a report from the Board of Financial Stewardship Development. The action empowers appropriate bodies to begin the work of reorganizing the United Methodist Foundation, the conference Endowment Fund and the Board of Financial Stewardship Development into a single agency with the recommended name of The United Methodist Stewardship Center & Foundation of the Baltimore-Washington Conference.  The Rev. Frank E. Trotter Jr., chair of the Board of Financial Stewardship Development, presented the report, which included a needs assessment, vision statement, detailed analysis of staffing, revenue and expense issues and a time line for accomplishing the transition. According to the report, a formal proposal of reorganization will be brought to the annual conference in 2003. Ideal staffing, according to the report, would eventually include an executive director, director of financial management services, director of planned giving, director of fund raising, two full-time secretaries and one receptionist. The Stewardship Center and Foundation would provide one-stop shopping for churches needing assistance in any matter of stewardship, Trotter said. In another action, conference members adopted an apportioned budget of $15,530,449 for 2003, a 5.8 percent increase over the 2002 budget of $14,659,894. The conference also set the benevolence factor for apportionments in 2003 at 24 percent of the local church expenditures for 2001. That figure is up slightly from 23.8 percent for 2002.  Conference statistician, the Rev. James Knowles-Tuell, reported that membership in conference churches has declined slightly. According to Knowles-Tuell, membership was down in 2001 by 1,126 after it had been rising slightly. The average attendance at worship was down by 177. Knowles-Tuell also reported that 196, or 28 percent of churches in the conference, received no members on profession of faith in 2001. He said that 126 churches received no members by any means. Membership grew in 294 churches, he said. Bishop Felton Edwin May said that it is unconscionable and an abominable sin that a church can go for a year without reaching out and adding members by profession of faith. Following a suggestion by the bishop, the conference passed a motion that requires the pastor and the lay leader of churches who add no members by profession of faith in any year to come before the appropriate agency and make an explanation. Knowles-Tuell remarked that 13 churches had not yet filed their statistical reports for 2001, due last Jan. 31. Bishop May asked for a list of the 13 churches. | 
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