Scout units in the United Methodist Church

[Buffalo Skipper]

I have a specific question for anyone out there with units chartered with United Methodist Churches. I understand that all units are chartered by the United Methodist Men, but where do your finances fall? Are they a part of the UMM? Are they audited annually as part of the church? How much support do you recieve from the UMM?

 

I expect this discussion will vary greatly, and I would really like to hear other's experiences.

[GernBlansten]

Our unit is chartered by the UMC. Our COR is part of the UMM. We never see him or hear anything from the UMM. Our finances are completely separate from the UMM, but technically owned by the organization. Never audited. Our relationship is not adversarial, just not cooperative.

[John-in-KC]

I have a good friend who is a UMC COR. I will ask him.

 

In return, may we ask why you're asking the question. It might help us focus our efforts...

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ETA: Just talked to him. He's also a UC in our District.

 

- Parish and Troop have good working relationship.

 

- Parish meets obligations of charter agreement to provide facilities and leadership management. IH/COR are involved in unit leader selection and oversight.

 

- Parish does not fund unit operations.

 

- Parish has not required an audit of the Troop books in this man's knowledge.

 

HTH.(This message has been edited by John-in-KC)

[packsaddle]

This unit has a UMC charter but we have unit non-interest bank account so we never see any of that audit stuff. The CO is fairly supportive with things like chartering fees and special needs boys. They gave us enough funding to buy a trailer too. But we do troop fund-raisers for equipment, etc.

[srisom]

We have a Cub Pack in our UMC. They are sponsored by the church itself, not the UMM. Their finances are separate from the church and as such are not included in the annual audit. The Charter fee is paid by someone in the church. We provide a place for the meetings, but there is not really any financial aid given to the unit, except by individuals.

As the COR, I try to keep in touch with the unit and offer any help.

[Buffalo Skipper]

I knew someone was going to play the "Why do you ask?" card before too long. It is both complicated and yet simple, but not an incredibly big deal. So let me explain.

 

In our churches early history, some 50ish years ago, our troop came to us from another local church. The first scoutmaster during this time was one of the troop's earlier Eagles (1953), who, like the troop, left the other church to form the new one. He is now our charter rep, and an active member of our church, the UMM, and scouting. The current head of the UMM is also an Eagle scout. The UMM of our church have more registered members of EMS (a national sub-group of the UMM who support scouting) than any other member in our district. The scouting support at our church is very strong.

 

Despite this, about 10 years ago, there began to be a disconnect between the church and the Troop, and many of our church youth (and their parents) went to other troop in the area (with other Methodist churches, 5 others to be exact!). One of my main goals is to strengthen the bond beween our church and the congregation. Somewhat unrelated, recently our church business administrator refused to allow church members to donate to scouts through the church, convincing the members to write the check to the church, without the stipulation that it go to the troop (that is the readers's digest of that issue, I won't bore everyone with more here). We have also had differences of opinion with our property manager. Suffice it to say that we (SM, COR and IH) want very much to see these differences resolved. We are each conduting our own research into exactly how other units formally integrate with their churchs, especially in regards to monetary matters (this really ties in to other recently discussed topics, like the one on "tax exempt status").

 

There really is more here, but I am trying to take an objective approach. Rather than dragging past issues through the mud, we want to establish a compete understanding of the relationship, and clarify that with the church "organization." For starters, we largely just want to see what other units/COs are doing, and making sure that we are doing this right as well.

 

Did that help?

[relapse]

We are chartered by the church, we do not have a Methodist Men's group (thats a different discussion).

 

We the pack take care of our own finances. We pay for our charter. We even pay the church for childcare during our pack meetings. I (as Pack Committee Chair and member of the church) would welcome them to audit our books. I may be asking for that to actually happen this year. They own the pack, they need to pay greater attention to it. Our COR is the uninterested church's business manager, working on fixing that also. We get the typical church support: space to have our meetings, place to store our stuff (being on the church's trustees I get to see both sides of that one), able to do Scout Sunday.

[ManyHats]

Our Pack is chartered by the church. The few times we've asked for help the money has come from the UMM (example 1 family lost job and couldn't pay dues and example 2 God and Family awards)

The only time I've seen a check from the church was when a leader turned in volunteer hours to the company they work for. The company had to write the check to the church since our nonprofit, tax exempt falls under the church. The church deposited the check and wrote a check to the pack.

[Eagle69]

I was SM for 28 years of a Troop sponsored by the United Methodist Church and for the most part all the church did was give us a place to meet and a small donation every year. We had a Methodist Men organization during that time, but they didn't have anything to do with the Troop, we were chartered to the church. In the 43 years we existed the church never got interested in our finances and has no idea and doesn't care that we have a bank account with over $1000 in it for a non-existent troop.

 

I can somewhat understand about the church not wanting to funnel donations to Scouts through the church. Except on rare occasions we discourage members writing checks for anything other than the Church Budget. It is a headache to keep up with. Personally if I was the SM I wouldn't want it to be done that way since that then makes you accountable to the church and it's members.

[relapse]

> Personally if I was the SM I wouldn't want it to be done that way since that then

> makes you accountable to the church and it's members.

 

But you ARE accountable to the church and its members. They own the unit.

[Buffalo Skipper]

"But you ARE accountable to the church and its members. They own the unit."

 

You hit the nail on the head here. One of our stated goals is to build the relationship between the church and the troop (and ultimately out two packs). This can only be done if we are involved, not only in church activities, but are accountable to the church as well. Making the church recognize that we are accountable will go a long way to improving that perception.(This message has been edited by Buffalo Skipper)

[ManyHats]

Out of sight... out of mind

We've been trying to be in sight more. Scout Sun., ice cream social etc.

We can tell some people don't want us there, but others are starting to realize what we do.

[relapse]

Buffalo Skipper,

 

I agree with the need to build relationships between the scouts and the church. That is one of the reasons I am our CC. My wife (our Children and Family Chair at the church) and I have discussed this at length. Scouts should be viewed as one of the ministries of the church.

 

Our church also sponsors a MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group. One of our MOPS rules is that their Chair must be a member of the church. Its a ministry of the church and it should operate itself with the rules and guidance of our church. Same thing should apply to our scout groups (I can only speak for my church). The CC should be a member of the church and have the church's interest also in mind. The CM, I can go either way on, I'd prefer a member but I wouldn't go as far as making it a rule.

 

To make this all work you of course need a IH and COR that understand and care about scouting. I'm working on those.

[HobcawChaos]

I have been in UMW circles in the past where we have donated money for specific items needed by the church-sponsored GS troops. There was not a formal process nor was the accounting checked. The troop leader made a specific request that the UMW circle membership elected to grant.

[packsaddle]

We had a similar problem with church members putting their sons in a competing troop. I and other leaders worked with church leaders to sensitize them to the fact that they had a troop and they were not supporting it in the most meaningful way. When one of their prominent members became SM, there was a lot more visibility but we're still waiting on those boys. Until then we're still dependent on boys from all directions and that's fine with me.

The only outright antagonisms I ever witnessed was from the 'little church lady' that it seems every church has and who just doesn't seem to like children. The other antagonism was in my troop when I was a boy. The Presbyterian church banned us from entering the church in uniform and banned the American Flag altogether. This was after they kicked out a really nice guy as minister because he supported the civil rights movement. I went to college soon after and never again looked back on Presbyterians with anything but ridicule.