Board of Pensions response to GAR-03
June 08, 2026
All agencies of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) may comment on or respond to General Assembly business and reports concerning their work. The following is the Board of Pensions’ response to GAR-03: Report of the General Assembly Agency Review Committee on the Board of Pensions.
The Board of Pensions of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (the “Agency”) recommends that the General Assembly disapprove the recommendations of the Agency Review Committee (the “Committee”), as the proposed “deliverance” would conflict with the Articles of Agreement from which the Agency was formed.
The Agency not having a deliverance from a particular meeting of the General Assembly is not an oversight. Other agencies of the General Assembly have been established over time under a deliverance structure, where a single meeting of the General Assembly guides the establishment of a corporation, naming what should be included in its Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws, for example. By contrast, the governance of the Agency was purposefully structured by the predecessor denominations of the PC(USA), the Presbyterian Church in the United States and The United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, as one of the terms of the contract that created the PC(USA). These Articles of Agreement were approved by four meetings of the General Assembly, (the 194th General Assembly (1982) and 195th General Assembly (1983) of The United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America and the 122nd General Assembly (1982) and 123rd General Assembly (1983) of the Presbyterian Church in the United States) and sent out to the presbyteries for a vote, as is done today for amendments to the Constitution. In Article 11 of those Articles of Agreement, the predecessor denominations specifically formed the Agency as an independent civil corporation. Section 11.3 of such Article states:
When the new unified plans and programs are approved by the General Assembly of the reunited Church…they shall be administered by a legally responsible corporate body established under a civil charter and having no responsibilities other than to administer these plans and programs and to assume the responsibilities of the former Board of Annuities and Relief of the Presbyterian Church in the United States and the former Board of Pensions of The United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. The members of the board of this corporate body shall be elected by the General Assembly of the reunited Church. Following approval by the General Assembly of the reunited Church of the program for equitable application of the existing funds, said funds shall be placed under the administration of the corporate body provided for in the immediately preceding paragraph as soon as the necessary legal requirements are fulfilled. (emphasis added) (Book of Order, Appendix A, page A-11)
Thus, a deliverance to govern the Agency’s structure or actions is unnecessary and would, if passed as written, have no force or effect. As a corporate body established under the not-for-profit laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Agency observes the purposes already set forth in its Articles of Incorporation and the governance rules in its Bylaws, both of which may only be amended by the Board of Directors (the “BOD”) of the Agency, all of whom are elected by the General Assembly. Several of the provisions of the proposed “deliverance” would severely limit the ability of the Agency to operate as an independent civil corporation as required by the Constitution and certain of the recommendations would violate the fiduciary responsibility of the independent directors elected by the General Assembly and encroach on their impartial business judgment.
We note that a deliverance is an ecclesial declaration of what a corporation of the church is to deliver to the General Assembly. The Articles of Agreement are clear in this regard, establishing that the Agency is to deliver plans and programs to plan members. Section 11.4 states:
Each of the annuity and pension funds shall be administered on an actuarially sound basis for the sole and exclusive use of its members, active and retired, and their survivors, with a view to the final distribution of all assets occurring simultaneously with the fulfillment of all contractual commitments consistent with all legal requirements. (Book of Order, Appendix A, page A-12)
While, as part of the church, the Agency conducts its business in alignment with the values of the church, the Agency owes its loyalty to “its members, active and retired, and their survivors,” not to the denomination. This is precisely because the assets held by the Agency are not assets of the PC(USA), but rather are held for and must be used for the exclusive benefits of the members that the Agency serves.
The General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission (in Session of First Presbyterian Church, Bowling Green, Ohio v. The Board of Pensions of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Remedial Case 2024-03), describes it this way:
“…the Board of Pensions (specifically, its board of directors) exercises fiduciary responsibility, delegated by the General Assembly, for administering the denomination’s medical and pension benefits (Synod of the Northeast v. The Board of Pensions of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Remedial Case 217-9, 2005). The General Assembly has delegated those fiduciary responsibilities to the Board of Pensions (a separate corporate entity), reserving only limited areas of oversight, namely the election of the Board of Directors and confirmation of the President. While the General Assembly and its Permanent Judicial Commission have jurisdiction to interpret constitutional issues, they do not have authority to direct the exercise of the Board of Pensions’ fiduciary duties (Synod of the Northeast v. The Board of Pensions of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Remedial Case 217-9, 2005).
Finally, Management of the Agency also notes with regret that it learned of the contents of this report through a search of pc-biz.org in early March 2026. The Committee did not discuss the recommendations in the report with anyone at the Agency before the report was posted. We find this highly unusual and unprecedented. During its agency review in 2025, the Committee posed hours of questions to the President and other Agency leaders, none of which concerned matters that became the recommendations in the report. Further, Committee members met with the Agency’s BOD for three consecutive days in October 2025 during its fall BOD meeting. During the plenary session on the final day, Committee members were allotted 45 minutes on the agenda to engage the entire BOD in a question and answer session. Again, the Committee did not raise any of the recommendations in the report during the BOD meetings.
For the foregoing reasons, we respectfully recommend that the General Assembly disapprove the Committee recommendations.
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