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From Women in Search of Mission by Gladys Goering. Faith and Life Press, 1980, pp. 69-71
Missionary Pension Fund
Through the years there were many special funds, three of which are of unique interest: Missionary Pension Fund, Memorial Loan Fund, and the Taiwan Choir—World Conference Fund. The earliest was the pension fund.
The mission board, in 1926, passed a resolution to accept a plan entitled “Missionaries’ Pensions.” The trustees referred to it more commonly as “Incapacitated Missionaries’ Fund” or “Incapacitated Missionary Fund.”
The fund grew slowly, and that it grew at all must be attributed, in large part, to the Women’s Missionary Association which adopted it as a part of its projects in 1935. All members were asked to contribute “2 cents a week and a prayer” for missionary pensions. By 1945 over two-thirds of the receipts for the conference pension fund came from the WMA. This did not include contributions from Canadian women, since at this time their gifts were still not credited to the WMA. The organization picked up the project with the intent of making it an endowment fund, with the board of trustees investing the funds at the then current rate of 2 to 4 percent interest annually. By 1945 the fund stood at $22,600.61.
An exchange of letters in their Executive Committee round robin in 1952 reveals that the trustees were becoming increasingly impatient with handling the fund separately, and suggested that the WMA give them complete control. WMA President Lohrentz wrote, “As far as Mr. D______’s letter takes it they are ready to start ‘giving away’ the Pension Fund right now…. Mr. E_______ has asked quite pointedly several times to turn the whole fund over to his committee.” The WMA secretary, torn with indecision, responded, “I don’t know whether it is wise to put up a protest of this nature, or whether to meekly leave it up to them, trusting in the Lord’s leading.” Lohrentz wasn’t about to give up without a fight, as she answered, “This thing of a policy for Pension Fund is getting nowhere fast, for they do not seem to understand just what we want and simply treat it as a matter over which they have the say-so. It seems to me that it would be best to get a com. of women to formulate a policy and then if we want to bring that before the conf. (1953) it could be included in the agenda there.”
Before the 1953 conference, the WMA had recommended to the mission board that the interest be made available for use. However, the amount was not large enough to pay all pensions, so the mission board made the following motion which was present to the WMA executives:
Moved that the annual receipts of two cents per persons per week be added to the interest from accumulated pension fund, to make possible more adequate pension payment to such retired missionaries as are not under the Presbyterian Ministers plan. And that with the approval of the Executive Committee of the Women’s Missionary Association, the Board of Missions be privileged to draw upon the principle in case of special need for retired missionaries not under the Presbyterian Ministers’ plan.
The Executive Committee agreed to the motion, but when it was read at the WMA triennial session in Oregon, the women refused to go along. In a rare display of independence, and rejection of the Board of Mission’s and their own Executive Committee’s leading, they argued that this was not the purpose for which they had been collecting the funds, and they ought to do more thinking before they accepted it. A motion to restudy the recommendation and delay voting failed, but an amendment that the fund be built to $80,000, as permanent endowment, carried ($65,000 was available at the time of the motion).
In 1976 the Commission on Overseas Mission and the Commission on Home Ministries added sizable amount to the retirement program, which today is called “Missionary Supplementary Retirement Fund.” Interest from the Women in Mission endowment is also used annually to supplement retirement income, and many local mission societies continue to contribute to it. |