JCD 1122

http://archives.umc.org/interior_judicial.asp?mid=263&JDID=1239&JDMOD=VWD&SN=1100&EN=1181

This decision settles whether or not the health insurance cost carried by a local church is compensation or a benefit. As the decision points out, local churches have no say about how much the premium for a benefit will be whereas compensation, the salary, is theirs to determine.

Some churches may have padded the pastor’s salary by budgeting a larger amount for the health insurance premium as they may have done with how they paid mileage for the pastor. By reporting a smaller salary, some churches were apportioned less based on the formula for setting conference “dues.”

The tone of the question from Louisiana, as I interpret it, really has more to do with helping the local church set its total budget at the charge conference rather than facing having to change it later in the church year if the conference requests a budget-busting health insurance apportionment. And lately, that specific cost has risen so much each year that it is a budget-buster every time.

The request was an attempt to hurry the process for formulating that cost in time for charge conferences. But it was indirect and the Council did not bite.