There has been a flurry of activity in the Presbyterian Mutual Society situation in Northern Ireland over the last few days.  The Administrator’s web site provides a nice timeline in their press releases.  The Court approved the Scheme of Arrangement (Press Release, FAQ) back on 4 July.  Then last Thursday (28 July) they put up an “almost there” notice — they wanted everyone to know that with the complexity of the bailout they were making sure all the conditions were met for the transaction to proceed.  Finally on Monday ( 1 August ) they posted the cheques. (Translation for American readers: “The check is in the mail.”)  The investors were getting their money the next day.  Today the Administrator put a clarification up on the web site about a mistaken report regarding the recovery amounts to the different level investors.

Needless to say, the media is all over this including the Irish Times, Belfast Newsletter and BBC. And the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, is getting a lot of credit for making this happen.  The Presbyterian Church in Ireland has issued a statement welcoming the payments and saying:

In particular [Moderator of the General Assembly] Dr Patterson joined [Former Moderator] Dr Carson in expressing thanks to
those who had voluntarily deferred a return of some of their money so
that others would benefit. “I would express sincere thanks to every
Congregational Committee and every individual who has opted to leave an
extra amount in the PMS so that smaller savers could be paid off first.
It is evidence that there is a spirit of kindness and generosity and
compassion within our Church. It’s been heart warming to see that those
who could have left money in the society so that the small savers could
get all their money back,” he commented.

The statement also expresses continuing concern for the investors who have had to wait almost three years for the return of their money, in many cases the tied-up funds represented a good deal of their retirement savings.

Dr. Stafford Carson has his own comments on his blog. He includes this statement about how the distribution worked out:

The other area of interest is the actual percentage required from those
who opted to make an additional deferment. Individuals and congregations
were given the option of leaving an additional 5% or 10% of their funds
in the PMS so that smaller savers could get all of their money back. I
hear that the response to that appeal has been so good that the actual
amounts may be less than half of that which larger savers were prepared
to defer. That is a tremendous response and shows that there is a
reservoir of generosity and compassion within PCI in spite of the PMS
debacle.

This leads me to a moral of this story. While there are plenty of lessons in all this regarding denominations running investment funds or mutual societies straying too far from their stated purpose, an article in the Belfast Newsletter probably has the most important take-away for those of us in ministry — The headline is “Savers tell of dismay at losing trust in church.”

As you read the story you will see that where the church members lost trust was not in the failure in the first place but in the denomination’s response.  You had to be a member of the church to invest in the Mutual Society but the denomination at first tried to hold the investment failure at arms length.  The story has this extended quote from Mr. Mervyn Redmond of Ballywalter:

“The church disowned us from the start and it just didn’t want to know,” he said yesterday.

“They
deceived us and we were told lies by members of the Presbyterian
Church, and we have been so hurt that we can no longer call ourselves
Presbyterian.

“I’ve never given up my faith or Christianity, but I don’t belong to a church any more.”

It is interesting to note that two of those interviewed for this story specifically single out Dr. Carson for his advocacy and compassion. (And people are posting their thanks to him in the comments to his blog post.)  As Mr. Redmond put it:

“Dr Carson never turned his back on us at any stage,” he said.

“There
were times when he was wearing two coats – he had to be on the church’s
side and he had to be on our side. He was in a very awkward position on
our behalf.”

There are a total of four interviews in the article, each individual having a varying degree of estrangement from the denomination and some from Christianity in general.

But let me leave you with Dr. Carson’s closing line which adds some additional perspective to the situation.