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About the CCPI

A Brief History

As the Church grew around the world, the Hornung Fund was created (named for former General Board of Pension and Health Benefits’ (GBPHB) General Secretary Jed Hornung). This fund continues to distribute a small amount each year to conferences outside the United States for the benefit of retired clergy. From 1988 to 1991, the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM) and GBPHB laid the groundwork for an organized, denomination-wide look into the needs of central conference retirees.

UMPH has provided vital pension support over the years by designating a portion of its annual earnings for pension support across the denomination. During General Conference 2000, legislation was approved that changed the distribution of those earnings from an "equitable" allocation to a "just" allocation, and this action has allowed increased funding to flow to the retirees in the central conferences.

That same General Conference session passed legislation defining the CCPI. As part of this effort, General Conference also created an interagency Task Force and charged it with addressing the retirement security of those in the central conferences who have dedicated their lives to serving the Church.

The Task Force began its work, by declaring that a central conference pension system should be:

• a fountain of hope;
• a sharing of resources;
• inclusive and not discriminatory; and
• a framework for economic justice that supports those who serve the Church and the world so that they have dignity, self-respect and the basic necessities of life, enabling them to sustain the life of the Church and the community.

During the 2000-2004 quadrennium, this interagency Task Force worked to define the needs of central conference retirees and begin exploring solutions to address them. Task Force members visited Liberia, Russia, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire, Estonia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe to study the conference pension structures, explore government pension support systems in place, and interview retired clergy to learn about their lives in retirement.

In 2004, General Conference affirmed the activities of this Task Force by establishing a better-defined interagency Central Conference Pension Committee (CCPC). This committee included five general secretaries, three bishops and at-large members from within the United States and around the world. Employees of boards and agencies supporting global ministry activities also work with CCPC.