Declining gifts threaten Red Bird School

Mounting shortfalls
may force UM school
in Kentucky to close

United Methodist News Service
A significant decline in contributions has created a financial crisis for Red Bird Mission in southeastern Kentucky.
If conditions don’t improve, said Fred Haggard, the mission’s executive director, Red Bird may be forced to close its school at Beverly, Ky.
Red Bird is one of four mission institutions of the United Methodist Red Bird Missionary Conference. The conference is in an isolated area in the heart of Appalachia, a geographic region that stretches along the Appalachian mountain range from Mississippi to southern New York.
Red Bird Mission School, founded by a forerunner of the Evangelical United Brethren Church, has been operating since 1921. The EUB Church merged with The Methodist Church in 1968 to form The United Methodist Church.
For the past three years Red Bird Mission has been operating with a deficit, using reserves to meet the shortfall, Haggard said. The mission includes a clinic, retail operations, community outreach and a work camp.
“The cost of education takes the biggest percent of our budget,” he explained. Other parts of the mission can raise funds through their ministries, but the school has no real way to do that.
Budget shortfall for 2006 is $500,000.
“We jumped from having a pretty bad situation to a near critical situation,” Haggard said.
The mission has enough money to operate through 2007, but if no more funds are received, expenses will have to be cut, he said.
“It could mean a loss of the school,” Haggard said. “Most likely it would mean cutting out part of it, probably the high school, since that is the most expensive part.”
Haggard noted that students and parents are upset about the possibility of closing the school.
“Red Bird School is not just a place for educational advancement but spiritual advancement,” said Jonathan Sizemore, a senior at the school. “For the past six years, I have attended chapel and devotional sessions. It has been a true blessing from God to be able to start out the academic day with a praise song, words of encouragement from the speakers and a prayer.”
Denominational attention to recent disasters, such as the South Asian tsunami and Gulf Coast hurricanes, has resulted in a drop in donations to the mission, Haggard said.
“One of the reasons we have had a decline in people coming to our work camps is because lots of groups say they sent teams to Mississippi and couldn’t get enough together to come to Red Bird,” he said.
Haggard said he thinks the attitude of United Methodists toward mission work is changing.
“Seems the more exotic and the further out (mission projects) are, the more (volunteers) want to go,” he said. “People go and spend a lot of money on these mission events, and they come home and feel like they have done their mission work.”
Declining membership and the aging of members also are factors in declining giving to missions like Red Bird, Haggard said.
“I think we offer to this community a unique education that is Christian and small-school based,” Haggard said. “In my mind it is the best thing we are doing as far as changing the future—changing the way people in this community live.”
Donations to Red Bird Mission can be made through the Advance Special No. 773726 and put into any local church offering plate.