February 1, 1970, Page 39Buy Reprints
Riverside Church, which dis closed its financial assets in en dowments and its physical plant for the first time this year and said it was more than $100‐million, is having trouble meeting its budget for activities carried on inside its building.
A proposed budget for 1970 of $475,000, according to church officials, was cut back to $445,000, and the church is still $20,000 short of the lesser goal.
The question of the church's assets became an issue last spring when James Forman, who was asking for “repara tions” to black Americans from the churches, chose the massive structure on Riverside Drive and 120th Street as his first target. The “reparations” were demanded to make up for ills suffered by Negroes at the hands of white society.
He demanded that the church, which had never made known its total worth, make a full disclosure and then contribute 60 per cent of its annual in Came from endowment to “black economic development.”
The church refused to com ply, but in December it issued a supplement to its treasurer's report listing for the first time the replacement value of they building, which was financed largely with contributions from the late John D. Rockefeller Jr. —at more than $86‐million.
Total endowments were put at $18‐million, bringing an an nual income of $1.3‐million. However, most of these funds were expressly restricted to use for maintenance of the building, the only real estate owned by the church.
According to Victor Z. Brink, president of the church's board of trustees, “Mr. Rockefeller firmly believed, as a matter of principle, that the expense of the church program should be provided by the current contri butions of members and friends of the church.”
Some of the church's ex penditures include the financing of a ministry for urban affairs, a Hispano‐American ministry, educational and athletic pro grams open to the Harlem com munity, and Radio Station WRVR.
Ironically, the church is hay Ina trouble meeting its budget of less than half a million dol lars for programs conducted in side its valuable structure.
One reason, according to the pastor—who points out that Riverside is in a better position than many churches that are hard‐pressed to meet even the cost of building and repairs—is that many of the programs are too liberal for the congregation.
Earnest T. Campbell, the chief minister of the church, also attributed the church's problems to shifting middle class populations in the city and the problem of rising prices.
He mentioned two church programs of particular contro versy that may have caused a adownturn in contributions: the use of a chapel in the church for a continuing antiwar protest by an outside group and the activities of the Black Christian Caucus in the 3,400‐member congregation.