Historic Philadelphia

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Above: The Board of Pensions president
shares the Board’s vision with a
church representative.
COURTESY OF CRANE PHOTOGRAPHY, INC.
Below: The Board of Pensions offers
personalized customer service, with a smile,
to members.
THE BOARD OF PENSIONS OF
THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH (U.S.A.)
COURTESY OF CRANE PHOTOGRAPHY, INC.
The Board of Pensions of the Presbyterian
Church (U.S.A.) traces its beginnings (1717)
very nearly to the founding of the City of
Philadelphia (1682). The first predecessor fund
was organized, in fact, just eleven years after the
Presbytery of Philadelphia was formed in 1706.
The Fund for Pious Uses was formed in
1717, funded with £18 from offerings and
donations. That fund was intended to support
frontier missionaries and provide for their
widows and children.
From that modest beginning, the plan has
grown to more than $6.5 billion serving more
than 54,000 members, pensioners, and their
dependents in 1999. The church views the
Board of Pensions as an extension of its ministry,
providing for clergy, lay people
employed by the church, and dependents.
The Board is charged with “the design and
administration of a comprehensive program
of retirement, death, disability, medical, and
optional benefits for church employees, both
ministers and laity, and their families while
being guided by the Biblical principles of
community and stewardship.”
Further, as an integral part of the community
of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Board of
Pensions is committed to fulfilling its mission by
offering programs, which are responsive to the
changing needs of the church community and
flexible in meeting the needs of a diverse community
of faith; responsible, balancing good
stewardship of the community resources, both
financial and human, with personal accountability;
affordable and accessible to the church community,
including congregations, church entities,
and church employees; and valued by its members
and affirmed by the church community.
The Board carries out its ministry to the
church’s servants by administering the benefits
plan for ministers, missionaries, and lay
people so that they can accomplish their mission
of doing God’s work, secure in the
knowledge that their benefits will be there in
times of need. The Board fulfills its mandate
by providing and protecting the members’
medical, retirement, disability, and death benefits.
The Board responsibly and prudently
manages the financial resources and investments
that fund members’ benefits.
The housing programs were initiated in
1883. Over the years this program has provided
both physical accommodations and financial
assistance for church workers’ housing
needs. The assistance programs address issues
that are beyond the provisions of the Benefits
Plan of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
These issues include supplements to inadequate
pensions, grants in times of emergencies,
and assistance with special care needs.
After its beginnings in the Fund for Pious
Uses in 1717, another attempt to organize
benevolence for ministers and their families was
the Widows’ Fund, established in 1759 by the
HISTORIC PHILADELPHIA
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