A special fund has been set up to assist clergy with direct financial support to clergy and their familes when a desperate need does arise. The Clergy Sustentation Fund is a means to care for our clergy and families in need tangibly. Your gifts become signs of hope and grace in difficult times.

Most of our clergy do not earn the money others in the private sector earn. Life can throw everyone curveballs. When clergy find themselves in a crisis—facing a medical situation, natural disaster, or caring for immediate or extended family—they find that limited savings and resources will not cover the pending expense.

We do not want this to happen to our faithful servants. We want to make sure clergy are taken care of and honor their faithful service. The Clergy Sustentation Fund grants emergency and hardship assistance for active and retired Dakotas United Methodist clergy and families. Any clergy experiencing financial need can request funds, which are approved by the Bishop and Cabinet.

Here are some examples of how these funds have been granted. After a typhoon in another country, funds were provided to a Dakotas Conference elder to travel to locate and assist extended family members. 

The process of receiving an organ transplant can be excruciating; funds were distributed to a clergyperson to travel with their spouse to a significant medical center several times before the transplant occurred. 

Imagine being thousands of miles away from aging parents when they face a medical emergency or the death of their spouse. Clergy persons have been granted funds to travel to their parents in need.

The Clergy Sustentation Fund is part of the 2024 Miracle Offering. Each year, churches and individuals in the Dakotas Annual Conference demonstrate their love for God and their neighbors through the Miracle Offering presented during worship at our Annual Conference Session.

 The Miracle Offering will be divided among the following recipients: the 31:8 Project, Abbott House’s Bridges Therapeutic Foster Care, recovery ministry grants, and the Clergy Sustentation Fund.