By Ronald Kelly
By Ronald Kelly
PASADENA—Member contributions for February came to $1,210,197, down slightly from February of last year. Including other sources of income, the total is down one percent.
Home sales
As you may remember, the church placed five historic family homes for sale late last year. One home sold in January and two more in February. The final two homes are now in escrow and probably will close late in March or early in April.
I have been reporting to you that one of our financial goals this year is to balance our church-related expenses with our donation income. The total donation income for the first two months of the year was $2,171,126. Because expenses were above income, we transferred the small difference from the home sales. That’s O.K. on a temporary basis, but not something we hope to do every month. We usually find January and February are lower income months, and we expect to find a rise in contribution amounts as we head into spring. Otherwise, funds from the sale of homes will supplement our reserve fund and can be used to purchase a new headquarters facility after the west campus sells.
Think tank with field ministers
As we continue our budget planning process, we invited a number of ministers to attend a think-tank meeting March 1. We spent the entire day soliciting input, comments, evaluations, even criticism, to our church budgeting process. The success of the meetings exceeded our expectations.
One thing I have found these past few years in working with fairly high levels of finance is that people have some strong opinions when it comes to the subject of money. For that reason, I have to admit, I had a bit of fear and trepidation about having a large-scale financial study meeting. But my fears were unfounded, and we had hours of candid, but at all times respectful, dialogue.
For these meetings we had three district superintendents, Curtis May, Ken Williams and Ted Johnston; three bivocational pastors, Don Cline, Tim Disney and Frank Ancona; and five salaried pastors, Ron Dick, Mike Swagerty, Dennis Pelley, Richard Parker and Tim Snyder. Many of our denominational leaders and Church Administration staff also attended.
One of our primary objectives was to listen to what the field ministers, representing our membership, sincerely felt about church finances, the new financial model, headquarters expenses and the budgeting process to determine expense allotments. We attempted to gain a perspective on priorities regarding budget categories.
This was all put in the context of a planned reduction in headquarters expenses as we move to the new model later this year. For example, if we were to move the projected staff we anticipate under the new decentralized model into a new facility and keep our programs and expenses at the current level, our expenses would exceed anticipated income by nearly $1 million a year! My task, as controller, is to find ways to minimize expenses to be more realistically in line with projected income.
Painful cuts
But reducing expenses is an emotionally draining experience. It usually means termination of employees, reductions in benefits, downsizing programs and possibly depleting reserves. By discussing almost every line-item budget expense, our task force could easily share with us at headquarters the pain of reducing expenses. For example, if we had to cut funding, would we cut out regional ministerial and member conferences? Or would we stop publication of The WCG News, Bible studies, member letters and booklets? Or would we totally abandon our international missions program?
As you can imagine, none of these would be an easy decision. But you can perhaps readily identify with the angst some of us in denominational finances experience.
Our think-tank meetings were not necessarily planned to reach final decisions, but to receive input and to at least identify priorities in what are the most important services our headquarters can offer the members, ministry and congregations.
Our denominational headquarters exists for the sole purpose of serving our congregations. As such, we want to maintain and fund those services and programs that best help our ministers and members fulfill their part in the great commission to preach the good new of the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the entire world.
The Worldwide Church of God is in a position to do just that. We have more than 800 congregations scattered among the nations. We have members anxious to share the good news. And we have ministry leadership committed to the calling of Jesus Christ.
Sometimes I wish it didn’t take money to do the work of God. But it does. And God has allowed each of us the opportunity to pool our gifts, talents, resources and finances to the greater good that can be accomplished through the organized efforts of the church. Individually, we would be hard pressed to achieve anywhere near the impact that we can collectively. So thank you all for your dedicated service and prayers. Together we are making a difference.
Wills and Trusts
Many members have requested information on how best to make a gift to the Worldwide Church of God, either during their lifetime or upon death through wills, trusts or other means.
If you want to receive information regarding such gifts, the Legal Department of the church is available to aid you in this regard without cost or obligation.
Copyright © Worldwide Church of God, 2004