First Quarter Financial Update | April 16
A big shout out to Lori Burns and Glen Moore for working so hard to bring us first quarter financial information in advance of our finance committee meeting this past Monday. The financial software we use is tied directly to our membership software. This is common for churches but makes bookkeeping extremely challenging. It takes an intimate familiarity with tools not commonly used in the accounting world to efficiently keep the financial wheels turning. Back in October, we switched to a new version of this software because our provider was no longer supporting the older version. It was basically like starting over. Lori and Glen have worked tirelessly to learn a brand new software while keeping up with our financial responsibilities. It truly is like building the plane as you fly it -- assuming you’d never seen a plane before and had no idea people could soar through the air! I am so grateful for their diligence and perseverance that allows me to give you this update.
After the first quarter of the year, our financial picture merits a cautious response. Our contributions are measurably behind expectations, particularly in our pledged income. We track contributions to our general fund in four categories: giving in response to a pledge, giving from members who didn’t pledge, giving from those not yet members, and anonymous gifts (cash given with no identification). We budgeted more conservatively in 2021 than the pandemic months of 2020 indicated, but contributions remain below our expectations. Overall, our contributions and income are $42,667 behind budget. To put that in perspective, we should be roughly at $300,000 and we are at $257,000 -- so we do face a measurable shortfall.
The good news is that our expenses are also lower than our budget by roughly the same amount. I credit our staff with careful management of their budgeted areas for this gift. We have had some unexpected expenses due to the deep freeze. Our gas bill for February took almost the entire amount we budgeted for this line. To clear the snow from the parking lot was three times as expensive as we expected. These are one time events and couldn’t have been expected. We’ve also had some positives we didn’t expect. We set aside funds each month for our annual insurance premium. There was enough surplus in that designated fund that we were able to forgo those contributions in the first quarter, helping our cash flow. We will need to resume these payments, of course. But, it gave us some cushion. In addition, we didn’t receive the amount for our district apportionments until this week, so that expense took a pause as well. Overall, our income-to-expense was favorable by $1,200.
If you’d like to see a full copy of our first quarter financial report, please email me or Glen Moore. We’ll be happy to send that to you. Our finance committee asked great questions on Monday night: when do we need to cut our budget to preserve our sustainability? Have giving patterns changed for our regular givers? Is this a result of people not returning to our church due to pandemic dissatisfaction? As we prayed through these questions and many more, we agreed that we don’t want a knee-jerk reaction. April has seen a rebound and we know we can’t cut our way to health. With Glen’s help, I am working through the giving pattern information. I hope to reach out to those I know are still connected with us, but whose giving has changed as of 2021 -- either up or down -- in the next month. The finance committee will meet again in June. We agreed that this is the time to re-evaluate our budget if financial trends warrant.
Let me conclude with a word of encouragement. You have been amazingly faithful to our life together through a painfully difficult season. You are to be commended for your faithfulness in paying off our building loan just before the pandemic began. That has been an immeasurable gift this year. Many of you offered your initial stimulus payment to help those in need through our Crisis Response Fund. In fact, your designated giving has gone above and beyond anything we could’ve expected. You are a generous congregation, Faith. You rise to whatever task is put in front of you. At this point, our life together depends on your tithe to our general fund, the commitment we are scripturally instructed to keep to our “spiritual home base.”
I am looking forward to the expansion of our Sunday morning schedule on May 23. We’ll move to two worship services, 9:00 Traditional and 10:00 Contemporary. I am looking forward to the return of more Sunday School classes plus Kids & Youth programming. As we lean into the beautiful gift of increasing face-to-face presence with each other, I am humbly asking you to hold fast in your commitment to our church.
Easter blessings,
Pastor Charla
