Annual Family Budget Meeting
Our annual budget meeting is more like a family discussion of where our budget is headed for the coming year. As we meet the goal is to approve an operating budget and help our members grow in their understanding of how our financial health will develop over the next few years.
It’s Approved
Approved for 2018 Our meeting resulted in a passed budget for 2018 of $252,900. It is our largest ever budget but yet still shy of where we need to be. A church of our size should have an average weekly budget higher than what we do.
What does this mean?
First, it means your staff has worked hard to be responsible stewards of everything we have been given. What we accomplish on our budget each year has always been impressive and this last year is no exception.
Second, we must have a bigger goal than what we have been given in years past. Our process has always been to take projected income for the current year and subtract 10% for a fiscally responsible starting place for establishing next years budget. While this has been the method we used to establish our base operating budget for 2018 the goal must be bigger.
Why must we have such a big goal?
We are growing at a steady rate and so is our town. We are due to higher another full-time staff member and increase a part time employees role to half time. This would require a significant increase to our budget.
Employees are not cheap and in order to maintain and keep talented staff members this is essential. We also have a vision for church planting that will require both capital to plant and launch. We want to be more generous in support of our missions efforts around the globe. We want to ensure our church is offering a top notch ministry to kids and youth.
What would it take to reach those milestones?
The most critical role to reaching the milestone of an ideal budget is everyone in our church understanding the importance of tithing. While we have been blessed by the generosity of so many over the years, we need to stress the generosity of all in the coming years. It also means that we need to pray for the conviction for our church to “come home” with more of their tithe. While we don’t want to discourage generosity outside the church we do want to encourage a greater generosity towards our church first.
So What is the Number?
The ideal yearly budget for a church of our size and in a community similar to our is approximately $325,000. This works out to be $6,250 a week. Our current weekly average is $5,223.00. This is an additional $1027 a week from where we currently are today. But I believe this is a goal our church can reach together and with renewed focus. This is going to be an exciting end to 2017 and an even better start to 2018.
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