Stewardship
by John Casey


I’ve written a fair bit about stewardship in the last few months. One of the points that I feel strongly about regarding stewardship is that it is about the need of the Christian to give, not about the church to receive. There are times, however, when it’s also appropriate to talk about the needs of the church, and this is one of them. So my column today will discuss our current financial situation at Mindekirken.

I’d like to start with a brief word about church bookkeeping – an exciting subject, you no doubt think! But it will be brief, and hopefully useful for this presentation. We have three different main categories in which we group income and expenses for Mindekirken. First is the General Fund, which is what we use to pay our ongoing expenses – pastor and staff salaries, utilities, postage, and all the necessary costs of keeping our church open and running. Most of our income to the General Fund comes from our Sunday offering envelopes, along with mail donations, contributions from church groups, and bequests. Next are the Designated Funds, each of which is set up for a specific purpose and typically receives donations for that purpose. Finally are the Restricted Funds, so-called because they are usually donations or bequests for a very particular purpose or a long-range goal. As an example, we set up our Building Fund as a Restricted Fund during the years when we were raising money for the new addition.

The General Fund is what I’d like to discuss today, because it is our day-to-day lifeblood in the sense in which we have to look at Mindekirken as a business. Without enough income in the General Fund, we end up having to transfer money from other areas, reducing our savings and leaving us at risk should any large, unexpected expenses occur. Historically, the General Fund has often run at a net loss. The last couple of years we have been fortunate to have a pretty well-balanced budget, which has been rather unusual compared with previous years.

Another interesting element is that our congregation’s giving patterns aren’t very well balanced throughout the year (which I’m told is not unusual for churches, by the way). Generally the first few months of each year show pretty good giving, the summer months drop off, the fall picks up, and usually November and December are the biggest months of the year. We have often run a deficit in the General Fund throughout the year and made it up at the end.

This year, as of the end of October, our deficit in the General Fund stands at $25,000. That’s higher than has been the case at this point in time the last couple of years, and that’s what caused me to decide to write this column. I know that many of you reserve some of your charitable giving for the end of the year, and wanted to bring our current situation to your attention for that purpose. Since you receive the Communicator, I don’t imagine I have to do a lot of "selling" to remind you of the many good things that Mindekirken does both spiritually and culturally. I think this church is worthy of your financial support.

At the same time that I’m asking for your donations to Mindekirken, I don’t want to incite a sense of panic, because it’s definitely not called for. I would like to see our operating deficit erased by the end of this year so that we can end 2001 on a strong note and be able to look confidently to the coming year. We have a Pastor leaving and another coming, and financial worries in the midst of this process just make it more complicated. So I look on our current financial deficit as more of a challenge than a problem. The Communicator goes out to over 1100 households every month – if every one of them sent in as little as $20, it would practically erase our current shortfall right there!

To make it easier for those of you who would like to send in a special donation, we’ve included a return envelope for that purpose in this issue of the Communicator. My thanks in advance to all of you for your support, not just financially but in so many other ways as well. We look forward to seeing you at Mindekirken soon!

John Casey

President