Vision Meetings {2 of 3}

{This is Post 2 of 3}

We conducted two vision meetings at Calvary over the past week.  Considering the time of year and how hectic everyone’s schedules are – we had good participation, with about 125 people attending one of the meetings.  This is good, but that means there’s a lot of people who weren’t able to attend.  Each meeting lasted an hour, and went pretty well.  I can’t begin to do it justice in this post, but I’ve had several people ask me to relay to them what they missed, so here’s my best attempt.

I broke the meeting down into several sections:

• “What’s Good?”
• “What’s Challening Us?”
• “The Big Announcement!”
• “Christmas Offering”

“What is Challenging Us?”

This is an incredibly easy one to answer – it’s finances.  We haven’t said a lot about this, because we NEVER want money to become the focal point at Calvary.  And yet, the reality is that the General Fund has lagged behind all year, and it has been incredibly challenging.

Now, let me remind you – we’ve had a great year.  If you didn’t read the first post in this series, you should stop reading and go back and read it now.  Things are good at Calvary.  I’m about to tell you what is bad, but you need to hear the bad news in the context of all that is GOOD!  The lack of finances has not stopped our growth as a congregation or taken our focus off of Christ.  And as you will see, though this has been challenging, not all of the news here is bad if you dig under the surface and attempt to understand WHY it’s happening.

A Word of Preparation/Caution:  I’m going to share some real numbers here.  To some, these numbers will seem impossibly large and will be difficult to relate to.  In my first ministry, back in 1995, our annual budget was about $36,000 per year.  So sometimes these numbers seem rediculous to me too.  However, before comparing us to another church or situation, please keep in mind that everything is on an economy of scale.  Our books are always open, and you can request a copy of our financials at any time.  If you have a question, just ask.

This year is the first year since 2005 that we have not seen growth in our General Fund giving.  We have actually seen a slight decline, and this has made it difficult to meet our obligations.  At one point this year, we were about $70,000 behind (this is equivalent to just over 3 weeks of our budget) in income verses expenses, but some of that ground is currently being made up.  We clamped down hard as a staff beginning in June, and have managed to spend 7% less than we had budgeted through the end of November.  That means that we’ve actually spent $70,235 LESS than we had planned to spend.  But even with those cuts, we are still way behind in what we anticipated the offerings would be – so we still have a shortfall of $38,976.44 (as of the end of November).

A few important points to consider…

• We projected Modest Growth:  We built our 2011 budget projecting modest growth in giving from 2010 to 2011.  We did experience 20% growth in attendance, but we actually experienced a decrease of $175 per week in giving.
• Our “Per Capita” Giving Dropped Significantly:  If you take the total offering for a week and divide it by the total number of people in attendance, you arrive at a “per capita” number — or the amount given per person in attendance.  Our Per Capita had been rising steadily for the past 4-5 years, but this year it dropped by $4 per person.

• The giving per person at our Clear Fork Campus is low:  Numbers from our Clear Fork Campus are factored into our numbers.  Breathitt County, where the campus is located, is the 3rd Poorest County in the Country when going by Median Income.  This has had a negative effect on our per capita numbers.
• Our Teen Ministry Numbers are Up:  This is a great thing!  But, like our Clear Fork numbers, this has contributed to the decrease in per person giving numbers.  Those beautiful, wonderful, awesome teenagers don’t give a whole lot.
• The Economy:  During the first few years of the current economic downturn, we did not see any visible signs of the financial chaos in our world affecting Calvary.  This is no longer true.  There are many congregation members who have modified their giving habits in response to challenges and strains that they are facing in their personal situations.
• Kingdom Generosity:  Even during this financially challenging time, we have encouraged our faith family to continue giving outside of the walls of Calvary.  As mentioned in the previous post, our people are giving almost $200,000 per year thru sponsorships with Compassion International.  Our members also continue to financially support a number of great causes directly, and we continue to take up special offerings and contribute to other worthwhile causes over and above our regular general fund giving as God leads us.  Surely this has had an impact on General Fund giving, and yet its hard to feel all that bad about it.
• GO Campaign:  We are just about 20 months into the 36 month GO! Campaign.  The people of Calvary have given 5234 gifts for a total of $499,542.60 during that time.  Quick math will tell you that this giving adds up to over $6,000 per week (this is the average, but much of that was giving in large lump sums early on.  We see about $3000 per week typically).  This money has been spent to launch the Clear Fork Campus; to launch the Vintage Worship Service; to do some Master Planning for the Redwing Drive Campus & the 50 acres at Boonesboro Road; to invest in some much needed technology for the school; to launch the Cairn – our coffee house & teen center in downtown Winchester; and to give $45,000 away to other missions, ministries, and causes.  If this money had gone into our General Fund, we would have no financial problems at all.  In the first year of GO!, this campaign had no visible effect on our General Fund giving – but this year it has.  Some families have made a choice between fulfilling their GO pledges or giving to the General Fund.
• Changes in Family Status:  Cathy Smith, our Administrator, poured through financial data between last year and this year and identified a number of families who had experienced a significant change in status.  Some retired, some lost jobs, some moved away.  These families accounted for approximately $75,000 that was given last year but not this year.
• The Slow Progress of the Cairn:  The Cairn, our downtown coffee house & teen center ministry has taken far longer to complete than any of us originally anticipated.  It turns out that renovating a 150 year old building and opening up two new businesses is quite a difficult thing to do!!!  As a result, we are still absorping costs associated with this ministry in our general fund that we never imagined we’d still be carrying this far down the line.  Our original intent was that we would complete this project as the money came in, and that we would not borrow the funds necessary to complete it.  This has been difficult, and has made it even harder to cut costs.

Next Post:  “The Cairn, The Big Announcement, & The Christmas Offeirng”

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