Budget 2015 — Q & A (Updated 24 Nov)

Church Family Meeting — Sunday 7 December (After Worship):  Vote on Budget 2015

At yesterday’s Budget 2015 Q & A session, the Finance Committee and I fielded and answered questions regarding next year’s budget.  Below you will find brief responses to these and other questions.

Why can’t we include our “local missions partners” (i.e. Stadtmission, YoungLife, Simsek) in this year’s budget?

Our Budget 2015 is based on our actual giving.  As a result we have had to make many difficult choices including cutting out of our budget ALL of our non-institutional missions partners.  Our “tithe” goes to our institutional partners.  Our plan is to collect a Finance Committee approved special missions “offering” of 9,800 Euros to be given to our European Baptist Federation church-planting partners.  Other missions giving will be financed the same way.

Are there other means of collecting missions funds besides a “special offering”?

Yes.  Although our fundamental commitment is to the biblical method of “tithes and offerings,” the leaders are exploring other ways of funding our ministry and missions and will coordinate those through the Finance Committee.

What was the 3% vote about in October?

In order to limit our expenses and to improve our financial position, the Ministry Council at the recommendation of the Finance Committee asked the church to stop our 3% of receipts contribution to the Nordic Baltic LEAD Team (Church Planting) fund at the IBC (Convention).  The church voted to discontinue that payment for the 3rd and 4th quarters of 2014.  The Budget 2015 reinstates that 3% but reduces the contribution to the IBC by that same amount.

Our personnel expenses are the largest percent of our budget.  Have we consider reducing our staff salaries?

It’s true.  Our personnel expenses make up over 60% of our budget — the recommended threshold for a church our size.  Our Staff Relations Committee (SRC) has reviewed the figures and asked that we freeze salaries at the 2014 level and that we do a task/time analysis to make sure that we are focusing our resources on priority needs.  At this time, the SRC is reviewing the staff job descriptions and assignments and will be bringing recommendations to our staff.

 

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