There He Goes Again
There he goes! Talking about money again! Yes, it's that time of year. Some summers the income goes down. It has this year. We are not in serious trouble as some ministries are. Our spending has been well controlled over the past 3 years, building a small surplus in the general fund (a bit over $20,000). My preference is to keep the surplus in place this year, because I see some bigger expenses coming next year. So I am letting you know that income is just barely meeting expenses for the first 4 months of this fiscal year.
In addition to the general fund, we have a few more expenses we need to deal with. Dave has challenged us to support Dr. Rudy in Haiti. We will emphasize that offering again on August 1. Our food bank continues to grow rapidly, and we are now out of money in that account. We are currently surveying the food bank users, to get their feedback on this community service that we provide. I'll let you know how that turns out. We'll probably have enough info just before school starts. 11 families have used our food bank this week.
Claude has agreed to lead the Hymn sing on August 1, while I am out of town. Michelle Butler has agreed to play the piano. We have about 20 people who come out each month just to sing hymns. We are going to do a Sunday Evening service at Oaknoll on Benton St. at 6:30 pm on August 15. We will sing a few hymns and I will present a short message. This might be another opportunity for some people to join us in music and God's Word.
The leadership team continues to be in contact with a young pastor in another state. We would like to have him come as associate pastor of discipleship. The earliest this would happen would be next summer. We have formed a basic job description, outlining what we would like him to do. Genesis is also working on a Job description, to see if we both want the same thing, and if we could each come up with half the money. I am telling you way in advance that this will require a major budget shift next year, if we go ahead with it.
