My Dear Sisters and Brothers at Christ Church,
The tenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew tells us to "...be wise as serpents and innocent as doves." Ever since my two children started keeping corn snakes as pets, I've wondered about this. The snakes who live upstairs from me, Speeder and Rosie, don't seem wise. They literally prove the reptilian brain theory of evolution. The serpents sit there, coiled up doing nothing, for days and days. Until Priscilla and Jackson dangle a frozen mouse (mousicle?) in front of them, which they eat without even bothering to chew. The snakes also try to eat the kitchen tongs holding the mouse, the fingers holding the tongs, or even their own tails, once they scent a mouse. So perhaps the bar for being "wise as serpents" isn't very high.
I often think of Jesus' challenge to the disciples when I balance the spiritual side of church life with the administrative side. I love the praying, singing, gathering-in-love "dove" stuff. The serpent stuff takes more discipline.
Today I want to share some of the "serpent" thinking that goes into the mundane process of church budgeting. As we all know, inflation is high all around us. That is driving up costs for Christ Church. Specifically, we're facing a 6.7 percent cost-of-living allocation from the Diocese and a 5 percent rise in health insurance premiums. Maddeningly, in 2023 the Diocese is also asking all the churches to pay a 17 percent assessment on our PPP loans from 2020. Our PPP was $66,000, so that works out to around $11,000. In the spirit of being wise as serpents, we are preparing to dispute that because it seems ridiculous. Fortunately, our new five year lease with Heat Start will generate an additional $28,000 in 2023. But that doesn't cover the gap between rising costs and rising pledges. In our convoluted math, we need an approximately ten percent rise in pledging to cover our projected budget. This means our Finance Ministry and vestry will need to be creative. Some options include:
Cut the budget wherever possible.
Dispute the PPP percentage the Diocese is asking for.
Not follow the Diocesan COLA guidelines.
Another fundraising push as we wind up our "Who is God calling you to be?" campaign.
Reach out to our many newcomers to become pledgers. New parishioners typically don't start pledging regularly for a few years. Longer-term parishioners tend to be more generous than newcomers, so when they die or move away, it takes a number of newcomers' pledges to compensate.
Approve a deficit budget, which we'd supplement with reserves.
Charge for communion. Just kidding! We gave that up 500 years ago.
Draw more on investment income.
Find creative sources for new revenue, such as leasing our kitchen to a caterer, hosting a social fundraiser, etc.
Some combination of all of this.
In the next few weeks our Finance Ministry will sketch out various proposals. We'd love your creative ideas if you've got any, so please reach out to me. Together, we'll figure this out. Together, we'll continue welcoming all kinds of newcomers. Together, we'll follow Jesus' invitation to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
In the meantime, let me know if you'd like to look after my kids' snakes while we're on sabbatical next summer. Think of the wisdom you could acquire!
Peace,
Stephen
