‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

—Matthew 6:19-21 (NRSV)

Pastor Charley here. A while ago I started a post on here with the title, The Big Turnaround, where I detailed how the financial troubles that often hinder church like ours had finally come home to us. I hinted in that post that several people were going to be looking at the problem and that there would be more to tell.

This is an update on how that process worked out so far.

Also, heads up: this post is about church finance. If that’s interesting to you, read on! If it’s not…well, read on anyway, but I’ll follow this one up with a more faith-focused note in a week or so.

That first post was a little too cryptic. We were resource rich but cash poor for some very simple reasons: a larger portion of our income was coming from pledges than should have. Now, that’s a funny sentence to write, because we focus all the time on the life of faith and how sharing of our time, talent and treasure can work to keep us focused on God in our day-to-day lives. And what church would ever admit it was getting too much pledge money?

That’s not what I’m saying, of course. Experts in the field (thanks Jonathan New at MACUCC, among others) are clear that only 65 to 75 percent of income should come from pledges. We were up around 85 to 90 percent! And we were feeling it. What happens when all you know is how to work from pledges is that you keep hitting folks for more and more, thinking that “if we were all just more faithful about tithing, this would work.” The truth is, we were already faithful about giving, and if you rely so heavily on pledges, when folks move away (or die, of course), your bottom line can fluctuate too wildly.

Just as we say “Time, Talent & Treasure,” for personal giving, in church budgets we need to say, “Pledges, Rental Income and Fundraising.” It’s not as catchy, I know. But by spreading out the percentages better, we minimize our risk.

So now we’re shooting for roughly 75% from pledges, 15% from fundraising, and 10% from rentals, recognizing that those numbers can shift across the percentages as needed. Eventually, I’d like to see pledges decline AS A PERCENTAGE OF INCOME.

I never want to see pledges decline. Just making sure that’s clear.

What does this mean for the folks doing the work? Well, this year we added a fundraiser, an art auction, and it was a success. It made us thousands of additional dollars. Thank you to everyone who worked on it and made it successful. You know who you are. And our Rummage Sale was back to full strength again. Thanks to the rummage team for all they do.

Due to some challenges with a burst water pipe, we’ve not gotten many new rentals in to our space, but smart folks keep bringing prospective people by to consider renting space, and after renovation at least two rooms downstairs are in better shape than they’ve been in decades.

But the point is, to rely on a higher percentage of pledges from fundraising and rental income takes more work from our volunteers. It takes more of your time in the time, talent and treasure equation. Check out this chart from an article about increasing board-member giving:

This was generated to explain board-member giving, but it can apply well to church members too!

There’s less of a need to have such a reliance on pledging when we can spend more time fundraising and securing rentals. But the truth is, it takes time, and a willingness to see the church as something worthy of supporting outside of a pledge and Sunday morning worship.

So many folks have answered the call and stepped up to help! I’m personally grateful and I know others are. Also, all this work has an additional side-effect: as a result of a seeing all this extra work, we received a significant, generous financial donation to the general budget. Now I don’t want to discourage that, ever, but we cannot rely on gifts like that year over year. We need to be sanguine about the fact that churches like ours are ALL doing more fundraising and more renting, now that we’re no longer in the era of “Open the church doors and they’ll come streaming in!”

Finally, there’s another piece of the fiscal puzzle: our Planned Giving Team is busy at work planting the seeds of an Endowment Fund. I’ll have a more to say about that soon (really I will) but for now please know that a small group of committed individuals are hard at work putting together structure, policy and vision for how to move that forward.

Thank you to everyone who made this post possible. We are a stronger community of faith through your efforts. We will be a stronger community of faith next year thanks to the work you’ve done this year, and we will HAVE a community of faith in twenty years because of the groundwork you are laying. I appreciate spending my time around your talents, you are treasures!

In Christ,

Pastor Charley Eastman