By Ronald Kelly
The financial picture for the WCG is tracking pretty much according to projections.
Our regular member donations for May were a little more than $1.9 million. Our festival or seasonal offerings were more than $1 million for the month. (Note: even though most of our congregations collected festival offerings in late April, our mail reading staff tabulated and banked much of those funds in May. Thus the majority of the spring festival offerings are counted in the May statistics.)
Income for January through May from all sources including estate donations as well as PTM income and donations is now at $11,691,145. That's just a tad more than the $11.4 million we projected for the year-to-date.
Your regular and dependable donation pattern has helped us with our budgeting process a great deal this year. Member donations, coupled with the Big Sandy property sale, have made it possible for us to plan the 2000 budget without any major decreases in projects.
Of course, we are operating on a budget that will reduce our reserve fund by about $6 million by the end of the year so we won't have to cut employees. So far in 2000, we have had to take almost $3 million from reserves.
Perhaps the next major concern for church finances is the location of a new office facility in Southern California that will be ready when the property sale concludes. Our prospective buyers, Legacy Partners, are still working on their plan to close escrow before the end of the year. Of course, that means, when escrow closes, we will need to move fairly quickly to a new facility.
Let me share our concerns with each of you and solicit your prayers for God to direct our paths. To have a facility ready for occupancy in December or January, we need to locate a building and negotiate the lease or purchase arrangements.
A certain amount of construction and renovation will be necessary. If the building were to be ready by December, renovation would need to start by July or August at the latest.
Yet we don't want to arrange financing for a new office facility until we are near the close of escrow on the Pasadena property. If the Pasadena sale could not be completed as quickly as we hope, we could have a period of overlap where we would be paying on a building at the same time we were completing the sale of the main campus. Needless to say, these kinds of decisions are hard on the nervous system.
Hardly a day goes by when we are not praying specifically for God's blessing and direction in the sale and relocation process. And the primary consideration in all of this is to make possible a financial restructuring that will direct a flow of funds back to donating congregations enabling each to fulfill a local outreach mission and evangelism program.
We are hard at work with plans for this financial restructuring. I discuss the overview of a future church financial structure in our district conferences. Hundreds of members have attended these conferences and have been motivated and inspired, as we look ahead to wonderful and exciting opportunities for service and growth in our local congregations.
We deeply appreciate your patience and generous support as we move toward our goals. It seems every month the pieces of the puzzle are coming together and the picture we see emerging is certainly one we can all be excited about. So keep up the good work.
Statement of Income and Expenses for WCG and PTM combined for May 2000
For the Month For the Year-to-Date
Income
Donation Income $ 2,938,768 $ 9,928,238
Other income (17,737) 1,762,907
Total income 2,921,031 11,691,145
Expenses 2,881,127 14,686,898
Net gain or (loss) to bank reserves $ 39,904 $ (2,995,753)
Copyright © Worldwide Church of God, 2000