By Ronald Kelly
By Ronald Kelly
PASADENA—The big news as I write this month is that we begin officially the long-awaited transition to our local-congregation-based financial structure.
On July 10 and 11, the Southwest district congregations began to function under the new plan, followed by the North Central district on July 24 and 25 and the Northwest district on Aug. 7 and 8. Other districts will follow about every two weeks, and we hope to complete the transition before the end of the year.
Changing the way we work
As I have reported from time to time, this new structure will significantly change the way our denominational funding works and will therefore change the kind of reporting we do in the WCG News. For example, with our centralized structure, the denominational budget for the year was projected at $20.5 million in income. Because we were committed to a balanced budget for the year, our expenses were also projected at just over $20 million. For the first six months of the year, we were close to our projections in both income and expenses.
However, as congregations take responsibility for donation processing, receipting and expense budgeting, the flow of funds apportioned to the denomination will be dramatically different. Instead of an annualized denominational budget in excess of $20 million, we anticipate an apportionment income of about $3.5 million for denominational headquarters.
Combined accounting program
During the remaining months of the year, as congregations come on line, we will operate under a combined accounting program, so please understand the numbers will be quite different than you are accustomed to.
Speaking of accounting, a few readers caught an error in last month’s update. I reported an income of $1.362 million as a 1.5 percent decrease from the previous year. The figure should have been a 15 percent decrease—an error in placing the decimal point.
At first I thought about blaming this error on a decimal demon. Then I thought I would cast the blame on the pressure of deadlines by Tom Hanson, WN editor. However, both would be lame excuses, not to mention untrue. In reality, it was simply my mistake, and I apologize for the inaccuracy. If any good comes from a mistake, it is to be more cautious in the future. I don’t think I have made such an error in the past, and I’ll be certain to be more alert in the future.
Now to the financial information for June and the first six months of the year. Member donation income for June was $1.35 million. Income for June 2003 was $1.43 million. That $80,000 difference equates to a decrease of about 5.6 percent. (I hope I got it right this time!)
In addition to member donations, we received about $200,000 in other income. Thus, our collective income was $1.55 million, and our expenses were just short of $1.5 million, so we added back a little to the reserve fund that we had used last month.
Member donation income for the first six months of this year is at $7.77 million, which is a decrease of 7.6 percent compared to last year. However, because of South Orange Grove home sales, we have supplemented our reserve fund during this past half year.
Searching for new facility
We continue to prepare the final about 17 acres of our Pasadena property for sale, and at the same time have begun to seriously search for a building to purchase or lease as a headquarters location. The school that purchased a portion of the lower west campus has graciously extended us the opportunity to lease back the upper three floors of the Hall of Administration for several months. Thus, we are under no great time pressure to relocate.
However, most of our staff would like to move on, and we have found several possibilities to purchase a modest and much smaller facility for our office and archive storage needs. We’ll keep you posted if we make arrangements for a new building.
In the meantime, as mentioned above, our staff is pouring intensive efforts into implementation of the new financial model. Congregational excitement is building day by day. Until next month.
Many members have requested information on how best to make a gift to the Worldwide Church of God, either during their lifetime or upon death through wills, trusts or other means.
If you want to receive information regarding such gifts, the Legal Department of the church is available to aid you in this regard without cost or obligation. Please write Legal Office, Worldwide Church of God, Box 5005, Glendora, CA 91740.
Copyright © Grace Communion International, 2004