Since it is the beginning of the calendar year, now seems like a good time to again thank each of you for your financial support and your prayers on behalf of the church.
It is especially timely to thank you because income in December held up relatively well, and thus followed in the tradition of previous Decembers.
For details of our income and expense picture for December, please see the accompanying report. As you can see, daily mail income average for the month was about $163,364, resulting in yearly daily average mail income of about $156,524, a bit over our projected amount of $150,000 average per day.
Nonetheless, we have run a deficit of expenses over income of somewhere between $1.5 and $2 million excluding depreciation. Note that the books aren't fully closed for 1996 yet, so the amounts are approximate.
We had a deficit because we lowered income projections numerous times throughout the year.
Although we attempt to lower expenses immediately when we project a lower income, in actual fact it takes time for expenses to lower and thus we can overshoot, as we did in 1996.
For the most part, this deficit was made up through the sale of various assets, so our reserves were not drawn down. This is the good news.
The bad news is that, obviously, with the sale of assets and the budgetary loss, our net worth has declined.
Compared to 1995's sizable loss of almost $20 million, 1996's loss is encouraging.
However, yearly losses cannot continue indefinitely, and it is imperative that our income stabilize and that our expenses in 1997 be less than income.
This, of course, has been the message I have been relaying in this column each month.
As already reported, we plan a balanced budget for 1997. It is hard to project income precisely, but we nonetheless have chosen a target of about $122,000 average mail income per day, calculated from the least of what we expect to have received by the end of 1997.
This projection is lower than 1996's, not because we don't hope for stable or increasing income, but because we must cut expenses to under what we will receive.
I am sharing the number with you because it will appear on future reports. It is, of course, our worst case scenario, and we pray for the $156,000 average per day we received in 1996, or even more.
Thanks again for your prayerful and financial support.
Jan. 21, 1997, Worldwide News, page 6.
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