Greetings again from the Treasurer's office.
First, I want to express my sincere thank you for your donations in response to Mr. Tkach's letter informing you about our financial crunch.
As you may recall, Mr. Tkach wrote that church income for the first quarter had fallen far below our budget and that we were on the verge of implementing some unpleasant budget cuts.
Although some of the cuts were unfortunately inevitable, the good news is that your financial response enabled us to avoid some of the more painful measures we feared we might have to take.
Many of you had made specific notations on your checks and letters such as "to help the current financial distress."
Your sentiments were most heartwarming to me, and illustrate just how faithful and supportive our members are when called on to answer a genuine need.
Because of your giving, the mail income average for April finished at almost $124,000 a day. This brought the annual average up to $111,000 a day--significantly closer to our budget projection of $112,500.
For the daily mail average to be $112,500 a day at year's end, we know from experience certain months must be far above that figure to compensate for months when income is below it.
Even though the upturn in income may not fully compensate for the dip earlier in the year, it has been helpful indeed and it is humbling to see how deeply so many of you care for your church home, the Worldwide Church of God.
This raises the question of whether we are past the financial crisis of the first quarter. We hope that things are more or less stable for now.
As I said, thanks to your response, we have been able to put on hold some of the planned budget cuts.
But, we were forced to lay off some salaried ministers because of decreased giving in the first quarter (see article page 6).
Thankfully, we don't see an immediate need to make more group terminations, if, as we hope, your giving pattern remains constant. This is why it is so helpful when members commit to a consistent plan of regular giving.
Another financial question on people's minds is, "How well did the Spring Festival offerings do?"
Although the Spring Festival season is past and, at press time, Pentecost is just days away, we do not yet have a clear picture as to how much was donated.
This illustrates problems associated with downsizing on the scale that we have experienced in Pasadena (see Questions and Answers, page 29, for more information).
On another matter, I would like to put in a plug for the Fall Festival. Your Festival registration donation helps offset administrative costs of preparing for the Festival.
Many of these costs are incurred months before the Festival. So by registering early for the Feast, you help us get a better idea of the level of attendance and thus enable a more precise planning process.
Finally, let me share an update of the sale status of the Pasadena and Big Sandy campuses. We have been experiencing a higher level of interest in both properties than we have had in the past.
It appears that many of the less-serious potential buyers have been weeded out of the buying process, and a much higher level of genuine interest in both properties now exists.
We hope that will translate into more concrete good news about their sale in the coming months. We will keep you posted as things develop.
Sometimes it seems that months go by before my Festival offering checks clear my bank statement. Why is this? Is Pasadena just sitting on our money all this time?
Numerous reasons exist as to why it takes your check a while to clear your bank.
First, it takes time for the offerings to be boxed up locally, sent to Pasadena, opened, recorded and deposited in our bank.
It then has to go through several other clearing stages in the banking system before it finally is taken out of members' personal bank accounts all over the nation.
The processing of Festival offerings here in Pasadena has slowed considerably because of lean staffing. The unfortunate fact is that the mail processing department, which at one time had more than 350 employees plus hundreds of student workers, is now down to a crew of just seven.
Yet, we still receive offering boxes from all the local churches. With such a reduced staff, it clearly takes a while to process these offerings.
Please don't misunderstand. We very much need and appreciate the Festival offerings.
The problem is that we staff so that during most of the year we have the fewest possible people to handle the mail. However, when Festival offerings arrive, the small staff is overwhelmed.
We are addressing this problem by using on-call paid and volunteer help.
The goal for the Spring offerings was to have them all processed by May 15 (four weeks after the last holy day). So your checks should appear on the bank statement you receive in June.
One note for the Pentecost offering. It would help processing tremendously if everyone would use the holy day offering envelopes mailed to you. In order to allow you to be properly credited for your donation, we need to process your donation using your personal identification number (PIN).
If you give an offering without putting your PIN on the envelope, we still make an attempt to determine what your PIN is by the other information on the envelope (such as your full name and address), but this takes more time and labor.
If you cannot find the envelope, please use any other envelope that already has your PIN on it. And, of course, if you cannot find a labeled envelope, please use anything else.
Thank you for your Festival offerings. We depend on them for about 14 percent of the budget for the year.
Copyright © Worldwide Church of God, 1998