Eastiew Community Church
Eastview Community Church

Today at Eastview

Your Challenge, If You Choose to Accept It: A Statement from Council

Steve Dick and Philip Wiebe - 2008-09-29

For those who missed it, make sure to read Marc Neufeld’s excellent recap of the 2008 ABM here, as it explains much of what will be discussed below.

When the Eastview membership in attendance at yesterday’s ABM voted to amend the 2009 proposed budget, it was a choice they made that will have much more serious ramifications than simply organizing numbers on a page in a different way.

To quickly recount what happened, the church council presented the gathered membership with the first proposed deficit budget in its history (meaning the budgeted values would see Eastview ending the year having spent more in expenses than it generated in revenue).

In the past, budgets had been presented where the revenue numbers had been picked based on what would balance what we intended to spend. Though we routinely failed to meet those numbers, we also paid out less (due to open staff positions and more tightly-controlled spending) resulting in rather artificial surpluses, where God’s grace and provision made up for unrealistic budgets.

However, this year council decided to use a revenue number that more accurately reflected a number we could more likely expect to see based on the trends to this point. As a result of recent drop-offs in attendance, we felt the church needed to see the reality of where current levels of giving and ministry spending would leave us.

As church treasurer Erika Fenske so capably explained, that leaves three options for balancing such a budget. The church can choose to 1) increase the money we bring in by approximately $XYZ,000 to match the money we’ll spend; 2) decrease the money we intend to spend by $XYZ,0000 to match the money we bring in; or 3) some combination of those two options that meets somewhere in the middle.

What became clear over the course of the ABM was that the Eastview membership was not going tolerate the idea of cutting back on ministry in the name of matching our revenues. And so the only option that remained would be to increase revenues.

The membership could have left the budget as is with the obvious hope that more money would come in than was projected, thereby bringing balance. But instead, the gathered membership passed John Thiessen’s motion that we budget for revenues to match the expenses we anticipate.

Now this is no idle move. Despite an assurance from the Property & Finance committees that, even under a deficit budget scenario, they wouldn’t allow Eastview to fall into the projected level of debt, Eastview’s members decided instead to increase the budgeted amount of giving to meet our expenses.

Essentially, in doing so, church membership committed to a plan that requires the congregation’s offering to increase by 20%.

Now, we should make it clear at this point that Eastview’s philosophy is still (and will always be) that each person should give cheerfully as the Lord leads them, not out of some sense of obligation to a budget or based on any mathematical formula.

However, at this meeting, Eastview’s members stated that they were willing to rely on God to make up that 20% increase. The comments made during the meeting suggested that members were willing to dig a little deeper and trust God to increase the numbers of contributors in the congregation, all so that no ministry would be asked to sacrifice effectiveness for the sake of finances.

So this Sunday, all Eastview members will be able to vote on this new budget. As the membership at the ABM requested, you will have the opportunity to vote on whether to take the challenge: The challenge of relying on God to reverse the trends, to show us collectively where we can offer up more, and to grow our congregation in numbers and spiritual maturity, so that nickels and pennies don’t get in the way of His work continuing through the members of His church.

As members of Council and Property & Finance expressed at the meeting, they do not take this challenge lightly, but we are blessed to have a God who loves to give His children good gifts, and we look forward to joining with the congregation in meeting this challenge, if we choose to accept it.