As we come off a season of soliciting pledges to fund the ministries of our church in the coming year, and we enter a season of visioning what our next moves are as a church, stewarding our resources to further our (God’s) mission, we want to write to offer some clarity on our congregation’s financial condition.
Our church has been careful to try not to spend greatly beyond our income, and in lean years have had difficult budget conversations at and leading up to our annual meetings. We have in recent years trimmed our budgets across multiple areas, re-organized our staffing, and reduced our personnel expenses. This last year, you will have noted that we actually spent less than we budgeted for in 2024 for the 2025 year and carried over a surplus of $94,000 into 2026. Despite that surplus in our general operations, we also had some major unexpected expenses - our basement wall was leaking and required a large construction project to repair the wall and the additional aspects of our building which we noted were in need of repair while fixing the leaking foundation!
So how are we doing financially at this point? The short answer is, we are in good shape. Our planning is conservative. Even when our adopted budget doesn’t cover everything in order to be balanced, our income has exceeded our funding plan in recent years.
Last year we had the very large maintenance item (about $150,000) of the leaking basement wall. We paid the bills without gutting our Major Maintenance Reserve by creatively using returns on the investment of our endowment funds (designated for operations and maintenance) that exceeded the goals specified in the endowments. That was a one-time solution. We expect major maintenance repairs to continue as our building ages. Indeed, the current issue of no heat in the sanctuary is going to cost on the order of $105,000. This is no surprise to Trustees. The equipment being replaced has already exceeded its expected life. We have about $300,000 reserved for major maintenance.
We have a very large building with space that is under utilized, all of which must be maintained. The congregation is currently dreaming about how we can use the resource that is our building and land on which our building sits to support the mission of the church in the community. This may include renting out more space to other non-profit organizations, which will spread the large overhead beyond our congregation. It may include using our property in other ways we don’t yet know. We do know that our church is being very responsible with stewarding the resources we have. Our trustees are committed and hard-working. Our council and staff use our resources wisely. We are in good hands and are in good shape.
If you would like to know more about our finances, please reach out!
Darlene Mathias
Treasurer
March 2026
