Church,

Thank you for continuing to partner was us over this past year, even in the most precarious of circumstances.  As Ricky preached on Sunday, the kingdom of God never stops increasing and moving forward and we are very grateful for your partnership that allows us to continue to move forward together in the small slice of God’s growing kingdom that is Cross of Grace Church!!  We couldn’t do it without you!! 

Because of the limited amount of people that can currently attend church in person and the difficulty of trying to do a financial presentation through video, we decided to write up a financial update for those of you that are interested.

Income

As we all know, the last 7 months have been unlike any other we’ve experienced as a church.  However, before the pandemic hit, we were still experiencing regular growth in church attendance and by God’s grace an increase in overall giving as well.  Due to your faithful giving during this difficult season, overall giving of the church didn’t decrease and therefore we had an increase in income compared to last year as a result of the continuing growth of the church.

This income figure also includes special ministry giving like the India Relief Fund, but does not include the NEXT project (children’s ministry addition).

Expenses

A growing church requires a growing staff to support it, so this last year we added Teresa as a full time Administrative Assistant/Children’s Ministry Director/Media staff member.  Little did we know how necessary this would be when but a few months later we had to totally reimagine children’s ministry as well and increase our online presence to account for all of the remote ministry that needed to be done during the pandemic.  We also felt that God was leading us to take on Andres Contreras as a full time pastoral intern to prepare him for full time pastoral ministry in Latin America.  Adding two full time positions as well as compensation reviews for current staff increased our salaries about 77k for the year.  We also had an increase in outside ministry giving with the India Relief project in addition to the other outside ministries we already support.  We did experience reduced spending in the church ministry category due to Covid as we could no longer do the ministry events we normally host. Otherwise, all of our other spending categories remained mostly unchanged.

Projects

Our main projects for this year were finishing up some requirements from the city associated with our repaved parking lots (yes, these things take forever to finish) and also all of the preparation work for the NEXT project including all of the architectural design and planning.  Also, we had to pay to replat the property into two separate lots to save us from having to spend 30-40k to pave sidewalks and install landscaping along the street of the upper vacant lot. 

Savings

After the budget spending for the year and the capital project expenditures we were able to still save about $130,000!  We were intentionally watching our normal yearly spending knowing that we would need to save all of our “pennies” for the NEXT project.

NEXT Project

Coming into this year, we had already saved about $320,000 toward the building project.  The NEXT fundraiser has raised approximately $140,000, so those two amounts combined with our savings totaled about $590,000 for this project.  The final bid price was about $583,000 so the Lord has been faithful to help us fulfill our goal of doing this project with no new debt!  We anticipate the final cost of the project to be closer to $600,000, but there is still money coming in from pledges and God is continuing to provide monthly surpluses that will allow us to meet that number.

Covid

As I mentioned above in the “expenses” section, we’re saving money during the pandemic since we haven’t been allowed to host our normal ministry events, but we have been in faith that we can continue forward with our full staff without cutting back hours,  Any reduction in workload due to hosting fewer ministry events has been more than replaced by the additional labor it takes to conduct everything online as well as continue our in person Sunday services.  We are in faith to continue in this manner throughout the rest of the pandemic as God leads us. 

Mortgage

We were able to pay down our building mortgage another $37,000 last year, leaving us less than three years to pay off the building!!!  Yay!!

Upcoming year

Our operating budget for the upcoming fiscal year isn’t substantially different than last year.  Our salaries will drop somewhat with Andres moving, but the addition of Chuck as the deacon of community groups will offset some of that money.

Those are the major pieces of our current and future finances.  As always, our Financial Accountability Committee reviews all of the details of our budget spending and the reviews the pastors salaries.  If you have any specific questions, you are also welcome to contact me at any time.

Todd