Over the years, I have found the end of April, the end of August, and the end of December as extremely good points to measure a church’s annual financial health. So having had some time to digest the numbers through April, it seemed a good time to give you my perspective.

The following projections are based on our history of giving in order to give us a realistic target by which to measure:

For those of us who are not as visual with numbers, let me interpret these numbers. Our projection was that according to our normal patterns of giving we would be in a deficit of $5,763.68 by the end of April but the actual deficit was only $3,115.53. This is good news except that our total giving was $2447.97 below our projection. The only reason we are in as good of shape as we are is that we have kept our expenses well below our budget. However, there is no guarantee we can do this throughout the year.

The main budget areas that are over budget for this point in the year relate to our children’s and youth budgets, but these are growth areas for the church, so if we could pick areas to be over budget, these are the ones I’d want to pick. The good news is that May giving has been good and is within reach of our target for the month with one Sunday to go. Thanks for your faithfulness in giving! Please, do all you can to be consistent so that we can maintain our ministry plans throughout the coming months.

Bro. David