New Community Groups at Central
March 05, 2025
Financial oversight is an important part of any organization, including churches. At Central we have a “Resource Oversight Committee” (ROC) that monitors the financial health of our ministry. We have had the joyful duty of serving on this committee for the past several years. We meet once a month to review our current year budget, to discuss emerging trends, and to look ahead at future needs and opportunities. It is important work, and we take it very seriously.
We entered this year with unprecedented macro-economic uncertainly, adding additional complexity to our financial oversight. As you may recall, in June Clay shared that financial giving to our 2025 annual ministry budget was behind pace. After increasing this year’s ministry budget by 7% to account for the rising costs of all things, most notably a major increase (nearly double) in our property insurance, our rate of giving was not keeping pace with the new budget level. Since June, we have continued to work on a variety of ways to control our expenses that we thought you would appreciate knowing about.
Proactive Measures Taken
First, our committee has prioritized a reevaluation of our 2025 property insurance coverage. We know many of you are struggling with similar dynamics in your own businesses and residential properties. Since early this year, our committee has been working with a new insurance broker to identify better property insurance options. We are very grateful to report that our work is bearing fruit. The full benefit of that work will not be realized until 2026, but even this year we expect this work to net us some modest relief in terms of 2025 ministry expense costs. The property insurance landscape is increasingly challenging to navigate, and nothing is yet certain for 2026, but we are encouraged by some of these recent developments.
Second, our staff team is working extra hard to further curtail expenses this year. They always do a great job managing within their respective budgets, but this year they are applying an extra measure of scrutiny to every dollar spent. Unless an expense is essential for conducting our current year ministry plans, we are holding off on “would be nice to have” ministry expenditures.
Third, our Human Resource Oversight Committee (HROC) is helping us to save money this year by coming up with creative strategies for replacing staff if/as they leave our team. For example, our beloved Business and Project Manager, Lisa Roth, recently left for a new opportunity at Covenant Seminary. Rather than replacing her, HROC has realigned Lisa’s essential duties with other staff members. In addition, HROC will continue to look for ways to gain efficiency in other areas across our staff team. It is not an ideal strategy, but in our current budget condition it is an important part of keeping expenses as low as possible while not compromising core functions of the church.
Giving Status Since June
Related to giving since June – we have gained some ground since Clay’s update, but we are still lagging where we need to be. As of August 31st, we have received $2,193,589 toward our total annual budget of $4,693,000. On the upside, this is slightly ahead of where we were in 2024 at this time. But on the downside…it is not keeping pace with our 7% budget increase for 2025. We are about $200,000 behind where we planned to be at this point. We still need help in catching up.
It is important to share this with you now. As most of you know, December is traditionally a very big month for us financially, as it is with most non-profits. We typically receive 25-30 percent of our budget in December, and we plan our budget around that. If our rate of giving over the next few months does not catch up, it will put extra pressure on December. The Lord is faithful to meet our needs, but we’d love to avoid adding extra pressure to this year’s December goal if possible.
Call to Action
With that end in mind, we would like to invite you to review your current giving commitment for 2025 and prayerfully consider increasing it by 7-10 percent. Each of us on the ROC are committed to increasing our giving this year in like manner, and we hope you will join us. If we all join in together it will make a really big difference.
Thank you!
2025 Resource Oversight Committee Ruling Elders
Pat Stark, Ruling Elder
John McGowan, Ruling Elder
Victor Kats, Ruling Elder
