Our Budget - Committed To Making Disciples
In this Friday news there is a link to our 2024 Budget papers in preparation for our annual congregational meeting [ACM] to be held on Monday 8th April. We have usually held this meeting before Easter but our auditor, because of her volume of work, was unable to get our accounts audited before this last week of March and then there is a meeting of Presbytery to which we want to submit the budget on April 9th – hence the ACM on the 8th. So, even though this will come out on Good Friday and our thoughts are, I hope, focused on our Lord’s death and resurrection, I will in this Pastor’s Update be speaking about our budget.
A Budget that needs support
If you look at the budget [which you can access here] you will see there is a significant $85,000 difference between income and expenditure, a difference budgeted to be covered in this coming year from our reserves. Such a situation is not sustainable, but the added cost has come about because of Session’s decisions, which Board has supported, firstly to reduce the administrative load on our existing pastoral staff by appointing Cat Camilleri as our pastoral administrator and secondly to bolster our capacity to train members of the congregation and support our existing women leaders by employing Helen Bell. We are aware that increasing our budget when we are all being squeezed by higher costs and interest rates seems anti-intuitive, just as I am aware that I could just take the next few months quietly and take no initiatives that mean change and adjustment to our life, but Session has made these appointments because we are convinced they are right and important. I want to explain why that is the case so that you will support them, in prayer, and also with your giving.
A Budget that reflects our commitment to making disciples
Both appointments are right and important because we are committed to preaching the gospel and making disciples as a congregation. We are praying that the Lord will save many – whether we are individually committing to 2-4-2 this year as part of the Meet Jesus mission, praying for two people to be saved for two minutes each day, or praying big prayers in our prayer meeting, that the Lord would open a door for the gospel in our community and grant many repentance and faith in Jesus. We believe the gospel is the power of God for salvation [Romans 1:16-17] and where it is faithfully sown it will bear fruit, there will be seed that bears thirty -fold, sixty-fold, a hundred fold [Matt. 13:8]. We are always seeking to be faithful in making Jesus known but this year we are seeking to be focused on creating opportunities for people to hear the gospel in events and services as part of the Meet Jesus mission. And so we are praying for and planning for the Lord to add to our number those He is saving, for the church is the context in which disciples of Jesus grow as they are taught to do all that the Lord Jesus has commanded.
Both appointments should be seen in that context and serving that goal – making disciples. Cat’s appointment will free up the pastors for their many necessary tasks, including those we hope will demand more of their time in the coming year – for example, following up newcomers, running Christianity explored, and then pastoral visiting as we try and get to know those the Lord has joined to us. Being one Pastor less we are already struggling to keep up with the existing load. And Cat’s appointment by encouraging our teams and helping their leaders train and recruit will help us all serve with the gifts we have in sustaining our common life into which we hope to welcome new people.
Helen’s appointment will equip us in three key areas. Firstly by helping us all share the gospel through regular evangelism training, which some of you have already shared in. Secondly, strengthening our growth group ministry by regular training and support of our leaders. It is hard to exaggerate how important this is for us. Our small groups and their leaders are essential to our discipling of one another. People who are incorporated into growth groups stick, and through mutual encouragement and teaching they persevere and grow. Growth groups are the places where we most readily love and encourage one another, but we are often challenged by not having enough groups for people, and enough options for people’s different lifestyles, and in sustaining our leaders. We need this ministry strengthened. Thirdly, by supporting our women leaders as they support and encourage the women in the congregation. So much of the disciple making that takes place is through the ministry of women in the congregation as they create opportunities for women who are not yet Christian to hear the gospel and as they encourage each other as disciples of Jesus through the different stages of life. From Session’s point of view appointing Helen has been about seizing the opportunity to appoint an able and tested believer whose gifts are ideally suited to our present needs, gifts that will help us become better in these key areas of our common life, areas essential to our ability to make disciples. I realize that not all of us know Helen as well as the many members of Session and the congregation who have had roughly twenty years of partnering with her in gospel ministry and who need no convincing of her gifts, and so in a coming Friday news there will be an interview with her so that those of you who haven’t as yet personal experience of Helen can get to know her a little better. But I am excited by the prospect of her joining the staff team in July because her proven gifts meet these key needs.
Thinking about giving
In the context of our core commitment to making disciples, to doing all we can to save some [1 Cor. 9:22], both appointments are important and right for us, but they can only be made and sustained if you support them with your giving. Talking about giving can make us feel uncomfortable. Some I know, for they have talked to me, are troubled by how little they can give because of their current circumstances. If that is you I want to encourage you by reminding you that we give according to what we have, not what we don’t have [2 Cor. 8:12], so don’t compare yourself with those who have more, and the Lord, who praised the widow [Luke 21:1-4], knows the cost to you of whatever you give. But I want to encourage those of us who perhaps do have more to give, or could have more to give, to take seriously the Lord’s call to store up treasure in heaven by the way we use our money now [Matt. 6:19-21, 1 Tim. 6:17-19], to be like the shrewd steward who used the present opportunity to prepare for the known future, to ‘make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings” [Luke 16:9].
Our Lord’s great gift
It is Easter, a time when we remember the grace of our Lord Jesus that “though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor, so that by His poverty we might become rich.” [2 Cor. 8:9] At Easter we reckon with the full extent, the full cost to Him, of the poverty the Lord Jesus embraced to save us, to make us eternally rich, co-heirs with Christ of the new heaven and earth [Romans 8:17]. It was the shame of the absolute destitution of dying naked on a cross, for which each one us, trusting Him, is eternally grateful. And we will sing, rightly, on Good Friday “were the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering far too small,” that such generous love demands our all, demands us to love generously in turn. In preaching the gospel, in committing ourselves to be a church that seeks in all things to make disciples, we are sharing in our Lord’s purpose in coming into this world and dying on the cross – we are seeking to save, to bring others to share in the eternal wealth, salvation, our Lord embraced the poverty of death to give to us. And so I am hoping you will support by your giving, as you are able, not just these appointments but the whole budget that sustains our common life and ministries, all of which are directed to that end, to ‘making disciples of all nations’, even as you continue to pray that we will all be faithful to fulfilling our Lord’s last command.
Small decisions, great outcomes
Remember, small decisions made by many can lead to great outcomes. If I make the decision to forego one cup of coffee a week I have $20 more to give each month. If three hundred of us make that decision that is $6,000 a month, and over twelve months we have almost covered our shortfall, and some might be able to give more. That is an illustration, not a direction, but small decisions made by many can lead to great outcomes, and the outcome we are seeking is not just to balance the budget but through our life together whose priorities are reflected in our budget to bring Jesus glory as we put into practice as His disciples all He has taught us and others come to know and believe in Him and give Him praise for saving them.
Prayerfully consider supporting the budget, so that whatever you give you give freely and cheerfully as an expression of your trust in and love of the Lord Jesus [2 Cor. 9:7-8]. And come along on April the 8th and support it with your vote, for only those present in the meeting can ask questions and vote. And if you do have questions about the figures and the allocations, let the treasurer know beforehand, because that will produce better answers. Or if you have questions about how this budget supports our core activity, making disciples of all nations, ask me or any of the Pastors or elders, for that is our goal – that many will join us in thanking God for His inexpressible gift [2 Cor. 9:15] because they have heard and believed the gospel amongst us and through our ministries.
