by St. Benedict's Finance Council
Let us pray together:
Dear Heavenly Father,
My parish is composed of people like me;
I help make it what it is.
It will be friendly, if I am.
Its pews will be filled, if I help fill them.
It will do great work, if I work.
It will make generous gifts to many causes, if I am a generous giver.
It will bring other people into its worship and fellowship,
if I invite and bring them.
It will be a parish of loyalty and love, of fearlessness and faith,
and a parish with a noble spirit,
if I, who make it what it is, am filled with these same things.
Therefore, with Your help, O God,
I shall dedicate myself to the task of being all things
that I want my parish to be.
Amen.
My name Dave Grimes / Tom Dinkel.
The parish finance council and Padre Bob have asked me to address you about the state of our parish.
- We do believe our parish is flourishing.
- Mass attendance has increased steadily over the last four years, since the worst days of the pandemic. Attendance continues to increase.
- The parish is now fully staffed.
- There are a record number of children attending religious education classes.
- Looking over the congregation, we can see people of all age groups.
- There are activities and programs for youth, young adults, adults, and senior citizens.
- Our soup kitchen has served its one millionth meal. Our parish continues to reach out to the area around us.
- We have inherited a beautiful church that is more than 100 years old of which we can be proud.
- We have a strong spiritual foundation on which to build a faith community.
Yet all these good things require resources. That includes money. Our financial situation is not good.
- Increased activity has not led to higher income.
- Inflation means that everything costs more, but the Sunday collection has not increased.
- For several years we deferred building maintenance because of COVID, so now we are playing catch up.
- For example, there are three windows on the south side of the church that need immediate attention.
The parish staff has done a great job stretching every dollar, but we are now at a point where the only way we can reduce expenses more is to slash and cancel lots of activities, or to ignore our buildings until they fall into disrepair. Both of these paths would lead to the ending of our parish.
But we can move in the other direction. We are determined to grow as a parish.
- We do not simply want to maintain buildings like museums, we want our parish community to grow and thrive.
- We have the capability of being a vibrant parish, giving example to others.
- Our faith and our spirituality can grow.
- Our outreach to others can grow.
- Although many groups and activities have been revived since COVID, about half of them have not. We continue to recover.
- Our beautiful church can be handed on to future generations as a symbol of our faithfulness for generations to come.
Let’s look at the numbers. The greeters are now handing out a summary of our financial situation. There is also a copy in the bulletin. I urge you to take it home and take a good look at it. Here, I only want to highlight a few things:
- The church’s fiscal year runs July 1st through June 30th.
- The last fiscal year ended with a $98,000 deficit from ordinary income.
- The raffle and a bequest lowered the final deficit to $67,000, but that is still a lot.
- We had to take the $67,000 out of savings. We can only do that a few more years before it is all gone.
- When it comes to capital improvements, we also ended with a deficit of $101,000. This was because of the many projects that had been deferred due to COVID.
In response to the deficit and current financial situation, the finance council has made the following decisions.
- We will revive and strengthen the fundraising committee.
- We will encourage everyone to look at how they support their church. We have placed QR codes in the pews to set up online giving, which we encourage, as well as about text-to-give. If everyone gave just a bit more, crisis would be averted.
- Thirdly, starting the first weekend in November the greeters will again pass the collection baskets at the offertory. We will reevaluate this decision after the Christmas season.
Finally, the Parish Council is taking the following initiatives:
- We will bring back the St. Benedict Parish festival, not as a fundraiser, but as a fun event for the whole parish.
- We further encourage the parish staff to explore new means of modern communication, including new social media outlets, and to make every effort to reach out to younger generations.
We thank you for all the support you have given to St. Benedict’s Church in the form of your time, your prayer, and your financial support. We pray that the Holy Spirit will continue to inspire our parish community to thrive. Thank you for listening.