Ed was behind it all. He bumped into Steve Line, who had been our audit manager for a dozen or so years, first with Coopers and Lybrand and latterly with Grant Thornton. "How're are things going?", Steve had naturally enquired. Ed was honest. "We're in a bit of a pickle, with Church business profits on a downward trend (if there at all), and New Creation Christian Community struggling to pay its way as comfortably as we've been used to. The result is that we're stumped for giving to our charitable Church and Jesus Centres work at the scale we'd like to."
This was nothing new to our Church members, as the whole situation had been carefully explained at Annual Church Convocation in August. What to do about it - for the best - was the tricky question.
Steve, since moving out of 'the profession', has been running an innovative business that recycles carbon fibre. "Hah, I've found that doing the stuff is a lot different from just giving advice," he sympathised. "But, keep in touch." His personalised number-plate Porsche suggested he'd mastered the challenges nicely.
So, late September found about 16 of us, charged with the care of our overall finances, spending the best part of a day chewing things through with Steve. He was direct and penetrating. "So, where would you like to be with things in five years' time?" "Whoa! When I pop along to church there's no chance of getting away without putting something in 'the plate'." "I detect turmoil!" "If you ask me, that's a no-brainer."
We'd done an impressive job of condensing the mass of figures and graphs, getting them into everyone's hands in advance, and thus leaving the bulk of the time for deliberation. Very significantly, we'd also done an exercise to sift through the priorities for saving expenditure so we don't damage emerging future ministry. (That's now gone to 100 wider members for further evaluation.) But - painfully - 2015 budgets are going to have more than a whiff of Chancellor of the Exchequer austerity flavour. Maybe not a bad thing, as we are meant to be a church of the people, and 'community bubble' is an expression you hear around.
Steven's final conclusion was that across all our entities we hadn't adequately trained up our 'succeeding generation', and were feeling the stress. We've set up different Exec meetings to shape our responses across our various bits and pieces -'entities' - (businesses, community house common purses, congregational regional funds, Jesus Centres, central events and departments and so on). Steve's promised to come back and hold a review before the end of the year. I hope we don't flinch.
This was nothing new to our Church members, as the whole situation had been carefully explained at Annual Church Convocation in August. What to do about it - for the best - was the tricky question.
Steve, since moving out of 'the profession', has been running an innovative business that recycles carbon fibre. "Hah, I've found that doing the stuff is a lot different from just giving advice," he sympathised. "But, keep in touch." His personalised number-plate Porsche suggested he'd mastered the challenges nicely.
So, late September found about 16 of us, charged with the care of our overall finances, spending the best part of a day chewing things through with Steve. He was direct and penetrating. "So, where would you like to be with things in five years' time?" "Whoa! When I pop along to church there's no chance of getting away without putting something in 'the plate'." "I detect turmoil!" "If you ask me, that's a no-brainer."
We'd done an impressive job of condensing the mass of figures and graphs, getting them into everyone's hands in advance, and thus leaving the bulk of the time for deliberation. Very significantly, we'd also done an exercise to sift through the priorities for saving expenditure so we don't damage emerging future ministry. (That's now gone to 100 wider members for further evaluation.) But - painfully - 2015 budgets are going to have more than a whiff of Chancellor of the Exchequer austerity flavour. Maybe not a bad thing, as we are meant to be a church of the people, and 'community bubble' is an expression you hear around.
Steven's final conclusion was that across all our entities we hadn't adequately trained up our 'succeeding generation', and were feeling the stress. We've set up different Exec meetings to shape our responses across our various bits and pieces -'entities' - (businesses, community house common purses, congregational regional funds, Jesus Centres, central events and departments and so on). Steve's promised to come back and hold a review before the end of the year. I hope we don't flinch.
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