Pastor Dan Kiehl's Weekly Letter to the Congregation
October 21, 2020
Dear Oakwood Church Family,
Somehow, in the dividing up of the household workload at the beginning of my marriage, I ended up with the job of being the primary treasurer/accountant for the family. I have always had the primary responsibility for managing our bank accounts and investments. It's not a job for which I feel any particular gifting or passion, but I got the short straw.
One of the things that I've learned through experience in that role is that I need to be as open and transparent with the state of the family finances as possible. It took a while for me to understand how difficult it was for my wife to be somewhat in the dark about how much money we had, how it was being used, and how much was available to spend on different purposes. When she had to ask how much she could spend on something it felt demeaning like she was a child asking her parent for an allowance. Even though I made the deposits and made the payments, she needed to be involved in the process. Money is one of the greatest areas of conflict in a marriage, especially in the early years, and communication is essential for avoiding misunderstanding and resentment.
The same thing is true in the church. Members give their money and other resources to "equip the saints for the work of ministry," and you all should expect honesty and transparency from the leadership about how these resources are being used and how the church is doing in regard to its financial health. I want to take this opportunity to thank our Deacons, who oversee our finances, property, and mercy ministry, and Lisa Smith, our treasurer, for their faithfulness, diligence, and openness in their work. We are blessed with gifted servants in this important aspect of our ministry. They regularly provide exhaustive reports on our financial status, and we should have high confidence in their integrity and skills.
Since 2020 has been such a bizarre year, and churches, along with other organizations and businesses, have needed to make severe adjustments, I thought it might be helpful if I were to give you a brief "state of the church" report in terms of our finances (on a very simple level, as I'm able to understand them!) and how this impacts our ministry now and in the future.
The timing of the pandemic was not great, from our earthly point of view (of course, the timing was the Lord's, so in that sense it was perfect). We had just finished a long, costly addition to and renovation of our church building a year earlier, and we had faced a brief financial crisis in the middle of 2019 as we tried to recover from the building project. But, as usual, you all came through with some extra giving at the end of last year which put us back on solid ground.
But when the pandemic hit we shut down our services for a couple of months, and at this point, we still only have about one-half to two-thirds of our congregation attending services in-person, with the rest participating through the live stream. As far as we know, we've only had a couple of families leave our congregation during the pandemic period, and we've added quite a few families and individuals over the past few months. We have not had an outbreak of COVID-19 cases, and, as far as we know, there has not been significant losses of jobs or income in our families. We are thankful for the Lord's protection and blessing for our church family.
How has this all impacted the church's financial situation? I'll leave it to our deacons to give specific answers to that question, but I can give a simplistic take on where we are. Our expenses have been lower than anticipated this year, due to the many different effects of the pandemic. But giving to the church has also been lower than expected, no doubt also largely due to the pandemic. The result is that our giving is about $35,000 below our expenses at this point in the year. The good news is that we expected to have some kind of deficit this year and had planned to use reserve funds from the end of last year, so we are still in the black. But as we look forward to 2021 and beyond, we can't continue that kind of deficit spending.
As the Session looks forward to next year, we have plans to strengthen our church's ministry in areas where it is needed. Oakwood's vision is to be a healthy, growing, vibrant "forest" filled with "oaks of righteousness" (Isaiah 61:1-3). This means we are all about making mature disciples who are equipped to make other disciples, by the grace of God and in the power of the Holy Spirit. A high priority for us is to strengthen and expand our ministries to our youth. Rev. Ben Lee has been doing a great job with our middle school and high school youth and has been a fantastic addition to our pastoral staff. He has been doing this while only working part-time for Oakwood and enduring a demanding process to transfer his ordination into our Presbytery. It is one of Session's highest priorities to be able to increase Ben's hours to full-time status as soon as possible, making him more available to our youth and the rest of the congregation. We are also anxious to get our Sunday school and other children's ministries back to full operation.
Another aspect of healthy discipleship is outreach into the community, an area that needs to be expanded in Oakwood's ministry. As one example, we are beginning a partnership with the Centre County Orphan Care Alliance to support adoption and foster care in our church and in the community, and you will hear more about this on "Orphan Care Sunday", which is November 8th. You will have an opportunity to give directly to this ministry on that Lord's Day, but we're planning to deepen our involvement in this ministry in 2021.
These are just a couple of things for us to be excited about, as we anticipate our future ministry. But our giving will need to increase significantly in the next couple of months for us to implement our plans and avoid making cuts to ministries. A mentor of mine once taught me that "resources follow vision" - in other words, God's people want to invest their tithes and offerings in ministry that is making a significant impact in the world, for the glory of Jesus Christ. I feel good about my investments in Oakwood's ministry - I hope you all do, too. Please pray with me that the Lord will provide the resources that we need to survive 2020 and grow our ministry in 2021.
On another note, I've been strongly recommending to everyone that I know a daily (Monday-Friday) commentary by Al Mohler called "The Briefing." He addresses important issues from the current headlines and analyzes them according to a Biblical worldview. If you're wanting some guidance to help you navigate the chaos of our culture, check it out -www.albertmohler.com/the-briefing.
