Still Need Prayer for me

Hello everyone,

I know that some of you have been praying for me and my youth group, and I have another matter of concern to bring to your attention.

Since I came to the church, I uncovered some budgetary issues that are quite significant.

Attendance at the church has fallen dramatically in the past couple years, and the church was way short on receipts last year. For this year, the budget was apparently cut by about 10%, with the youth budget in particular getting cut by about 1/3, and the youth missions budget cut nearly in half.

That didn't help matters, as we are on pace to fall short of our needed receipts by about 10%, even with the reduced budget, and attendance and giving are still falling.

One of our main problems is that we are overstaffed. The church has been running just under 200 on Sunday morning, but we have a FT pastor, FT administrator, two FT secretaries, one PT music minister, me (a PT youth minister), a very PT librarian, a custodian, a food manager, and a PT music associate/pianist.

Please pray that God guides me to make the right decisions in my future.

 

They're bloated because they have a big church mentality left over from the "glory days."

When they were running 500-600 on Sunday morning, a larger staff was legitimate, but they're holding on when they don't need to do so.

 

I guess that's the difference between an active church an a declining one.

 

I've been talking about the need for evangelistic outreach, and I've even analyzed some data about the evangelistic health (or lack thereof) of the church and made a presentation in staff meeting.

The problem is that it's a senior adult church with emphasis on activities for senior adults and almost no emphasis on outreach. On a Sunday of 200 in attendance, probably 150-160 of them are senior adults. They brought in a younger pastor in 2004 to help with this issue, but they fired him in 2006, and this alienated the few younger families that were attending. They have since left.

As the youth minister (and honestly I have no idea why they even have one with a church of this demographic), I am really limited in what I can do.

 

It's not working as outreach, that's for sure. I've actually had youth tell me that they don't want to come to church because of the unruly ones.

 

And, as a matter of correction, after reviewing the pertinent information, the budget was actually not as large as I thought. It was actually just over 4%.

We are still on pace to miss our budget by a mile, though.

 

Payroll costs and benefits (not including ministry expenses) eat up over 56% of the budget.

 

I'm talking to the pastor today at 4 (central time). Please pray for me.