God is Faithful!

The economic downturn has affected people and organizations of all kinds. Churches are no exception. But the economy is not our source, God is! Government bailouts are not our source, God is! Even our jobs and retirement accounts are not our source. God is! And God is faithful and God is able.

Blog readers who attend Trinity Church will know that we entered December projecting a shortfall of approximately $56,000 for 2008. We would be able to pay all our current operating expenses, but we were way behind in our missional promises and obligations.

Similar situations had occurred in the past. The solution had always been to have the chair of the Finance Committee make announcements in church every Sunday begging for funds. Not surprisingly, nobody enjoyed these, especially the chair of the Finance Committee. So part of our Consecration Sunday stewardship campaign last April was the decision that we didn’t want to do that again.

Instead, starting the first Sunday in December, we put written accounts of our situation in the bulletin each week. Sometimes we remembered to draw people’s attention to them, sometimes we didn’t. And two weeks into December we had made up $20,000! But we still projected a shortfall of $36,000.

That’s when we really started praying. And we shifted the focus of our prayers. Instead of asking people to pray about their own level of giving, we started asking them to pray that God, with his infinite resources, would meet all our needs.

Preliminary calculations on January 2 indicated that our shortfall had been cut to under $6,000. Praise the Lord! That was a major shift! And out of an annual budget of over $500,000, that $6,000 did not seem very significant. But from the perspective of a missionary out in the field who might be really depending on support from Trinity, that could be very significant indeed. We really didn’t want to leave anyone hanging.

So the Finance Committee decided to extend the deadline for 2008 missions giving to Sunday, January 11.

Sunday morning, January 4, the amount needed remained at just under $6,000. By the time the announcement was made in the beginning of the first service, half of that had been made up! At the end of the 11:00 service the amount was less than $2,000. By Friday it was down to just over $900. And by the time the second service started yesterday, January 11, the entire shortfall had been made up. All our 2008 expenses, including some rather hefty unexpected ones, had been covered. All our obligations to the denomination for their missions and other work had been covered. And all our goals for giving to our own Trinity missionaries, local and around the world, had been met. All this is in addition to several thousand dollars that was given off-budget through the year for a variety of missions projects. Hallelujah!

Yes, the economy is bad. Yes, there are people in our congregation who are looking for jobs, or additional jobs. But God is good. God is able. God is faithful. And God’s promise always holds true, for individuals as well as churches: Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you as well (Matthew 6:33).