Every year I like to write about how things are going with the Parish. Right now, nearly 2 years in to the pandemic, I would say we are holding steady. We have hybrid worship in place and are continuing to refine and improve that practice. Attendance is holding steady in all of our worship gatherings (Sunday Morning, Dessert Church, and Snack Church). We are continuing with Mom’s coffee, and our committees and teams are meeting again, some online and some in person. We are partnering with Bethlehem House of Bread and Manna Table for service opportunities. David Engle and I are participating in a cohort of SE churches, finding new ways to serve our neighborhoods in partnership with ministries around us. These include a chance to support a refugee family with Moreland Presbyterian and new relationships with All Saints Episcopal. Our worship team continues to select interesting and complex themes for worship, such as the Racial Equity and Social Justice series we are in now. New people are showing up and connecting with us and folks even report that they are inviting people to come and see. After our historic vote last fall to become part of the Reconciling Ministries Network our values of welcome and love have never been more clear.
Financially we are in good shape, but sustainability continues to be a concern. Last week we voted on our first Parish wide budget. After 5 and a half years of this experiment we are combining our resources. We now own the Sellwood Faith house on Tacoma street, which is a great asset for us as we think about future clergy being able to live in the neighborhood. While there are costs associated with the house, these are less than the amount we would have to pay in housing allowance and being able to find housing in our neighborhoods is not as easy as it once was!
Our $154,000 budget consists of 4 main sections:
Trinity Building ~33,000
Staff (this includes the Sellwood Faith House costs) ~95,000
Program~10,000
Apportionments~ 16,000
Our building use donations cover nearly all of our building costs. Our parish giving covers our staff costs. The grant we have for 6 more months is about the same as our program expenses. This leaves our apportionment costs unfilled. We have enough in operating reserves to pay our apportionments this year, but if we do that then next year we won’t have those reserves. And we know that the grant covering program expenses runs out next year too.
Our plan as a parish has always been to develop an entrepreneurial mission based business so that our ministry could be sustainable. We had great success with Steele Street School’s pilot year, but the pandemic has made that an unsustainable model. We are exploring other ideas such as building an ADU at the Sellwood Faith House, restarting a new version of Steele Street School, opening a drive through coffee cart that employs special needs young adults, and revisiting the notion of a laundromat. The leadership team is meeting in retreat this summer to do more work around these ideas and to open ourselves to what new ideas God might be calling us to explore.
Until we can find our way forward the leadership of the parish is asking everyone to prayerfully consider how they might increase their pledge for us to reach sustainability in the short term. For this year if everyone who pledges gave $33 more each month we would have a sustainable budget. We know that’s not feasible for everyone, so the finance team is asking people to give what they can so that we might continue the vital ministries we are engaged in here and now.
If you have any questions please reach out to our finance team as listed in the Parish Directory. If you need help locating that let me know and I will steer you in the right direction.
After 2 years of chaos and change I am so thankful that we are here, doing good work and on a path to a long term sustainable ministry that serves many different folks in many different ways. God’s spirit is on the move among us and it is a joy to behold.
-Eilidh
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