Dissolving

This week one of the things I get to work on is dissolving the Sellwood Faith Community Corporation. This is simply a financial hoop we have to jump through The Parish is not going anywhere, and both Trinity and SFC are strong components of this new expression.

Back when SFC began the Annual Conference (the regional body of the United Methodist Church) was our financial sponsor. So each month I’d take any offering we had received up to the conference office. One of the conference staff people paid our bills as soon as I got my receipts submitted. Back then we were the only new church start, so it wasn’t too much extra work on the staff. Our plan was to run the finances ourselves eventually.

We had a volunteer take over as our treasurer, but we couldn’t open a bank account until we were incorporated. We weren’t a legal entity. At that point we knew we were joining with Trinity to form the Parish and we hoped to have them be the fiduciary entity, but the folks at Trinity weren’t so sure about this Parish thing and wanted to take it slowly.

By this time there were lots of other new church starts add it wasn’t feasible for the Annual Conference to continue on as the financial body for SFC, so we incorporated with 3 officers, our DS, the SFC treasurer, and the Annual Conference Treasurer. SFC would pay in 1/2 of the salary costs to a payroll account and Trinity would pay the other half. We had clear lines of which program was which and how our finances flowed with the two parties of the collaboration. Over time however the lines have gotten muddier as we have moved from 2 distinct communities in to one blended family! When our SFC treasurer announced he was stepping down it clearly was the right time to finally combine fiances.

Since January 1, 2022 we have had a single Parish budget. It’s so cool to have our finances reflect our shared work. This was evident in person on Easter Sunday morning when what was SFC’s sunrise service was full of people from across the Parish, who have connected with us in a variety of ways.

Over nearly 10 years we’ve had a few different administrative set-ups, but this next step of shared resources and shared accountability is one more step in that maturity and sustainability of this new expression of faith community here in SE Portland.

-Eilidh