Saturday, April 02, 2016

Financial State of Hilltop -- Pastor Musings -- February, 2016

Annually, in January, various officials report to their constituents on “The State of” something. The President reports on “The State of the Union.” Governor Herbert reports on “The State of the State.” I imagine the various Mayors report on The State of Sandy or Draper or West Jordan or Lehi. I want to take some of your time to report on “The Financial State of Hilltop.” 

The Financial State of Hilltop is excellent. In fact, the overall state is probably the best it has been since I arrived in July, 2012.

The decision to move to one service, made in April, 2012 caused a few families to leave Hilltop. It took us time to ascertain the exact impact of those departures. This was due in part to the strict confidentiality over by-name giving which is a historical value of Hilltop. We are continuing to work on protecting givers confidentiality, while having a numerical feedback to inform your financial leaders of what is happening. This is better now, and we continue to work on it. It is by nature, imprecise without a dialogue element.

This is my fourth shot at budget development since I have been here, and we have done it a little differently every time. I think Tim Strickland and the Stewardship Committee laid out an excellent strategy for the church, and key leaders stepped up and carried the narrative of where we were trying to go quite well. The five brochures created around people, building, worship, programs and missions are in the fellowship hall and are strategically accurate about goals and vision.

Hope and reality led to modifications from our draft budget. We laid out a strategy for a $550,000 budget which would have been a $100,000 increase in spending over 2015. Our 2016 budget will be $505,000 in projected income and spending. We are going to split the difference:  this is a little over $50,000 increase in both income and spending.

A bold element of the budget is that the revenue from the cell towers is not going into annual spending but is being provided directly to the trustees for use with building sustainment. In short, that money will not be used to pay salaries, fund ministries, or pay for utilities. Rather, it will be used to replace and refurbish the building. This step is long overdue and necessary. We hope to withdraw most of the income from the Hilltop Christian School in 2017 for the same reason. We would maintain some cash flow from HCS in order to deal with utilities but, we hope that portion that is “rent” can be spent on capital items, i.e. heaters, air conditioners, carpeting, etc.

Our cash reserves and designated accounts are earmarked to assist the budget with nearly $20,000 of income support. In addition, the Rocky Mountain Conference has been sent a grant request for $30,000 for 2016 to pay a portion of the Minister of Evangelism’s salary. If the income does not materialize, then an expense that is directly related to that income will not be started.

Our forecast for congregational giving is up nearly $40,000. Most of that increase, $35,000, is due to increased pledges. It has been our experience that pledged numbers are generally met. We will keep a close eye on the totality of congregational giving and report to you regularly on how that totality of congregational giving is going.

We plan to spend $505,000 on the building, our people, our programs and activity beyond the local church.

We will meet about 75% of our obligation to the regional and national church. We aspire to increase our funding to RMC to 100% in the future as we have for many years in the past. Like the staff at the conference, your staff is very lean. Only three of us are currently even close to full-time. We will, if the conference grant is approved, go to four in July. I hope we can increase compensation and benefits for all of the staff in 2017. Replacing some of them at current compensation levels would be challenging if not impossible.

Again, the Financial State of Hilltop is excellent. As I indicated earlier, the overall state is arguably the best it has been since I arrived in July, 2012. There are many ministries and community events active in our building. These include our support for Family Promise, multiple levels of Scouting, Alcoholics Anonymous and community music groups. Further, we are engaged outside the building in many ways through the Salt Lake Rescue Mission and our Gospel Choir, just to name a few. Many of these are made possible by extra-mile stewardship, and others are made possible through the gift of time and talent. We have been very generous with time, talent, and treasure this past year. We look forward to another year of growth here.

Selah, Pastor Dennis


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