Transcript
Good morning church,
We want to take a moment in our service to review our financial health and assess how our collective stewardship of God’s resources is progressing. We do this for a couple of reasons.
First and foremost, it’s an important aspect of our worship and devotion to God. He is the provider of all our resources, and as we learned in our series on stewardship last fall, we are to steward them carefully and worshipfully as we put him first. Secondly, we want to celebrate His provision and have a collective understanding of how we’re doing as a family in the body of Christ.
We plan to do these family moments a couple of times a year. We’re going to do them in September, because we’ve just come through our fiscal year. It ended August 31 and we’re going to do another one in March where we’re halfway through a fiscal year, just so that people have information and know how we’re doing now, last fall, we announced some significant budget adjustments as we were in the midst of the changing media landscape with living truth, the traditional broadcast platform was experiencing declining engagement while while our online engagement was growing exponentially.
So, people were migrating from traditional TV broadcasts to our online platforms. But with that came some financial adjustments to our revenue, and we needed to make operational adjustments in our ministries and our staffing. Over the past year, we have seen staff departures for a wide variety of reasons. Some positions were removed as we were adjusting our headcount. Some people were called to other assignments within the kingdom before we made any adjustments. And then, whenever you go through a season of change, people take time to consider if it’s time for a move prayerfully, and we’ve seen that over the last year as well. The past year has not been easy, but it was navigated with great prayer and care. I was reminded in my quiet time, reading through Mark 6, recently, that you can be following Jesus as leading, and it doesn’t mean that it will always be easy sailing. Sometimes you are obeying his direction, but you’re going through a stormy season, and the wind and the waves start to pick up. But I trust that the Lord is guiding us, and I can say with great confidence that the board and leadership work hard to put ourselves in a posture of listening to what God is revealing, taking great care in discerning his leading and carrying out his wishes and commands.
So, over the last while, some of you have shared letters, emails of encouragement or approached pastors to say, “We’re praying for you in this season,” as we’ve navigated these waters, and I want to thank you for that posture of support. God is faithful, and he is leading and directing us.
In John 15, Jesus reminds us that God is the gardener of the vine, the church, and as the gardener, sometimes he prunes the vine. Pruning hurts, but it only ever has one purpose in Scripture: that they may be more fruitful. And so we say, Lord, have your way in our midst.
Having just completed our fiscal year, I’d like to share a few key data points with you, highlighting how our performance has evolved from September of last year to August of this year. The revenue was just over $6.7 million, and our budget was $6.2 million, so that gave us an operating surplus this past year of $445,029.
Now it’s important to remember that it takes a whole family, an entire body, to make things like this happen, and so over the past year, we’ve had 663 new givers start their Giving journey at the Peoples Church just in the last 12 months. And collectively, there are 2563 giving household units that represent those numbers. Now, these aren’t just line items behind this faithful giving; they are real testimonies of how this support transforms lives, both here in our local church ministries and through our global partners and missions giving.
We have now ended our fiscal year in a surplus position. Whenever we have a surplus, we set aside those funds, and they are held in reserve to weather different giving seasons, as they ebb and flow throughout a fiscal year. And for capital investments, such as the parking lot resurfacing, you have noticed that our parking lots no longer have swimming pools. But it also goes to other capital investments, as we are in a facility that’s over 60 years old, and there’s constant upkeep. Overall, it’s good news. Our church is in a healthy financial position, partly due to the pruning actions we undertook to achieve a balanced budget. And it takes all of us pulling our weight in the church for a healthy family to flourish and grow. And so I want to thank you for listening to the spirits leading in how to steward your resources, and for obeying His direction with your tithes and your faith promise offerings.
Let me close by saying this to those of you who haven’t started your giving journey in your discipleship: If you consider The Peoples Church home and have been blessed by the ministry here, I encourage you to consider your giving journey as well. Tithing isn’t simply about your relationship with the church or about being a mature Christian. Tithing is about your relationship with God. Our giving is to him. It’s between us and Him, and we looked at that last year during our stewardship series. So, if you haven’t stepped into that expression of worship to Him, I ask that you take it into your quiet time. Take that into your prayer time. This week, we see throughout Scripture that we are to steward his resources. And whether you’re studying the Old Testament or the New Testament, we see that we are invited to take a portion of what He’s poured into our lives and return it to him and his ministry (Learn more about giving to The Peoples Church).
It means that we get to participate in what he’s doing. And there’s actually a promised reward attached to that. In Scripture, we see Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount talking about giving, saying, “Your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” So, for those who have been faithfully contributing to the needs of the big family here at The Peoples Church, thank you, and your heavenly Father sees you. And for those who haven’t yet started your giving journey, take that up in your worship time, because your giving ultimately is between you and God, and so it’s a key aspect for us to delight in worship and contribute to what he’s doing.
Let me pray.
Father, as we look back over the past year, we thank you for your faithfulness. We thank you for the resources that you’ve blessed each of us with and how we get to share those in community, for what you’re doing, both here in the city of Toronto and around the world through our global partners, thank you for this aspect of walking with you, and we just pray that you would continue to have your way in our midst. We pray for Stevens now as he comes to open the word Lord, would you give us ears to hear hearts that are completely open, minds that are alert to what your Spirit is saying to us as a church community, we ask all this in Jesus name amen.