Introducing Parish Development
By Mary Patestas & Jim Gabriel
Do you feel as though you are constantly being asked for financial support
from the Church? Are you not
easily able to differentiate between the requests? If you answered yes to either or both of these questions,
you are not alone.
The
Church of the Holy Resurrection offers many ministries to our members, friends
and neighbors: Worship,
Philanthropy, Youth activities, and support of both the Orthodox and Long
Island communities are just some of the areas where we focus.
All
of these programs require plenty of resources to operate, a combination of our
time, talents, and financial support. While this may be easy to understand,
other information is not provided to put the entire picture into perspective. For instance:
· What does it
cost to run the church each month?
· How big is our
mortgage?
· How do we pay
for emergency expenses?
· When will our
iconography begin and when will it be completed?
· Why is the
dinner dance or the golf outing so expensive?
· Who funds Youth
and Philoptochos activities and programs?
· When will our
gym be built?
The
Church is our spiritual home and as ‘one family’ we should know the answers to
these and other questions. All of
us should be working together to achieve the same set of objectives. As a
result, we are introducing a Parish Development program.
The
objectives of the Parish Development program are quite simple:
· Clear and concise Financial Strategy: Develop and communicate a single strategy to our
community, so that we will be able to better focus on Stewardship as the single
major source of operating funds, while concurrently managing efforts for
necessary capital improvements and other one time financial needs.
· Education: Educate the members and friends of the Church of the Holy Resurrection
about:
o Operating
expenses of our parish and our need for their financial support in meeting
these expenses
o Additional
expenditures that fall outside of our standard operating expenses, such as
special projects (e.g. last year’s Fellowship Hall construction project) and
mortgage reduction.
o Where various
requests for funds fit into parish finance
§ Stewardship
§ Capital Fundraising
§ Special Projects
· Communication / Transparency: Work with all relevant committee chairs to ensure consistent message is
delivered regarding finances
In
the coming months, you will see more and more information regarding this
effort. More importantly, however,
we are looking to each and every one of you for support and insight. Your
involvement will create a means of constant communication and collaboration and
ensure support and success. We want to come up with a financial strategy for
our parish that factors in all of our priorities.
How
can you participate? The short
answer is: by making your voice heard. You may have already seen
our Parish Development survey that was distributed in mid-March. Our next major event will be our Parish Development Conference on Saturday, May 15th. Keep an
eye out for the agenda. We hope
that everybody will participate.
In
the meantime, we continue to work with Fr. John, the Parish Council, key
committees and individuals to ensure that we all agree on our message and our
priorities. If you have a
question, we’d love to hear from you too.
