One year ago, we found ourselves facing an unprecedented financial crisis: we were $1 million in debt to General Assembly, $750,000 in debt to other organizations, and had a $750,000 commitment for copier leases. Our leadership was in anguish and despair.
As countless hours were spent by numerous people seeking answers and solutions to this financial mess, we learned that we needed to rely on God to make a way when there seemed to be no way.
Mike reminded us of the prophet Jeremiah’s lament, “Is there no balm in Gilead?” which captured the heartache felt by the Israelites who had been cast into exile in Babylon. Our African-American spiritual ancestors turned Jeremiah’s question into a powerful affirmation in “There Is a Balm In Gilead,” which had been beautifully sung during the morning offertory. We have turned from our own heartache and experienced the revival of the Holy Spirit as God led us not only into a financial house cleaning, but also to increased participation of our churches and members in balancing a transparent budget.
We developed a five-year repayment plan for all our indebtedness, fully funded our restricted accounts, covered the expenses of the outlandish copier leases and, on top of all that, now have an operating budget balanced on the increased giving of our churches and members. “We cannot be deterred from the vision and mission that God has set before us,” said Mike. “God has gifted this presbytery with an incredible array of resources for mission and ministry.”
With these resources:
- We lead the denomination in new church developments: 18, all the costs of which are covered by our operating budget.
- We are viewed by many as a leader in our denomination in transformational and missional ministry.
- We have a phenomenal staff who repeatedly show their commitment to Jesus Christ and their devotion to the mission of the presbytery.
- Our presbytery meetings have been streamlined and are intentionally informative, visionary, and challenging.
- Our presbytery is involved in more mission than ever, not through a centralized mission budget, but through the missional efforts of our congregations.
- We are preparing to launch an initiative for spiritual renewal and retraining of our pastors and key leaders (KEYS).
- We have funded $120,000 in grants to advance the vision of our presbytery.
- Our presbytery worships in at least 12 languages every Sunday. God’s plan is for the gospel to prosperin this presbytery. As long as we keep our eyes on that goal, the temporary distractions will be just that — temporary.
During a recent mission trip to Peru, Mike experienced a train ride during which the train periodically stopped, reversed direction, then stopped and proceeded forward. The train was making these maneuvers in order to switch tracks as it proceeded up a hillside. Life’s journey with Jesus Christ is not one long progression up the mountain, said Mike, but rather a series of maneuvers sometimes moving forward and sometimes backward. The critical thing is to affirm who the engineer of our train is — Jesus Christ.
The lesson of this last year in our presbytery is that, in order to get up the mountain, sometimes we have to reverse direction in order to get on the right track.
“God has a grand plan for our presbytery,” said Mike, “plans to prosper us, not to harm us, plans to give us a hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:11) Thus saith the Lord, our Engineer: “All aboard!”
