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| Thursday, September 09, 2010 |
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| Note From The Treasurer Of Our Council |
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By Jerry Babaian
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As a long-standing member of this church and its Parish Council Treasurer, I thought I would share some of my observations and reflections. I am amazed of how many times when there seems to be an obstacle, when an event or affair seems completely out of control, when we are desperate for money to run our church or to purchase a house, our parishioners seem to hear the call, “step up to the plate” and get the “job” done. They always seem to make it all come together. Yet, it only seems to occur when the need is dire. If there is no perceived threat, I see almost a state of apathy when it comes to the funding of our church. Almost like “It will take care of itself.”
There are so many services that our church offers us. We have so many events, so many groups, and so much fellowship. I can enumerate just a few:
Three different schools, deacon’s training, Caring Hearts, youth choir as well as our beautiful regular choir, Friday night Hye Café, Hayr Soorp’s Café (for our young professionals), FIVE weekly bible study classes, at least 3 adult educational courses annually, even a Friday morning church service, a weekly Seniors group, a flourishing ACYOA Junior group, and of course our incredible Women’s Guild. Every Sunday is followed by fellowship with coffee and food, gratis. This church is our home, but with all that is offered to us, the upkeep of our “home” is forgotten. I have heard the complaints that every time you turn around you get another solicitation from the church. Quite frankly, I agree because I see the same people, not necessarily wealthy people, giving of themselves and their pockets because for the most part the solicitations fall on deaf ears.
No one likes to be the bearer of unpleasant news, but put very simply “Our members don’t give.” If each church member DONATED $800 each, each church year, each year we would end up with a surplus. I mean donated, not a raffle ticket or dinner dance. Instead of offering more from our church we have to offer less. Every year our costs go up, yet our donations do not. No one, no one wishes to talk about money. But maybe if we talked about it more, we could avoid all the mail solicitations. The year ending 12/31/06, we will end up with a deficit of around $60,000. This is after trust fund transfers of over $40,000. So really the shortfall between annual donations and annual expenses is over $100,000.Where will this shortfall of money come up from? It will come from our Reserve Fund, which is prior years’ money net of monies paid for house acquisitions. So we are living on what the founders of this church built up. This fund is quickly being depleted.
There are many “painless” ways to donate. A new way, this year, is if you’re over 70 and ½ and required to take a minimum distribution from a regular IRA, you can have the required distribution go directly to the church. By transferring directly to the church from the IRA, the IRA distribution is not taxable to the IRA holder. Another way is any appreciated stock donated to the church, gives the recipient a donation for the appreciated value of the stock without any tax liability for the capital gain. In prior years we had bequests from wills when people passed away. I say in prior years, because this year we have not received any bequests. All pretty painless ways to take care of our home.
So the next time you see the water damage in the church office or the church auditorium and building closed to save oil and gas, think of what I said earlier that unless the threat is dire we don’t give. Unless there’s no roof or no heat because we can’t pay for the oil and gas, we don’t give. We don’t take care of our house that we use to pray to God.
Eight hundred dollars is all it takes. Think about it and then DO something about it.
Jerry Babaian
Parish Council Treasurer
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