Q: Would you please separate the missions’ budget for 2027? One line item is the missions partner support. Where do expenses for Global Awareness Week appear and how much is it for 2027? Are there other missions’ miscellaneous costs in the budget as well, and where is it allocated in the budget?
A: Yes, we highlight the direct payments to our partners in support of their ministries. Each partner’s budgeted allocation is reviewed, allocated and executed by the Missions Leadership Team. Ministry events such as GAW are included in Ministry Support. Questions on the exact budget components for GAW for FY27 should be directed to Pastor Jeanette Yep and the Missions Leadership Team. The annual cost for GAW is approximately $30,000 including partner travel, a Soul Care Retreat and other ministry events designed to highlight the ministry of our visiting partners. There are other mission ministry costs like staffing (included in personnel) and related expenses such as travel (included in ministry support) that are all costs related to supporting our mission partners and the missions ministry of our church. We also separate from the operations budget our special offering support that typically happens during GAW and our Christmas Eve offering.
Q: What is the annual cost for supporting one resident in the program Pastor Ruthie referred to?
A: Pastor Ruthie shared that we have had to put on pause our pastoral resident program due to finance restrictions. We certainly have hopes to bring this important ministry and pastoral development program back to Grace Chapel as we should be a church that builds future leaders in the church.
It is treated just like adding a full-time role on staff. The residency program that we built this role around, Made to Flourish, provided financial support for the program in its first 5 years, but that slowly faded away over those 5 years. The total cost includes salary, benefits and related costs. The role could be a campus associate pastor or a central ministry role, but they spend about half their time working in a residency rotation working across all the functional areas of the church including areas like finance, operations and ministry areas like preaching and missions.
As we grow into the future, we have a strong desire to bring this program and ministry back to Grace Chapel.
Q: Part of the Vital Church survey response indicated that the expectation should be that the individual campuses should be self-supporting after a few years. I'm light of that, how are our campuses doing? Is they are not self-supporting? What is the plan to accomplish that?
(BTW, thrilled with the strategic use of the 3 militia funds to pay down debt and manage capital expenses)
A: We track giving and expenses by campus and have plans and goals for each of them. Our current campuses all cover their fixed and local costs which include buildings, staff and local ministries. That is an important milestone and an early goal for any campus.
Our centralized costs, which includes the costs for central staff, missions, and other Grace Chapel central costs are allocated differently and are allocated by factors including attendance and facility square footage. Those total costs are not all covered by individual campuses, but we have plans including outreach and connection strategies to grow our impact in each community and helping people begin their giving journey as they join our church community.
(Thanks for your excitement around the 3 Militia Funds – we are excited too)
Q: I’ve been reflecting on the “Legacy Fund” established from the proceeds of the office building sale, and I wanted to share a thought that might be worth considering. Has the leadership team discussed how maintaining a substantial pool of financial assets directly on the Church’s balance sheet could potentially invite greater scrutiny in the event of any future lawsuits or legal negotiations?
From my experience, this is a common concern for organizations like Grace Chapel. One approach that helps mitigate that risk is to transfer the sale proceeds into a newly established Private Foundation. This could be structured to exist solely for the benefit of Grace Chapel and its mission. While the Foundation would need to maintain its independence, there could still be meaningful overlap, perhaps with trustees drawn from the Church’s Finance Committee or other committed leaders. This also creates a mechanism for parishioners to make charitable donations to the church through their estate plans.
A: Our finance committee, an Elder Sub-committee, has looked at several options in how to manage the funds established from the sale of 3 Militia Drive. These funds have now established a more sustainable approach to leveraging growth opportunities and leveraging interest growth to fund some of our annual capital projects across our campus buildings.
That team looked at various options but is open to exploring other options, like establishing a private foundation with Elder oversight, if that is a better option for the church. We would be happy to engage in discussing that option and weighing it against our sustainability strategy as we move forward.
Q: There is a general feeling that a good chunk of the learnings from the Vital Church survey are being tossed aside, and we're spending precious money on consultants with little to show for it. One example, there was a communication workstream that did a lot of work, yet no one has been able to point out one difference in the last year between how things are communicated in the newsletter, pulpit, and app. Even on the grace.org website, clicking on the annual celebration event does NOT show a link to the annual report. It was only in the newsletter. Communication is still a mess. Another example, in talking to staff, it's not clear they feel any more cared for than a year ago. I have spoken with a number of unhappy staff. How do you respond?
A: There has been a tremendous amount of work coming out of the Vital Church survey with many staff and congregants engaged in working teams and outcomes from that work. We have shared a lot of that work and ideas up front on Sunday’s and in our eNews. As an example, the marketing team did listening sessions at every campus, including online, and took all that feedback into working sessions with interested volunteers around where we focus on our improvement efforts. It takes time, but we are launching a new website within the next month. This will provide a website solution that is integrated with our CCB operating system and new ways of streamlining our workflows and processes. Our app will see new improvements, and our eNews will be reimagined and launched this summer.
The annual celebration landing page on the website does include access to the annual report and copies of the last few years of annual reports for reference.
The Vital Church report identified that our staff was seeking more connection and care from our congregation. That is an important distinction of the care that staff was needing, and we have seen many congregants stepping up in support of our staff and their ministry areas and volunteering to help in new ways. We continue to encourage our staff to be a part of Group Life which is a wonderful way to find connection and community in a large church.
We monitor our staff morale and support in several ways and always strive for a staff that is feeling cared for and supported in their professional growth and ability to reach their goals. It’s not clear from your question how many staff you engaged with, but we continue to hear from staff that Grace Chapel is doing many of the things necessary for them to be happy and content in their work and life balance.
Q: We can no longer blame flat or declining attendance on COVID or society's ills. Local suburban churches like Genesis are growing rapidly. Aside from doing the same things over and over with enormous energy and resources, like Christmas, Easter, Kidsweek, how are we materially making Grace a place people are attracted to and want to stay once they set foot? Not every visitor or even regular attendee is able to join a life group or a service team, which seems to be Grace's only answer to the question of how do people stay once they come.
A: We continue to work through a season of Senior Pastor transition which is an impact to all churches that go through a similar season. We are not laying out excuses but are working through the real impact on the church with prayer, caring, and the energy to engage all our people. We are always seeking new ways to connect people to each other and the ministries at Grace Chapel. We also know that Group Life and Volunteer teams remain some of the best ways to make that connection and make a large church feel smaller. Getting connected to each other is critical, these days more than ever, and if anyone has creative ideas and would be willing to lead people to connection we would love to work on it with you.
Q: The church is full of very talented people from all walks of life, with diverse interests, skills, gifts. There appears to be very little effort to draw from this, except the period calls for volunteers for events the church leadership come up with. For example, many people were drawn to the work/faith gatherings but the congregation was not empowered with following up on the interest. A lot of it was left to overworked staff who don't work in the field. How can Grace tap into people's gifts and passions, not just to do the things the Grace leadership wants to do?
A: We completely agree that we need all those that call Grace Chapel their church home to find their unique gifting and use it to support and grow the church. The staff and our Work and Faith volunteer team is always open to ways that we can find new ways to serve and engage those that have not found their way to volunteering yet. The Work and Faith gathering was a great example of bringing people together to connect around their marketplace roles and meet new people with similar interests. Since that initial gathering we have had a number of focused industry gatherings, some small groups emerging and some job finding events including a webinar in interviewing to support those seeking job placement. We are open to any ideas that would help us foster more of these types of events.
Q: Please let me know what is in the budget for the Grace Chapel “Care and Support Ministry”. I saw no mention of it in the annual report that was gone over at the meeting last Sunday. I understand that it is still an active ministry of the church.
A: Yes, Care and Support is a meaningful and important ministry area at Grace Chapel. We did not highlight every area of ministry in our meeting time at the Annual Celebration, but that does not reflect on the importance of so many areas of our church. The Care and Support Ministry budget is managed by our ministry director, Denise Tarquinio, and that budget is part of our central ministry budget within the “Ministry Support” line item in the budget. The budget includes expenses related to Stephens Ministry, Grief Share, Various Care curriculum, and travel and meals.
