A presentation given by The Rev. Eileen O’Brien on October 20, 2019.
Since January, we have made great strides in building a foundation for this work of mission. Here are some of the good things that are bubbling up as we seek to set tables of welcome for the many and various people of God.
- Our new Director of Family Ministries, Simone Barnes, is getting her feet on the ground, and we have a great group of adults to support her in BOTH children’s and youth ministries.
- De Sellers has not one, but two, EFM groups going.
- We have built up our adult education offerings with exciting new opportunities to learn on Sunday mornings, a book club prior to the 5:30 service, and the addition of EpiscoBasics.
- Our pastoral care processes have been clarified, and we are training 6 new Eucharistic visitors, 2 new Community of Hope chaplains, and new folks willing to take meals to people.
- Our outreach and advocacy ministries are moving into greater alignment and a clearer sense of priorities as we build teams around the leaders in this ministries.
- One Human Race is training new facilitators and UBE is getting out the vote.
- The Parish Census is deepening our knowledge of who is here and helping us set up our database for more effective communications work.
- We raised over $50,000 for the Pauli Murray Scholarship Fund.
- Thanks to Anna Blake and her team of young adults, our new website will go live soon, but we have also made our current website far more robust and representative of the ministries in our community.
- Our liturgy committee is reinforcing the vibrant and creative spirit of our liturgies.
- We are about to bring a proposal from the VAC about the columbarium to the Vestry. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! This is a long ago envisioned project now entering reality.
This presentation focuses on what it takes to be St. James’ from a financial perspective.
These are numbers from our 2019 Budget.
Staff:
Our staff list may look rather impressively long to you considering the amount spent on salaries and benefits, but that is because 4 out of our 5 clergy are non-stipendiary. We have one full-time staff member, and that is the rector. The remainder of our staff are part-time. That includes Aimee Estep and Diana Espinosa who do amazing things with their hours, all of our musicians, and our brand new Director of Family Ministries (who oversees Nursery, Children’s Ministries, and Youth Ministries at 20 hours a week).
A survey of Episcopal congregations roughly our size indicates that they function with 3-5 full time employees plus the retinue of part-time folks and non-stipendiary clergy. Over the next two years, we have to plan to increase our administrative capacity and our ministry capacity, especially in the areas of children’s and youth ministries. No matter how great we are at managing volunteers, our staff size has become a significant limiting factor for the growth of our congregation.
Diocesan Mission:
This diocesan mission line item reflects our diocesan assessment, our diocesan insurance assessment, and yearly costs of sending a delegation to diocesan council. The diocesan assessment supports the mission of the diocese. How does our common work as the Episcopal Diocese of Texas get funded? Well, aside from the funding from our Foundations (Episcopal Health Foundation, Bishop Quin Foundation, The Great Commission Fund, etc), it comes from the diocesan assessments that parishes and missions pay based on a percentage of their prior year’s budget. This is essentially our tithe to the diocese, and we can expect it to grow with us, as is only right. We can also expect it to increase a bit, because we would like to more fully fund our delegation for diocesan council instead of relying on them to pay their own way. We would like to be sure that we get rid of financial obstacles to participation in leadership in this way.
Worship and Music Resources:
Music gives wings to our worship here, and we have an incredible music program at 10:15, 1, and 5:30 pm for the size of our music budget. The salaries of our primary worship leaders and accompanists are included in the staff line item, and the costs related to the Children’s Service are absorbed in this line item. What you’re not seeing is the cost of paying our five staff singers at 10:15 am, because during the lean years certain generous parishioners sponsored them, so that we could maintain a robust choir. We want the whole congregation to be responsible for maintaining a robust choir, and so we are rolling those weekly costs back into our budget. We also want to increase the presence of guest artists and do some long ‘deferred maintenance’ on our music library and resources.
Ministry and Outreach:
Don’t let this line item fool you. We marshall incredible resources for the work of outreach and advocacy in our community. Welcome Table, which runs N2N and Freedom School, does incredible work with zero full-time staff, and deploys over $120,000 each year to build community, to empower children and ignite their love for learning, and to meet the needs of our neighbors. One Human Race (funded through the UBE and grants) takes the work of racial justice and reconciliation out into the communities, both sacred and secular. In the last year, we have received a significant new 3-year grant from the Episcopal Seniors Foundation to fund an expansion of Neighbor 2 Neighbor.
This line item needs to grow so that we can give our new Director of Family Ministries something more to work with for the good of children’s and youth ministries. We need to hire at least one new nursery worker in order to address increasing demand. During the lean times, leadership training, adult formation, and pastoral care expenses were absorbed by generous parishioners who wanted those ministries to survive in some form. Just as with the staff singers, we are bringing some of those expenses back into our budget, because we need to know what it takes to be St. James’. Some people may still choose to fund things out of pocket, but we want to know you are doing it a) so that we can properly acknowledge that gift; and b) so that we can weather transitions.
Operations and Business:
What’s in this category? Maintaining our campus, air conditioning, insurance, technology, etc. We have a rather large campus and a rather small O&B expense item considering. Over the past year, we have spent some of our savings to make our way through a deferred maintenance list. A few items remain, and we are moving into the season where we are going to have to start replacing instead of just patching AC units. The Vestry Administration Committee has already done considerable assessment of our campus to establish our working priorities. As we grow over the coming years, we are going to find that we are even more stretched for meeting, educational, and community spaces, and we will likely envision a next phase building project, but we can’t do that until we establish robust habits for maintaining what we have.
The mortgage line item speaks for itself. Through the good efforts of past Vestry Finance Committee members and other parishioners, we have a workable mortgage payment.
Note: The budgeted pledges differ from actual pledges made because sometimes people are not able to pay the entirety of their pledge. We budget conservatively based on past pledge pay-off rates.
57% of the money that makes things happen here comes from your pledges. For 2019, we had 120 pledging units, putting our average pledge at $3,189. This is a stat that the diocese examines, but I believe the median pledge is a better indicator, and that’s at $2400. Your pledges help shape our budget for 2020 in significant ways. And so the timing of your pledge matters. We have an ingathering celebration because we want you to pledge by October 27 so that we can factor your contribution into our decision-making.
An interesting note: Operating Contributions make up 23% of the St. James’ budget. Operating Contributions that usually come in whenever people think to or are inspired to give. They are also amounts paid over and above one’s fulfilled pledge. As such, they tend to be correlated with church attendance and also anxiety about the church’s survival. We base our estimate of operating contributions on the prior year. This year has been odd, because we have been over-performing in the pledge category and underperforming in the operating contributions category even though church attendance and enthusiasm has been solidly higher than the year prior. Curious. Right? What’s going on? One of our operating hypotheses is that the anxiety level about giving has gone down since the land sale and the hire of a new rector. Over recent years, operating contributions have been a strangely high proportion of our giving: 23-25%, while other churches are closer to the 12-17% range. In the long run, it will be healthier for us to have a higher percentage of our contributions coming from pledges and a lower percentage coming from the more unpredictable operating contributions. I would like to appeal to you, if you are an operating contributions giver to consider how much you might give to St. James’ over the coming year and make a pledge so that we can plan for the future.
Today we have been talking about our yearly operating budget, but we do have options for planned giving, and if you are interested in learning more, please contact Aimee Estep, office@stjamesaustin.org, about that.
However, you give of your gifts to St. James’, we are grateful for your generosity and want to help you deepen your spiritual roots through ministry in this place.
If you would like to pledge online, use this online form.
