The church and the congregation are busy this week!
- Monday
- Worship team meets at 6:00 p.m.
- Finance Committee also meets at 6:00 p.m.
- S.P.R.C. meets at 7:00 p.m.
- Mission trip team also meets at 7:00 p.m.
- Tuesday
- Quilt & sew group meets in the fellowship hall at 1:00 p.m. Bring your project to work on as we visit and share ideas. The Edith Allen Circle of the UMW is working on a project for the hospital auxiliary making quilt for pediatric patients. Anyone who would like to help with that project is welcome to come Tuesday afternoon to see how you may participate.
- Disciple Bible Study meets at Pastor Jerry’s home at 6:30 p.m.
- Wednesday
- Active Listeners meet in Pastor’s office at 9:30 a.m.
- Disciple Bible Study meets in Pastor’s office at 10:00 a.m.
- Choir practice in the sanctuary at 6:30 p.m.
- Thursday
- Trustees meet at the church at 7:00 p.m.
- Friday
- United Methodist Women’s meeting is at 10:45 a.m. There will be a guest speaker and a potluck lunch following the brief business meeting.
- Saturday
- All are invited to a birthday party for Mona between 2:00 and 4:30 p.m. Her children are hosting the event.
Our congregation is making a difference at Community House on Broadway! In February you donated 26 pounds of cereal! The item to donate in March is ground coffee. Place your donations in “Janey’s Wagon” in the narthex.
The Fat Tuesday pancake supper was very well attended and supported. I don’t know for sure how many came, but it was a pretty good room full and $193 donation was made from UMW to the church general fund!
Regal Cinema, in Triangle Mall, is showing the Harvey Milk movie and some of us are going to the showing that starts at 6:50 p.m., Thursday.
A note about our finances:
In our Monday updates, we reported a budget surplus for our church for the first several weeks of the year, and this was incorrect. In coming up with the figures we passed along to you, we mistakenly included parsonage rental in our general church income, along with other income that we collect but pay directly to others (Money collected for the Valentine’s Day dinner to benefit Ocean Park Retreat and Camp Center, for instance, or offerings collected for Conference programs, such as Hope for the Children of Africa).
However, income from these sources does not apply to our general church budget. The parsonage is a separate account, and the rental income we receive basically offsets the housing allowance we pay our pastor each month.
Again, that is all outside of our regular church budget.
So instead of a surplus, our church budget is running a deficit – about $3,000 through the end of February. This is better than we’d anticipated, but it is still a significant shortfall.
Our offering yesterday came to $3088.64, which reduces our deficit through the first Sunday in March to $2456.(We add or subtract the total of our pledges, tithes and pancake dinner proceeds from the $1,836 we need each week to break even.)
Our Finance Committee will meet at 6 p.m. tonight (Monday) to address our 2009 finances. The meeting is open to everyone in the congregation, so if you have thoughts, questions or suggestions, please attend.
