In September of 2009, the elders began to draft a ministry budget for 2010. In October, they began to dialog about those early drafts with the stewardship team. Over the following months, those budgets were revised and reduced. While we ended 2009 in the black, we want to be cautious as we step into 2010 due to the continued weakness of our economy. 
As the elders and stewardship team developed the 2010 budget, we prayerfully considered ways to expand the impact of our ministries while minimizing the costs. We tried to plan ahead to meet the needs of the church family, while minimizing our commitments to new expenditures until contributions prove capable of supporting those efforts.
The two primary ministry areas that we have budgeted to expand if funds allow in 2010 are:
Acts 1:8 Ministries (Missions): We would like to increase our Acts 1:8 budget from 11% to 12% of our total budget. If contributions are adequate to support this, we will increase support for existing missionaries as well as add support for Phil and Sara Nickels as well as a ZEMA family serving in Mozambique. We will wait until second quarter to decide if these additions are feasible.
Pastoral Addition: At some point, we would like to add a Family Pastor who would be focused on both equipping parents in their roles as the primary disciplers of their children as well as unify and oversee all of our children’s ministries. There are lots of areas of ministry that could benefit from additional staff focus, but we feel this role would produce the greatest ‘bang for the buck’. We recognize this addition may not be feasible in 2010 – and will delay a decision until contributions support this expense.
Additionally, we other areas where increases are budgeted include: building expense (special gifts covered part of our building costs in 2009); staff (increased insurance costs, stepping Tim Badal closer to half-time compensation and additional support staff hours); audit fees (outside CPA compilation and ECFA review); web site costs (ongoing development and bandwidth charges).
