Message from Lon

Dear MBC family member,

Greetings in the wonderful name of our Lord, I hope this letter finds you and your family doing well.

As you know, the historic snowfalls of late January and early February resulted in our worship services being cancelled for two successive weekends, something that has never happened in all the years I have been at MBC. We thank God for our internet campus which enabled thousands of people to have a worship service on those weekends in spite of the weather. But missing two live service weekends combined with the staggering cost of removing so much snow has created a financial challenge for us.

Please allow me to explain the situation.

As a result of these two missed weekends, even with the giving that came in over the internet campus and from the generosity of many of you in the following weeks, we fell $290,000 behind our projected income figures for just those two weeks. In addition, our removal costs for such a massive amount of snow added another $167,000 of expenses over the $48,000 we had budgeted for January and February. The bottom line is that, consequently, we are ending the first two months of 2010 with a year-to-date operating deficit of approximately $560,000.

Our normal pattern at MBC (like most churches) is to slowly go into the red operationally all year long until December--and then trust God that the increase in giving that always occurs in December will erase our year-to ¬date operating deficit and enable us to end the year in the black. As you know, in 2008 and 2009, this resulted in our needing $3.9 million in December to end each of those years in the black.

By God's wonderful grace, and thanks to your incredibly generous giving as a church family, we met that need in both years. In fact, in 2009, our December giving totaled over $4.5 million, leaving us with a surplus of over $600,000--PTL!

In our budget projections for 2010, we began 2010 anticipating a December need of $4.0 million. However, as I'm sure you understand, this number can easily swell as the year goes along due to unexpected expenses and income fluctuations.

And so, in order to reduce the amount of income we would need in December 2010, our elders decided to apply the entire surplus from 2009 ($600,000+) to expense items in the 2010 budget. Our hope was that this would provide us with a financial cushion in 2010 and enable us to lessen the financial mountain we would have to climb in December to below the $3.9 million of the previous two years.

Well, as you can see, the shortfall in income that we have experienced in January and February has essentially nullified this cushion we had hoped to create. It has taken us back to facing at least a $4 million need in December 2010--and possibly more.
All this brings me to the "So What?" of this letter.

The elders and I remain convinced that it is important to try and reduce the amount of giving we will need in December 2010 below the $3.9 million figure of the past two years. It seems to us that the best way to do this is to try and recover the lost income and snow-removal costs from January and February (i.e., $457,000) now.

Therefore, I am writing to ask each of us in the MBC family to consider giving a little extra in March. If all of us would give an extra $50 per person in March [$100 per family]--over and above our regular giving--we would be able to recover the bulk of this loss ($457,000).
In my 30 years as your pastor, I have never asked the people of MBC for this kind of extra giving in any month but December. I hope you know that, if I did not believe, before God, that this was of the highest priority for the well being of MBC, I would not be asking for it now.

I realize that many of us are facing financial challenges of our own. So if you do not feel that you are able to give an extra $50 right now, then please know that I will be most grateful for anything you feel you can do. And if you are able to give more than $50, I sure would appreciate it.

Thank you for your kindness in taking time to read this letter. If you would like more detailed information and/or the opportunity to ask questions about any of this, I invite you to attend our regularly-scheduled congregational meeting on March 24. You do not need to be a formal member of MBC to attend.

God bless you--and thanks in advance for your prayerful consideration of my request.
Sincerely in Christ,

Lon Solomon

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