At the last business meeting we, as a church, voted for a challenging but attainable budget for 2004. This budget is our church’s plan for how we will use the resources God entrusts to us to glorify Him and extend His kingdom. It covers everything from maintaining the church building and grounds to buying Bible study and devotional materials to funding ministries and outreaches of the church.

I am very grateful to the Stewardship Committee for their hard work in putting together this budget. They made some tough decisions in order to bring our planned expenditures more in line with our expected income.

One thing we refused to do is to cut our giving to missions. Many other areas were reduced but we chose to keep giving to local, national, and international missions at the same rate. Over 11% of our church’s offering go toward mission causes elsewhere in the world. And that does not include the special offerings, like the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions that we just collected, of which 100% goes to missions.