Year-End Financial Stuff
Every year in January I get a package emailed to me by our financial team. In it, there are a myriad of Excel files which detail every possible aspect of our giving for the past year: which months were best…which trends were there…etc. There’s nothing in it about who gave what or details like that, but there is a lot of information about where we stand in terms of our giving at the church.
To be honest, our giving is something I think about three or four times a year when we’re doing some planning, and I am so, so, so, so, glad that we are a church which rarely deals with this subject and only does so from a spiritual (as opposed to guilt-based) perspective.
Anyway, within the package this year was something new - a breakdown of our weekly giving for the past 6 years.
I thought it was very interesting and encouraging, so I thought I’d share it here on the blog:
2002 – $263.43 - Our first year of existence in Mississauga; 3 families
2003 – $521.89 - We launched publicly in Mississauga, and weren’t yet viable
2004 – $978.72 - Things pick up attendance-wise
2005 – $1,023.22 - We reach our upper size number-wise in attendance in Mississauga
2006 – $979.32 - We relocate to Milton with a smaller group and virtually no overhead; saving for our launch
2007 – $2,062.06 - Our first full year of existence here in Milton
2008 – $3,003.91 - This past year
For as much as I hate to gauge the success of anything by looking at money and numbers, I found these numbers super encouraging.
For me, what it shows is that we’ve come from a small group of 3 families who were doing our best to prop up a crazy dream of launching a church, and now we’re at a point where we’re a group of 150 or so who are now helping own this dream to impact Milton in amazing ways.
Very cool stuff.