On Sunday, September 15, Lance Powers, treasurer of Good News Church, gave us a financial update. This is my best recollection of what he said:
GIVING: Good News Church gives away 12% of all of its income to other ministries. The ministries that we support were listed on a slide behind him and it included: Share the Love (RFK and TRAC), Interfaith Emergency Services, Wear Gloves, Young Life, Unlimited Discipleship, International Muslim Outreach, Barnabas Aid, Acts 29, RMI-Food for Health, Women’s Pregnancy Center, and Project Hope of Marion County.
SPENDING: Good News funds its operating expenses which includes things like building upkeep, insurance, staff salaries, etc. Lance mentioned that there are four full-time employees at Good News.
SAVING: Lance broke this category down into three subsections:
GIVING: Good News Church gives away 12% of all of its income to other ministries. The ministries that we support were listed on a slide behind him and it included: Share the Love (RFK and TRAC), Interfaith Emergency Services, Wear Gloves, Young Life, Unlimited Discipleship, International Muslim Outreach, Barnabas Aid, Acts 29, RMI-Food for Health, Women’s Pregnancy Center, and Project Hope of Marion County.
SPENDING: Good News funds its operating expenses which includes things like building upkeep, insurance, staff salaries, etc. Lance mentioned that there are four full-time employees at Good News.
SAVING: Lance broke this category down into three subsections:
- PAST – We used to meet in a small building (the current KidZone building) that was designed for about 110 attenders. When we outgrew that building, we built the current one, taking out a loan that was a little over $1 million dollars. That was about 8 years ago, and it was a 15-year mortgage.
- PRESENT – Since that time, we’ve always made extra payments toward the principal in order to pay the loan off as fast as possible. We paid off the building last year and are now debt-free!
- FUTURE – After that, we continued to take the money that was previously used to pay down debt and have continued to save it for future expansion if needed. Lance mentioned that we once (years ago back when we built the current auditorium) had an engineer draw out a future expansion project, and that he determined that there is enough room on our 13-acre property (to the south of the current auditorium) to build another auditorium about double the size of the current one with proportionate parking if it ever became necessary. Lance also pointed out that Good News is still growing and that there were over 800 people at our services on September 8, which is the highest attendance we’ve ever had on a non-special/non-holiday Sunday.
People were excited to hear the news. One guy came up to me afterward and said, “I’ve always liked the way this church handles finances.”
