Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

Okay, so my last post about paid and unpaid, professional and amateur Christians sparked some discussion. I need to be clear about something from the beginning. I am not a cynic. I know that it is tough to discern tone from prose, but am not jaded, fed up, or otherwise done with the Church. In fact, I love the movement that Jesus started. I am spiritually fed by what people would consider “typical” church worship. As we have been clear from the beginning, Southside Abbey is not a move away from anything, but rather a branch of the same limb.

The reality of the numbers is stark. What are the two largest expenses facing every Episcopal church in the land? Property and Personnel. Southside Abbey is a model of another way to be church without a building. Notice I said “a” model, not “the” model. We are providing one solution to the problem of the expense of a building.

Now what about that other expense? Can't you just feel the collective sphincter tightening at the very mention of this issue? In the Episcopal Church, we like our priests. We like to have someone up there we can point to as the expert on God, someone who will interact – on our behalf – with those we don't want to see or know.

Let me break it down in our context. The Diocese of East Tennessee's minimum compensation package for full time employment is $47,000. Church Pension adds eighteen percent, or $8,460. Include (as we must for full time work) health insurance to the tune of $11,148 for the cheapest plan for a couple. Including the life and disability insurance offered by our diocese adds another $1,036. That makes a total of $67,644. If we are to take the Church Pension formula, the math is similarly inflated. Their minimum compensation for full time work is $18,500, which costs $34,014. Now that you know the context, let me put it in perspective.

Southside Abbey's budget for 2014 was $33,811. For that amount we:

• Kept the seasons of the Church Year, engaging in liturgical worship with our community.
• Served over 3,000 meals as part of that liturgical worship.
• Celebrated St. Nicholas' Day with presents & meals for 175 neighborhood children & families.
• Shared 250 pounds of Epiphany pickles as a way to hear our neighbors' stories.
• Shared 400 cups of homemade soup as an excuse to visit retired folks in section 8 housing.
• Gathered over 200 pairs of shoes & socks for the local elementary school on Maundy Thursday.
• Held a chili cook-off with with about forty gallons of chili from members of our community.
• Made over 210 lunches for neighborhood children on fall break, shared at an Oktoberfest.
• Housed a theologian-in-residence who worked with us while obtaining an STM from Sewanee.
• Were brought under the 501(c)(3) umbrella of the Episcopal Church.
• Became a Jubilee Ministry Center of the Episcopal Church.
• Raised nearly $50,000 to be spent on outside ministries as part of the Southside Jubilee Fund.
• Were featured in articles from Christian Century to the Chattanooga Times-Free Press.
• Mentored three Education for Ministry (EfM) groups.
• Trained leaders, forming 4 postulants, 1 aspirant, 2 seminarians & a lots of lay ministers.

We did these things with help, particularly from the Holy Spirit. We also had some terrestrial partners, perhaps too many to mention, but look at what we were able to do with $34,000 – $34,000 that did not include a clergy compensation package! Such a package would either double or triple our budget depending on which “minimum” we can get away with.

This reality is what makes it difficult to “buy” these numbers. I realize that I am an important part of this ministry, but am I really that much more important than all of my brothers and sisters in Christ who follow Jesus just as faithfully but do it at no cost to Southside Abbey? That is what we as a community and I am personally wrestling with. This is a really cool possibility. I just have to be brave enough to say “yes” to the Holy Spirit. Your prayers are most welcome.

Missed the first two blogs in this series? Read blog #1 here and blog #2 here. 

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