Transition Team Meeting 4/16/09

The main agenda item for this meeting was church finances and budget.

We decided to print the weekly offering totals in the Sunday program each week so that everyone will be able to follow our financial situation more closely.

There was some discussion of the financial/legal structure of CITC. CityChurch was (and still is) incorporated as a religious corporation. CityGallery is an assumed name of CityChurch. CITC is a DBA (doing business as) of Cathedral of Hope. Currently, the weekly offering is deposited into the CITC bank account and the money is swept into Cathedral of Hope’s account. CITC is essentially treated as a division or department of Cathedral of Hope. CITC bills and expenses are paid by Cathedral of Hope, we believe only upon submission of a check request. We are going to clarify that with Cathedral of Hope so that all checks (other than salary) must always have a signed check request.

We worked on the budget which we will be presented to the community at the 10am meeting on Sunday, April 19. The main categories of spending are the pastor’s salary, rent at Kidd Springs, and childcare. Through June we also have health insurance costs for PL and Neeki, which we agreed to pay at a prior meeting before they left.

Courtney is currently paid for 32 hours per week based on a $42,000 annualized salary, which is the minimum starting salary in the Methodist Church. There was discussion of whether we should be paying for her health insurance. Is providing health insurance a value of our community and can we afford it? Apparently she can be added to her husband’s insurance policy for about $200/month and we could simply subsidize that. Or we could see if we could add her to Cathedral of Hope’s insurance. We decided that whether and how to pay for Courtney’s health insurance is a decision for the community and we will be discussing that at this Sunday’s community meeting.

Two proposals were made for additional paid staff. There is a proposal that we hire a part-time music minister that would be paid for 20 hours a week. There was a second proposal that we hire an administrative person for 10 hours a week. It was decided that we should not include those items in the budget at this time because our financial situation is uncertain. If the community decides that additional paid staff is desired, hopefully we will be able to include these as budget items in the future as our financial situation stabilizes. For the time being, the music team has volunteered to do the music planning. As far as administrative work, Teri has volunteered to print the programs each week and Scott will continue to do some administrative tasks on an unpaid basis.

This week’s community meeting will focus on budget and financial issues. Scott is going to present the basic vision behind the budget and either Alan or John Means will moderate the meeting. The team will be preparing the following documents for presentation and discussion:
1. John volunteered to write up a summary of the giving to the church over the last 12-18 months.
2. Wes is finalizing the budget based on our discussion.
3. Teri will write up an explanation of the extra expenses that we have between now and July.
4. Rob will draft financial pledge cards to be handed out this Sunday, which we will ask to be turned in next Sunday, April 26.