Update on BHBC finances

Some have asked why we don’t report our income and financial position in the e-newsletter.

Truthfully, I’m not sure why the financial report stopped showing up. Somehow, when we switched to the digital version it didn’t make the transition.

One of our challenges is how do we accurately report our financial standing at any given moment? For example, do we base our reports upon our projected budget or on actual receipts and expenses? If we use the projected budget and compare that with our actual income, we don’t look so good at the moment. Our year-to-date projected budget calls for us (through July) to have received $651,758.88 but we’ve actually received $555,495.86. Those numbers show us behind our budget by $96,263.02 and we appear to be headed for trouble. But real numbers show a different story. We’ve held our spending down and through July have spent $567,357.84, which is a deficit of $11,936.79 of real dollars. That’s not bad for the middle of summer when we’ve had some of our large expenses hit and attendance lower because of summer travel.

Let’s compare where we are today with a year ago, again using July numbers and real dollars, not proposed budget numbers. One year ago we had received $542,256.57 compared to this July’s total receipts of $555,495.86. So we’re actually $13,239.29 AHEAD of last year.  Our spending last year was at $572,720.83 compared to $567,357.84 this year, which is $5,362.99 less than a year ago. We continually look for ways to save money without cutting ministry and our staff is doing a good job of this.

The number I continually monitor is our bank balance ABOVE our reserves. As of August 23, our reconciled bank balance above reserves is $194,518.49. On July 31 it was $168,113.40.  

What I’m struggling with is what to report to the church. Do we only show actual income and expenses or budgeted income compared with actual income, or both?  Bottom line is we are still strong financially and have solid financial practices in place. The truth is also we could be doing better.  What we have to learn to do is translate our offerings into Kingdom work and realize the more we give the more we can accomplish for God’s glory.  Just something to consider.