256. How Our Finance Is Running

We had our congregation meeting last Sunday. As it is for active (attendance in the previous three months) registered (finished New Family Class) baptized members, not every member gets to hear the detailed report of how our annual budget is allocated for this year. So I would like to briefly touch on some areas of our finance to inform all our members and stay transparent.

Our annual budget goes through multiple fresh eyes before it gets adopted by the congregation. It is first submitted by team leaders (in November), reviewed by SLT (in December), approved by Ministers (In January), and adopted by the congregation at the congregation meeting.

Since we began to manage our finance, we’ve had surpluses each year. So we categorized these surpluses into three funds: General (operation) fund, Mission fund, and Emergency fund. As the name implies, the mission fund will support mission initiatives. The emergency fund gives us a margin for unforeseeable emergencies and keeps our ministry running through it. The general fund will cover large, one-time operational expenses. It makes our annual budget more predictable and prevents large one-time purchases from straining the existing budget.

Also, we’ve created another budget category called “compensation.” As we are still in the process of becoming fully financially autonomous from KSC, The Seed has been increasing our share of its lead pastor’s salary coverage. We’ve also started contributing to a portion of the youth pastor’s salary this year.

Thanks to our members’ generous giving, we are making substantial progress (much faster than I anticipated) toward full financial autonomy. However, we are still at a very early stage of our growth. So, for the time being, you will find that majority of our finance is used for operational needs. But we are hopeful that we will be a resource church in the future, providing tangible help and hopes to those in need in our community and mission fields.