The church I attended when I was growing up had several boards with information at the front of the sanctuary. One of the boards listed the hymns we would be singing that Sunday morning. The other board listed last week’s Sunday School attendance, last week’s worship service attendance and the amount of the offering from last week. A summary of this information was included in the monthly church newsletter.
Well, here at Platte Woods Church we do not post such information. However, from time to time I get questions concerning giving and attendance. One of Pastor Steve’s goals is to increase worship attendance by 5%.
With our new Web page, we have an opportunity to provide some information about how we are doing. When you go to the new Web site, visit the Stewardship page, and then select Financial Updates. (You can go there directly by selecting this link).
What you will find is a month-end report of the church’s budget compared with the support received through the end of month. Information will be provided on where we are on paying off the church’s building debt. Also, there will be information on worship and church school attendance.
As you encounter the numbers, please remember a couple of things. First, the church has up and downs with the numbers varying from week to week. Some weeks are certainly better than other weeks. Our challenge is to do well “on average.” Second, the “average” numbers are on a calendar year. Such averaging provides an inaccurate picture some of the time. For instance, as we move into September, we know that our yearly averages are usually down as we are coming off summer vacation. Our averages should improve as we move into the fall schedule. By the end of December, our averages should be a lot different than our end-of-August averages. By the way, we have a log of weekly numbers going back to 2004. So, we look not only at our year-to-date numbers, we can also compare the averages to several previous years.
As you review the numbers and have questions or comments, please let me know. I would be glad to discuss the numbers with you.
