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NEWS

by Erik Alsgaard
UMCONNECTION STAFF

The Baltimore-Washington Conference is making the necessary adjustments to balance the 2005 budget.

'We need to balance our budget if our vision for the future is engaging people in discipleship and emphasizing support for our leaders who make disciples,' said Bishop John R. Schol.

A realistic look at the budget showed that, based on changes in program projections and statistical corrections from local church reports, expenses would exceed giving in 2005 by $1.4 million. Conference staff and the leadership of the Council on Finance and Administration, when faced with increasing apportionments further or making cuts, decided that congregations would be more effective in making disciples if their apportionments were not raised, even though the annual conference authorized CFA to do this if needed.

The new budget numbers are more in line with historical trends in apportioned giving, said Martha Knight, director of the Office of Finance and Administration for the conference. Historically, the churches of the Baltimore-Washington Conference have returned about 90 to 91 percent of their apportioned askings.

In the past, the Baltimore-Washington Conference dipped into its reserves for many reasons, such as emergencies or to launch new mission and ministry opportunities. Over time, those reserves, which were expected to be replenished, have not risen back to prior levels.

'We've come to the realization that we really can't spend reserves for things other than unforeseen circumstances, like the mold crisis of two years ago,' Knight said in an interview.

'It sounded really good at the time,' Knight said, 'that we would spend some of the reserves to fund special ministries. We thought that they would be replenished. And that's okay as long as you don't over-commit yourself, and you know that money is going to keep coming in. When our investments were making as much as they used to, (it) was a little easier to re-capture.'

The 2005 spending budget for the conference is approximately $15.3 million, said McPayten, not including the amount billed directly to churches for clergy benefits.

That means the conference expects to receive that level of financial support from local churches in the conference. Those dollars are received through a mechanism known as apportionments, or connectional giving, whereby churches combine resources for mission and ministry, enabling them to do more together than they could separately.

In 2004, according to figures from the treasurer's office, the Baltimore-Washington Conference received $14.2 million in apportionment giving. This represents nearly 90 percent of the total apportioned to the nearly 700 local churches in the conference.

In terms of actual dollars, 2004 apportionment receipts were ahead of 2003 by more than $450,000.

Only through significant cut-backs and good stewardship was the conference able to keep mission and ministry afloat in 2004. With three months left in the year, the 2004 expenditures were curtailed in an attempt not to spend more than what came in.
The result was a resounding success. Expenses in 2004 totaled $13.8 million. But the cut-backs were not done without sacrifice and pain.

'This meant cutting a lot of travel,' said McPayten. 'It meant not replacing personnel. It meant doing without some temporary work and using more volunteers. It meant not purchasing equipment that we expected to purchase.

And in 2005, some of those same measures are being taken, along with other cost-cutting moves conference-wide.

'We've gone through a process this year and will continue to go through
a cost-cutting process for reaching economies where we can,' said Knight.