A Man Speaks - But Who Is Listening?

WELS President-in-Waiting Wayne Mueller:

God Bless Our Decisions
Last weekend the Synodical Council found itself in nearly the identical financial position as it was at the February meeting. The support forecast and budget emergencies in mid-March forced $2.3M in cuts to Home Missions, World Missions, and Parish Services. The SC applied the blessing of the 5-year gift of $2.5M to those cuts for the first year of the upcoming fiscal biennium.

For the second year of the biennium 2008-2009 half of those cuts will be reinstated to areas of ministry other than Ministerial Education. Mission divisions will each lose about a half million of their budgets for that fiscal year and Parish Services will also be cut. There will be no cuts to Ministerial Education for the next two years. BME will retain its full allocation, keep the $2.6M addition from the November 2007 meeting, benefit from a $170,000 annual gift to their special funds for 2007-2009, and retain all the savings of the proposed closing of Michigan Lutheran Seminary in their budgets.

Starting July 1, 2008, and for four years after that, the SC designated half of the new $2.5M gift annually for debt reduction. Since WELS’ debt service for more than $20M in loans currently comes out of our operating funds, this move will have the affect of relieving the operating budget of nearly a million dollars a year of debt service. This will allow the $2.5M gift to be the gift that keeps on giving long into the future and have a stabilizing affect on support for ministries.

These budget moves by the Synodical Council presuppose that the convention will uphold their recommendation to close Michigan Lutheran Seminary. If the convention reverses their decision, much larger cuts to other areas of ministry will have to be considered to cover not only the operating costs of MLS, but also the BME deficits which, with MLS open, will climb to over $5M by the end of the 2009-2011 biennium.

It was the prayer of Synodical Council members that God would bless their decisions in a way that would demonstrate their desire to maintain prep level education in the WELS, offer overall long term stability to our support of ministerial education, and live within our means while keeping our core ministries intact.

As C. Peter Wagner Stated, Church Growth Principles Just Don't Seem to Work