The Diocesan Dialogue
Current Issue
April 2007

A Note from the Minister of Finance

Money is a funny thing. We never have just the right amount. Like Goldilocks, we complain that the pot is too small, too large. I get lots of questions about the Diocesan finances. Let me answer a couple here.

Q. I hear that the Diocese is very rich, and yet we always seem to have to beg for money for our parishes. What's that about? And, if the Diocese has money, why do we need to pay anything to the Diocese from the parish?

These are good questions with somewhat complicated answers. First, when the Diocese sold St. Mark's Hospital most of the proceeds were put into a trust, called the Perpetual Trust of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. The terms of the trust allow the Diocese to use a certain amount of the income from the trust but not the principal.

That amount is calculated by figuring the average monthly income in a 48-month period ending on June 30 of the year prior to the budget year. So, the average monthly income for the 48 months ending June 30, 2006 gives us the amount we can use for the 2007 budget. We have some savvy folks doing the investing, and we have weathered the ups and downs of the stock market pretty well.

In general, we can figure to receive between $4.5 and $5 million. We get another relatively small amount of revenue from parish assessments and other miscellaneous items, bringing us to a bit over $5 million.

That does seem like a lot of money! Last month's Dialogue explained how the money has been budgeted for 2007, and you can see that it is being put to good use. In rough numbers, we spend about 25 percent of our revenue on parish support - grants, congregational clergy insurance, clergy deployment, clergy professional development, for example.

We spend another 10 percent on items that we are canonically required to have - National Church and Province support, conventions, Commission on Ministry. Thirty percent covers "overhead" - Diocesan staff (not including those assigned to a specific ministry), communications, supplies, retired clergy benefits, etc. We dedicate 10 percent to the cost of our facilities, including our lease and utilities, clergy equity sharing, maintenance and repairs, etc.

That leaves 25 percent for our Cornerstone ministries - Evangelism, Education and Spiritual Development, Special and Emerging Ministries, Social Justice/Advocacy/Service, and Leadership (Council, Standing Committee, and other Diocesan Committees).

The Council has appointed a task group to look at the budget process, among other things. You'll be hearing more about that in the months to come. Our hope is that the new process will encourage more participation in the development of the Diocesan budget.

I am going to hold off answering the second part of the question - about parish assessments. That, too, is being studied by the Council and its task group. The short answer, however, is STEWARDSHIP. We seem to have forgotten what that means here in Utah. By the time you read this Dialogue, ten folks from our Diocese (five clergy, five lay) will have attended a Stewardship, Evangelism, and Congregational Development conference in California. We hope to bring back lots of ideas and energy around these issues. Perhaps I can get one of them to answer the question of why give to the Diocese.

Thanks for askin'

Toni Marie Sutliff
Minister of Finance

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