At the urging of my pastor at Green Mountain Presbyterian I started working with the presbytery and council in 2019. Not knowing any better, I agreed to be the co-moderator of Finance and Property. With a background in finance for almost 35 years with the US Postal Service, I carried over a lot of the goals from there: balanced books, achievable budget, policies in place, competent people in all positions and short finance meetings. In the first year we had a new treasurer, had gone through 3 accountants, had a new firm handling our investments, had a new bank and had a new software package to do the accounting. And then COVID-19 hit. Welcome to Denver Presbytery!
Only my faith from childhood and a few well-placed remarks from presbytery staff and my pastor kept me going. I quickly realized we had churches in trouble and no real way to help them. We had the funds but not the path or policy for their use. The last two years we have concentrated on getting this done and with the January assembly when the motion for allocation of funds from the sale of property was approved, we now have a policy and a path and can do more to help. The Shared Funding Ministry is a part of this assistance.
The Vision Construction Team is now in the "curate and generate" process. Once they complete their work, Finance and Property will continue to move with the team’s vision and strive to make sound decisions going forward, especially in the areas of property and church assistance.
Our goal is to see no church fail. We want to work with them any way we can to ensure their congregations continue to function, even if in another format. The document, Reimagining Congregations, is a tool now on the website to help with this. LEARN MORE→ If you or your session have questions or concerns, let us know. We can help with data gathering and interpretation as well as reviews of your financial reports. Don't wait until there are no other options.
Denver Presbytery has a long tradition of serving, meeting the needs, ministering and sharing the gospel in our part of Colorado. Working together and managing our resources, we can see this continue for many years to come.
And by the way, we still haven't had a short finance meeting!
In the service we share,
Ruling Elder Pat Queen
Denver Presbytery Council
Finance & Property Workgroup Chair