Spring is here. Time for a quarterly treasurer's update. If you're a regular giver to LaSalle - thank you. We really appreciate your generosity. If you're not a giver yet, perhaps you'll be inspired by stories from our newly-formed Giving Team. In the weeks and months to come you'll hear stories from this team about what giving means to them - why it's important and meaningful, what it means for them and their spiritual growth.

Your giving directly impacts what this church is able to do in terms of programming and ministry. Your gifts make it possible for us to provide programming that connects people of the church to each other and also ministry that allows us to reach out to others outside the walls of the church.

You can see from the chart below that our spending (expenses) is tracking very closely to the budget. We've spent almost exactly what we planned to spend three months into the year. You can also see that giving is 20% below budget so far. We've received $32,000 less than planned for at this time.

You should also note that LSC has total cash reserves (restricted and unrestricted) of $457k, which is less than we had at the end of the year because of lower-than-expected giving. These cash reserves represent 6.8 months of spending. Our goal is three to six months.

There was a lot of good dialogue about the budget at our congregational meeting in February. We highlighted then our ability to withstand another year of deficit spending because of our healthy reserves. We also recognized we can't continue deficit spending forever. We really need a bump in giving this year to avoid making some painful choices.

After that February meeting my wife and I decided to increase our giving for the year by 10%. Of course, we're just one household so that's not enough to make a difference, but if many of us banded together and increased giving by 10% this year it would make a real difference.

I hope you'll prayerfully consider your giving for this year. Watch for those Giving Team stories coming up soon.

Karl Lauger

Treasurer

Quarterly Treasurer’s Update

Care in the Face of Harm