I assure you that unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it can only be a single seed. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. (John 12:24)
Dear Friends,
On Sunday, April 27, I shared with the congregation some of the amazing signs of growth that we are experiencing in our church. Let’s recap that information:
- In person worship is up 16%, and online worship is up 75% between last fiscal year and this fiscal year up to April 1 (so this year’s numbers don’t even have Easter included yet). The Gathering has grown to a point that beginning June 8 we will add another service, The Gathering Unplugged, from 10:10-10:50 a.m. Sunday mornings. In Traditional, we also continue to see growth, including adding 5 new people to the Chancel Choir.
- Our podcasts have seen increased traffic and downloads, and people in 28 different countries have accessed our sermons. Top countries include the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Brazil, but we have also been heard in countries like Mexico, Latvia, Singapore, South Africa, India, United Arab Emirates, and Iran!
- We have had more than 10 families become newly active in our children and youth ministries this year.
- We will take 27 people to the Ozark Mission Project camp in Benton in June, up from 11 the previous year. We also have 2 youth who serve on OMP leadership for the state, and our church will again house and feed 100 kids and adults from all over the state for an OMP camp from June 8-13 to help our Benton County neighbors.
- We have started a youth band led by Ms. Allison (you got to hear them in worship on Senior Sunday, when you also got to hear Phillip Mills preach) and a youth leadership development group is being led by Kristin Wells and Pastor Michelle. We also have 2 youth who serve on district and state leadership for Conference Youth Ministries.
- We have seen growth in small groups, including an intergenerational Sunday school and a women’s spiritual formation group, and to help with the large number of people exploring our church, this summer I will form a Connection Team that will integrate new people into existing ministries or form new small groups where they are needed.
- We continue to make a difference in our community, through our partnership with Gateway (the online and alternative high school in Bentonville) at events like the Gateway Career Fair; through support for the teachers at Gateway and RE Baker and Mary Mae Jones elementaries; support for the Bentonville Book Bus; partnering with the Benton County Literacy Council; hosting our community Earth Day Fair; offering several community lectures; and support of the Second Street Pantry (which is helping as many as 300+ families per week now). We are also part of the inaugural class of Faithful Foundations, a program sponsored entirely by the Urban Land Institute and designed specifically for churches to look at how undeveloped land might address needs of the greater community.
- We continue to grow lay and church leadership. Michelle Amos, who came out of this church, is running the Henderson State and Ouachita Baptist University Wesley Foundation as she finishes seminary. Kristin Wells will start her second year of seminary in a couple months, and Brooke Tilley, a member of our youth group, continues to articulate her call to ministry early in her life, including participating in the Hendrix Youth Institute to help in her discernment of call. We have several new Lay Servants among us, and Angie Barrington is very close to finishing what she needs to be a Lay Speaker, allowing her to cover pulpits for area pastors on vacation or leave. We have also hosted and taught Lay Servant Ministry classes for the state, including classes on Congregational Care and Preaching.
These are just a few of the highlights I can share with you about our church! What incredible good news we have about how we share the Good News with our neighbors!
And now for the challenging news, which I also shared on April 27. Over the past year, we have experienced some moves and deaths that have significantly impacted regular giving at our church, coming to a total loss of about $150,000 annually. The good news within such loss is that our giving is now much more evenly spread across families (we have 370+ giving families right now), which means that as we move forward, we should not have such a significant challenge in the years to come. This is an exceptional moment, but that does not remove the struggle that is before us.
Our staff and Finance Committee has responded in kind. We have held expenses as tight to the belt as we responsibly can. To help you understand what we are proposing for this year, here is a comparison between this current fiscal year budget and next year’s proposed one:
|
Budget Comparisons |
Fiscal Year 2025 |
Fiscal Year 2026 |
% Increase/ |
|
7/1/24 to 6/30/25 |
7/1/25 to 6/30/26 |
Decrease |
|
|
Receipts |
$1,275,298 |
$1,250,776 |
-1.9% |
|
Expenses |
|||
|
SPRC |
$744,765 |
$763,463 |
2.5% |
|
Administrative |
$47,188 |
$51,531 |
9.2% |
|
Conference/District |
$127,530 |
$125,078 |
-1.9% |
|
Board of Trustees |
$247,353 |
$251,832 |
1.8% |
|
Nurture- Worship/Music |
$41,600 |
$39,350 |
-5.4% |
|
Nurture- Children/Youth/Adult |
$39,100 |
$39,013 |
-0.2% |
|
Outreach/Missions |
$20,500 |
$19,500 |
-4.9% |
|
$1,268,036 |
$1,289,766 |
1.7% |
You can see that, despite growth numbers like a 16% increase in in-person worship and growth across the board in all our programs, we have held the budget increase to just under 2%, which does not even match inflation. Let me also explain some of the breakdown. Despite adding another worship service, worship drops in the budget for two reasons: the Endowment Committee has allocated funds to cover the cost of the new worship service for a year and some software expenses have been moved to administration from worship (which explains that jump of 9%). The Trustees budget faces the same challenge we do in our households, that utilities and insurance costs continue to rise. SPRC is the cost of our staff, who all have faced increased workloads, and your Staff Parish Committee felt strongly that such work needed to be recognized on some level. Everything else was cut to help defray the challenge of this year, but we truly believe to cut anymore means bringing a halt to some of the key ministries that are at the heart of who this church is and what we do for Christ.
We do anticipate as our numbers continue to grow, giving will follow suit. However, people do not typically begin consistently investing in a church until they have been attending for 2-3 years on average. This means that some of us need to step boldly into the vision that God is calling us into: to rise to this challenge and invest in this moment so that God’s future on the patch of land at this corner in Bentonville is assured. And the thing is, we actually have not needed much to close the gap in the grand scheme of things. Once all the figuring was done, we had a shortfall of about $100,000. I challenged 200 of us to give $500 more. That would make up the difference. As of Thursday, May 15, we have closed that gap significantly. We are, as you see, only $38,990.17 from hitting that goal. That means we only need 78 more $500 gifts to make it.
We can do this, my friends! We can close this gap so that we can keep celebrating God with stellar music and room for more people to connect with God through worship! We can close this gap so that our kids get to continue learning how to lead us in faith, and so our youth can grow into sound moral leaders in our community! We can close this gap so that care for our earth and our schools continues! And while $500 in a lump sum may seem like a lot, it is actually just $41.67 a month. If you go out to dinner with one other person these days, you will spend more than that. You also know that I will not ask you to do anything that I would not be willing to do as well, so I increased my pledge this year by $1500, which means I have covered me and two of you. And if you can’t give that much, know that anything you give makes a difference. If you can’t give money, remember that service often saves us money. You can join the handyperson team and help with painting and repair projects. If you volunteer in the nursery once a month, you save us at least $120 a year on paid costs. There are all kinds of ways you can make a difference.
We just need to know the difference you can make, so we know how to responsibly budget. If you can give more, any amount more, send a note to our Church Accountant Chandra Rogers at Please do so this month if at all possible, because we do need to approve this year’s budget soon and we need to make plans if we cannot hit it. But I just have this feeling that you all will rise to the occasion and make the investment in the now for the people of Christ that we are for this town. It’s who you are.
I share one more detail with you as we close. Pastor Ray and I were visiting with a couple this past weekend who were checking us out for the first time. They have recently moved to Bentonville. I shared with them how glad I was that they had come in our building. The young man then responded, “Oh we asked around. Everyone told us to come here. You are the church the whole town is talking about. This is the place to be.”
You are the people who make this place. You are the reason we are who we are. Thank you, my friends. Thank you for loving and welcoming so many in the name of Christ and giving in all the ways you do so that mission continues.
Grace and peace,
Pastor Michelle