Resources for Ministry: Your Tithes, Offerings and Gifts
Where does it all go?
Your regular offerings support our General Budget, which pays for things like staff salaries, utilities, property maintenance, and the congregation's benevolence to the larger church.
Your special gifts can be designated to all kinds of good things which our congregation is up to.
- Discretionary / Emergency / Food Pantry Fund-- we help a lot of people you may never meet, through the resources you are able to share through this congregation. These funds are kept in a different pocket, and are used to help the poor, the hungry and those facing life emergencies or catastrophes. Please be generous.
- Mission Endowment Fund --this is a new fund which the congregation authorized in November 2007. It is a permanent Fund from which we will draw only interest earnings to help pay for outreach and mission. In other words, not to pay our regular expenses or the upkeep on our "club house" but to do other mission work to spread the Good News and to change the lives of people who put their hope in the Lord. Please be generous.
By the way, you don't have to be dead to give to the Mission Endowment Fund! But you can also remember this Fund in your will or estate planning.
- Organ Fund -- Our congregation has undertaken to repair and upgrade our tired old 1920s-era movie theater organ. We have already raised $5,000 to purchase another pipe organ which is being removed from Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills as they do a costly replacement with a new instrument. We will eventually need another $75,000 to build a new chamber, move the Beverly Hills organ, and integrate it with our existing instrument. This is an exciting opportunity that happens only once in a generation, and will create a find musical instrument and a legacy for the future.
What have such gifts accomplished in the past few years?
- $2,000 to rebuild a Lutheran church in Orissa State, India, in the Jeypore Evangelical Lutheran Church.
- $625 annually to provide Christmas gifts for the young people at eh Jeff Griffith Youth Center residential program in Hollywood.
- Major gifts to replace the horrible carpet in Durkee Hall with a high-quality permanent porcelain tile floor.