How long does it take to pay for Christmas?

Christmas is a wonderful time of the year. And as my wife reminded me this weekend, it's time to start buying gifts. As always, we put a little back each month so gift buying time isn't a stain on the family budget.

I came across a great article in my Sound Mind Investing newsletter relating to Christmas buying. It tell you how many days you have to work in a year to pay for all those great gifts. It assumes a 7 hr work day, who works 7 hours?

How many days on the job will it take.

Assuming $10 earned per hour and $1,000 spent on Christmas = 24 days

Assuming $12 earned per hour and $1,000 spent on Christmas = 20 days

So if you haven't saved for gifts yet, what can you do to minimize the damage and keep your budget on track? Here are a few gift ideas that could be worth more to the gift getter than anything you could purchase.

1. A gift of service. Make up a coupon book (running errands, house work, shopping)
2. Make a gift. Are you good at something? Photography, candle making, cook a great meal for them
3. Gift of time together. Take a relative out for coffee. When was the last time you just sat and talked with an aunt or uncle?

Non stress time together at Christmas is a true gift to friends and loved ones. It's worth much more than anything money could buy.

Big news in the church world and taxes

In August, Congress inacted the massive Pension Protection Act of 2006. The provisions of this act take effect immediately.

The biggest impact of this act and church's is this

If you have people in your church who are age 70 1/2 or older who have an IRA(s), they can make TAX-FREE distributions of up to $100,000 from a traditional IRA or Roth IRA to a tax-exempt church or charity. This provision is effective through 2007.

In a nut shell, the church wins and the donor wins but there is only a two year window so don't let 2006 go by without getting this information into the hands of your church body who reached age 70 1/2.

Unreal shopping experience

Yesterday, my wife did some cloths shopping at the mall. (mall's that's another blog for another time.) Because of how we allocate our paychecks, we tell every dollar where to go, and we had a specific amount budgeted for cloths this pay.

When my wife checked out at the register, she used the balance of what we had allocated for cloths and put that amount on our debit card and she paid for the balance in cash from her biweekly commission. (Again another blog topic at another time.) The sales clerk must have thought my wife was trying to hide the purchase from me. The clerk suggested three ways my wife could keep me from knowing what she purchased. (I'm not making his up.)

1. Put her new purchase on under her current cloths so when my wife comes in the house, I wouldn't see her purchase.
2. Put the cloths in the trunk of the car and wait for me to leave then bring the cloths in the house.
3. Dispose of the department store bag before she got home and maybe I wouldn't notice.

I find it unbelievable that one someone would suggest things like this and two that people would even think like this. Another reason why we must tell our money where to go or it will leave on its own. Thanks Dave Ramsey!

Recharge your Batteries. . .

As we coming to the end of the construction phase of our new church, situations, questions, and decisions are moving at light speed. I know this is just a season and much like fall, the next season is just around the corner.

In all of this, I exercise to stay energized. Exercise clears my mind. My sweat of choice is riding my bike. I'm less than 50 miles away from my yearly goal of 1,500 miles. I should have that in my next ride or maybe two rides. Walking my dogs is a daily activity. I'm really surprised how just walking helps keep my weight stable.

I also love listening to podcasts on my mp3 player. This is one of the greatest inventions of my lifetime. I recently purchased a FM transmitter for my mp3 player for use in my car. Now I'm legal. (I'll say no more on this.)

So what do you do to recharge your batteries? I hope whatever it is you do it on a regular basis. It will help you to focus on the big picture and not get gobbled up by the details of everyday life.

Budget Time!

Well, it's that time of year. Budgeting Season. As I'm closing the quarter, ok trying to close the quarter, I'm also looking ahead to 2007. Next year is bringing with it some unique challenges in our budget process. As we move into our new facility what impact will this have on our budgets? Truth is, it's very hard to tell.

Conventional wisdom says, our people numbers will go up and our giving will go down. This is playing a key factor in my projections for 2007. As a starting point for our budgets, I'm working off the assumption of a 30% increase in attendance and a (15%) decrease in offerings. I believe this is a "typical" trend based on my conversations with other church's and church consultants who I've spoken with on this topic.

I've looked back to our construction costs to estimate our electric and natural gas for the coming year. Since we will still own our current facility, I have to budget utility costs for this building also.

One very exciting thing for me is that our Worship & Creative Arts Ministry has already submitted to me their 2007 budget. I should give them a prize. Since I didn't budget for a prize a big thank you here on my blog is all they get.

If you are interested in seeing the budget sheets I give our various ministries to use, send me a email and I'll forward you a copy.

Have a great budgeting season!

Kudos to Church Staffing

If you have been following my blog for a while you know we are getting ever so closer to moving into our new church. (Yea God!) As such, we currently have three staff positions open and posted on our web site www.sugarcreekfmc.org

We decided to test the waters at www.churchstaffing.com and post our Service programmer position. Kudos to Churchstaffing! In one day, I received 11 resumes via email. That to me is very impressive as this position is what I would call "specialized". The really cool think is that none of these applicants would have found us without our listing.

Now if someone would apply for one of our open staff positions based on my blog, well then that would be unbelievable. (Anyone from Indiana wanting to move to Ohio?)

Online Bill Pay

As I sit here waiting for the Ohio State game to start, I thought I'd pay a few bills and as I was doing so, I wonder many people take advantage on line bill payment?

I've been baking on line for more than 8 years now and I love it. I just scheduled my credit card payment (yes, I have one credit card used for mostly business purchases. I do not carry a balance on my cc and I never use it for unplanned purchases.) I'm a big Dave Ramsey fan! I digress. Here are some reasons why I bank on line:

1. I can schedule exactly when the payment will reach the intended party.
2. No envelopes or stamps ( I love saving money).
3. My online bill pay is free through my bank.
4. They keep track of all the payments I've sent. I can pull up a years worth of payment to my gas company to see how much we spend in this category each year.
5. I love technology and this is a great way to make it work for me.

Putting on my Church Business Administrators hat, I see more and more "bank" checks each year from people in our church using bill pay services. We offered electronic giving for a few years now and that's been great as well.

Time to walk my dog then I'll be all ready for the Bucks! (Ohio State)

To POS or not to POS

We only have 7 weeks until we take over our building. Lot's to get done. I guess that's why I wake up at 2 a.m. and think I should get out of bed and get to work. Don't get me wrong. I'm energized by all that's taking place. I thank God every day that I get to be a part of what he is doing through Sugarcreek.

My latest 2 a.m. thing had me thinking about our cafe and how to intergrated the accounting for it into our church's books. (I still haven't decided the which way to go on this.) But I'm getting ahead of myself. Ok, POS - Point of Sale. This consists of a computer, scanner, cash drawer, expensive software. . . . This is the first issue at hand for our cafe. At least in my mind.

I've received some great suggestions on what POS sytems others are using in their cafes. Thanks Andy and Matt. We will get there sometime. For starters, mostly for cost reasons . . . . . ok totaly for cost reasons, we are going to start simple. We'll start out with 2 ROYAL alpha583cx Heavy Duty Cash Register I found the best price at JR.com. $179.99 Thanks Froogle.com



I think this simple solution will give me the reporting I need as it comes with software that will allow me to download the sales transactions into my notebook. Even right into Quickbooks if I choose.

Now what to serve at the cafe and what to charge? Decisions, decisions. What I do know is profits from the cafe will go to missions.

Next Hire . . .

During a break at the IT roundtable, I looked up Granger's "retail manager" Susan Chipman. She was very helpful and gave me lots to think about as we get ready to hire a food service coordinator.

We just posted this opening on our web site. In addition to coming up with great interveiw questions, I'm also looking for a POS system. Any suggesgtions on either issue?

I'm also trying to process how to best integrate the cafe's accounting into the church's accounting.

I love this kind of stuff.

I asked at the roundtable if anyone heard of bookstore manager (as we have a bookstore as well) and lots of people heard of it. That's all I'll share here. So no need to suggest this software.

Back from the IT Round Table

I'm back in the office after Granger Trip. My head is still spinning. It was very fruitful in multiple ways.

Here's a few key items / pointer that resonated with me.

1. Church's are size and larger have at least one full time IT person. (At this time, our IT Superman is has other responsibilities.
2. Most church's have laptops that can be checked out. Very few staff members have a laptop assigned to them.
3. No local adimistration of PC's. (i.e. no installing software unless the IT department installs it.)
4. No personal inkjet printers.
5. Help Desk software / Ticketing software is a must. (We are looking into that today.)
6. Most church's that were running Fellowship One has a back-up ISP.

As always with this kind of thing, the best part about the event was the networking and knowing there are other church IT departments and people who have similar needs and "opportunities".

Greetings from Wired Churches.com

Good morning.

I'm waiting for the church IT round table to start. I'm jacked. About 20 of us got together last night informally to "hang out". I learned so much that I could drive home now and still be very blessed by the networking and knowledge I gained.

We are sitting in Grangers Jungle room. This is Dave Mast our very own IT guy. We are early. What can I say. . . . . It's always better to be early than on time.

Road Trip

I'll be hitting the road Tuesday with our IT manager, Dave Mast. Dave and I are headed to Granger Community Church for a church IT round table. Way Cool!

SFMC is the smallest in weekend attendance numbers that will be present at this event. The largest church is Seacoast at 7,500.

What exactly is a roundtable? I'm glad you asked.

DEFINITION OF A ROUNDTABLE: roundtable is a peer-learning event where the participants are both teachers and learners. A roundtable is:

o Small enough to emphasize interactive learning

o Led by a facilitator and peer

o Includes participants who have an affinity with each other

o Does not include a strong agenda beyond sharing knowledge Roundtable members are selectively invited with less than 25 per group

PURPOSE OF THIS ROUNDTABLE
1. To meet other innovators· Encouragement - "I am not alone." "Here I am understood."· Confidence - "I'm not so crazy after all."· Relationship - Develop on-going friendships

2. To advance the diffusion of innovation in a given topic area· Sharing knowledge, lessons learned, and experiences· Sorting out the big picture. How does it all fit? Where are we= going?· Synergy of new ideas, new perspectives, and new dreams

3. To facilitate collaboration· Explore opportunities for teaming up to accomplish common goals· "Network" - Learn who knows what and who is doing what

I'll update you from Granger. . . . . Pray for Dave & I

Thanks

Basketball at Church? . . . . It's not what you think

Today, our weekly all staff meeting was two hours. Usually our weekly all staff is only an hour and here's the agenda.

1. We share stories of life change that happened last week. (This is what makes life great!)
2. We communicate with staff on what's going on so we can be informed and inform others.
3. We pray together and for each other.

Today was different. No we didn't play basketball. We had the defending, two years in a row, Highland Hawks basketball coach Dave Schlabach speak to us. He came to share his leadership principals with us. I was very excited to hear from him and to see if these principals would be transferable to us.

I very surprised. He really didn't talk about basketball at all. His principals were all about leading people. And man did these principals apply to me. Here were my take aways from the church.

1. Have a passion for what you do.
2. surround yourself with Energy Givers
3. Give people a roadmap where to go
4. Make your goals big
5. Never be on time, always be early
6. Sacrifice is needed for special things to happen
7. Understand your role and do it very well (not everyone is the shooter)
8. Ask for help. No one knows it all or sees it all
9. Don't assume people know their role. Help them see it
10. with a "big win" thank the smallest contributors first. Make them feel like hero's. Everyone will thank the person out front.

I know if I would diligently work on these ten things, I'd be a better leader!

What is most important to you?

I woke up this morning thinking about the same thing as when I went to bed last night. Life moving in fast forward. In my quiet time, God asked me what am I willing to say no to in order to slow down a little bit? At that moment, I didn't have an answer.

In doing some reading in success magazine, I was reading a profile on Chris Gardner. At 27, he was homeless and living on the subways of Chicago. He's now 52 and president of his own company. He said something in his article that stuck with me. "Money is the least significant aspect of success. It's more important to look in the mirror and go Yeah. A lot of folks with a whole lot of money can't do that." His quote brought me right back to God's word. Your treasure is where your heart is. I say all this to say, God's asking me to say no to a few things and to check where my heart is.

When I slowed down and thought about what God challenged me with this morning, he brought me back to it's all about relationships. That's what's most important. My relationship with him and with people.

Did you miss me?

Ok, I know it's been some time since I was last here. To be honest I was thinking about giving up the blog world for a while. I guess in a way that's just what I did.

Over the last few day's I've had more than a few people ask me where my blog has been. The last person who asked was Jeff. Jeff's our sales rep at Fellowship One. (Hi Jeff!)

In talking with Jeff today he said life feels like it is in fast forward. I totally agreed and thought to myself that's a very accurate statement about the lives of most of the people I know.

As I type this, I just finished doing some consulting work, my wife is on her way to pick our son up from football. I've put my daughter to bed for the third time tonight and our puppy is finally sleeping.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade my life with anyone if I could.

I'll be blogging again on a regular basis. We are only 10 weeks away from opening weekend in our new building. I'll keep you posted on this from my point of view. Pray for us!

Riding Wet?

If you don't know by now, I'm passionate about bicycling. My licenses plates say "LV2PDL" . . . . . love to pedal. Tonight, myself and two friends hit the road and drive two hours north to bed down in a red roof inn in anticipation for 6 a.m. Saturday morning. At that time, we will join hundreds of other cycling enthusiasts and head west along the shores of Lake Erie.

At the end of the day, hopefully around 1 or 2 pm, we will have completed the first day of a two day ride having ridden 100 miles. (75 + an optional 25 the first day) It will be time for a shower, food, and then on a bus for free admission to cedar point. I think cedar point is better than Disney. Lots of childhood memories at cedar point.

After the point, its back on the bus and off to bed. Sunday is the return bike ride back to Cleveland. When it's all said and done, I'll have 175 miles more to add to my total from this weekend ride.

Pray that the rain stays away. It's not looking good for Saturday.

Church Construction Road Trip

Today our Senior Pastor and I jumped in the car and headed about 45 minutes up the road to visit with First Christian Church of Canton Ohio. They are in a relocation project just like we are and both church's' are set to open within one week of each other. Cool! Dwith and I met Matt Chambers at their construction site for a tour. Thanks Matt!

Talking with Matt and having him walk us through his building was very cool. We've both experienced a lot of the same issues during the construction process and we are both very humbled and grateful for what God is doing!

In a couple of weeks, it will be my turn to host Matt and his Senior Pastor for a walk through our new building. I hope we will be a source of encouragement for them.

We adopted!

This weekend was very special for our family. After months and months of begging, our 10 year old daughter finally got her puppy. On Saturday, our family took a trip to the county dog pound and we adopted a 8 week old puppy. We named him "Gino".

My daughter made all the right pleas for months and months. "I'll walk it, feed it, and take care of it". I'll have to admit, she's done a great job of this until last night. She finally gave into sleep. I was the one who took Gino out 3 times last night. 11:30 pm; 2:30 pm, 5:00 am.

Today / tonight it will be my turn to give into sleep. That's ok, I'm a dog lover. It was a condition of marriage. . . . That's a story for another time.

Coke or Pepsi

By all estimates, we are 90 - 120 days from moving into our new church. That will be a wonderful day! In the mean time, lots of stuff to get done before the move. Today I had the opportunity to listen to a proposal from Coke. It was great, they made a nice presentation and brought lots of samples of their new milk drinks.

The milk drinks are still sitting on my desk unopened. I'm not to sure about dairy products that don't need to be refrigerated and have a shelf life of 6 months. The reps from Coke tell me the kids love them. I'll take their word for it.

I've got a call into the Pepsi rep and I'm waiting for their proposal. If all things were equal, who would you go with? Coke or Pepsi?

It doesn't get any better. . .

As I'm about to finish leading my fifth Financial Peace University Class, God has reviled to me that I'm doing what he has created me to do. Helping people with their financial lives.

I'm still jacked after having a conversation with a couple a few weeks ago. They completed an FPU almost two years ago. In that time they have paid off $25,000. WOW! Not only that, this couple is leading others through FPU in their home.

There's no grater joy in life than being used by God!