November 2018

Title: It is that time again to ask God for help for our Parish and The United Methodist Church

Matthew 7:8-Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

Pastor Ran and I want to say “Thanks” to you. Thanks for fully supporting us and baby Caleb. We really thank you for your love, kindness, generosity, help and everything you do for our ministry. Thanks for your faithful decision to maintain our parish ministry continually with us.

Even though we have only been here 2 years and 5 months, we have done and maintained many things for the parish and will have a fruitful ministry plan.

Things we have done:

• Maintained the Parish Youth Group Meeting. Regularly, 5-15 youth have joined our program.
• Maintained a monthly children’s program, Children Fun Sunday at Atlas UMC & Go Fish Program at Central UMC.
• Maintained the Invitation & Homecoming Sunday to focus on inviting new people to SCF UMC and still have a plan to apply this event parish-wide as the church evangelical event.
• Continued to introduce ourselves to the community and have participated in local church events.
• Maintained many other mission projects in the community and the Wisconsin Annual Conference.
• Maintained regular visitations to church & non-church members, once per month. Also, we are covering several emergency pastoral visitations. Anytime, the pastors are ready to visit our church members when they need our help.

Next year, our continuing priority is to be united among the three churches as one parish beyond financial obligations. For that, we will have planned 3-4 joint parish worship services, parish fundraising events for our next generation, parish missional work, parish bible study, parish youth retreat & mission trip and parish children’s ministry.

Our second priority is our revival, not only spiritually, but also increasing attendance numbers. Finding our lost sheep at each church and inviting new people to our church will increase our attendance. We have a plan to launch a Homecoming & Invitation Sunday at Central UMC next year for that purpose. I am so glad to share that we gotten more people and some increase of regular attendance last and this year in the churches.

Financially, we know we will definitely have financial problems next year too. We have a 2% increase in the parish budget, almost $3,000 compared with last year. This is not a tremendous jump compared with last year, but we are having a hard time solving this problem ourselves. If we don’t receive a Conference Financial Supportive Grant ($7,650) and Central’s apportionment deduction ($6,774), we will struggle to solve it.

However, remember that we are still surviving and also have some positive signals to solve this financial issue, specifically that SCF UMC decided to keep their commitment, even though we were changed from 4 to 3 churches in the parish and to extend it to us until next December and prepare a $1,200 emergency fund again to help the other churches, if they still struggle financially.

FROM THE PASTOR CONT…

Central UMC has kept the inancial stewardship program and Atlas has started a new fundraising event and all churches accepted the budget and have tried to overcome this difficulty with faith. Also, the D.S. and the conference may try to help us this year, not only spiritually, but also physically too.

In addition, as a leader of the church and as the pastors in the Upper St. Croix Parish, we have lots of holy responsibility regarding our financial situation so we decided to keep our general offering equally to the church to help cover next year’s parish budget increase, even though pastor Ran is now half time and we currently still have committed a lot to the churches. We would never shift this hardship to our congregation. We want to lead by example as the pastors of the parish.

Each church will have a Commitment & Celebration Sunday on November 11th. (The letter with the pledge card will be sent at the end of October)

Commitment and Stewardship is not merely about money. It is also about how we offer our whole lives to God and to the service of the church. We promise to serve the church with our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. All five of these things are marks of discipleship. Your promise will help the church in managing and maintaining the 2019 church plans, which we have worked hard to budget for this coming year. However, if you are uncomfortable with giving after your prayer, please skip it until the next year. We honor and respect all your decisions.

Let’s go the next step with a humble and faithful heart. I definitely promise that we are going to share and celebrate many fruitful ministerial joys with faithful friends and God here. Thanks be to God and thanks to all of you.

Blessings, Rev. Kook Ho Kim & Rev. Ran Yoo