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FINANCIAL VISION by Lawrence G. Tosi, Esq. Treasurer, Diocese of New York and New Jersey [Spring-Summer, 2001] [At the Diocesan Council Meeting on March 23, 2001 Archbishop PETER approved the appointment of Lawrence Tosi as Diocesan Treasurer and Hieromonk Joseph (Hoffman) as Diocesan Secretary, with responsibilities at the direction of the Archbishop for daily operations.] It has been said that hard times can be either the road to ruin, or the beginning of a road to success. Being the eternal optimist, I believe the latter. Whenever a problem occurs, one should take the experience and see how you can use it to improve the long-term picture. I remember sitting at our last Diocesan Assembly during the review of the proposed budget and thinking that there has to be a better way to finance the Diocese. Many church representatives complained about the burden caused by the assessments. These really hit those churches that have an elderly population on a fixed income or who have a small parish. They are not alone. The larger parishes also see the bite on their total income. Every parish has significant budget concerns. The obvious problem was that there was no long term planning done in anticipation of this day. We have allowed our Diocese and parishes to have a Ahand-to-mouth@ existence. The solution eluded me for a long term. When Archbishop Peter asked me if I would take on the role of Treasurer, I had to think harder. I must admit that there was a lot of smoke coming out of my ears from my poor brain working overtime and way beyond its capacity. I have always been a believer in Astewardship@ and Afirst portion giving.@ I wasn=t sure if this could be made to work on the Diocesan level. Truthfully, I have seen it work on the parish level, although not perfectly as we still do not have 100% participation and support. I can say with certainty that this model is our future. I have had long discussions with many clergy, fellow Orthodox Christians and my next door neighbor, who is the treasurer for the local Lutheran Church, over funding the churches. My neighbor=s church is also trying to follow a program similar to our Afirst portion giving@ model. Like our church they are not getting total buy-in, but it certainly has caused an increase in giving by many who have taken the time to examine their giving practices. My neighbor agrees with me that once people understand the concept and follow it, they find that more money is available in their personal budget for the church. If a percentage of your income is placed aside for God=s work before all else, you will find that you have more than enough afterwards to pay your bills and have plenty left over. He agreed with me, that the first step is faith that God will provide for us. It reminded me of so many stories from Christ=s life on earth. Foremost is the feeding of the five thousand. We all know that story. But like His Disciples, we must be reminded again of God=s ability to care for us. The story to remember is the latter one, where Christ and his Disciples are on a boat again in Mark 8:13-21. The Disciples began to wonder about eating because they had no bread. It was truly amazing how quickly they forgot about the miracle which occurred only days before this incident. After witnessing the miracle of feeding the five thousand, they forgot of God=s bountiful gifts to us. Here the Disciples, like us, needed to be reminded. With that in mind, I started to think differently about the financing portion of the Diocese. I believe that the future model will be the Afirst portion giving@ model. Are we ready for it to be the model for the way parishes fund the Diocese at this time? I do not believe so. However, with that said, we must move in that direction soon. In the long term we will begin a slow transition to a fairer apportionment of costs to the churches based upon their ability to support the Diocese. In the mean time, the approach is to directly appeal to each and every member of the Diocese to look closely at themselves and their giving pattern. I hope that this is done not only in regard to the Diocese but also your parish. In order for us to move forward, we need everyone to accept our vision for the future of the Diocese and the greater work that can be done. Now that I had the idea of how to seek funds, I had to see what we were going to do with the monies. In the past I never knew what a diocese did besides taking care of the bishop. When I took on this position, I had my eyes opened. I pledged at that time to make sure everyone understood the work and needs of the Dioceses. We have never been good at getting the information out to the local parishioner. Thus, the first goal was to publish our budget. Every time Jacob=s Wel@ is to be published, I will have our current income and expenses. I hope to expand the report in the future. I also want stories to come into the publication of how the funds are used. Perhaps, if each of you knows where the monies are spent, you will feel a sense of community and see our successes. We must be accountable to you in how we use your money to spread the Word of God. As the money grows, this Diocese can do more than the meager amount of work currently being done because of our limitations. In the mean time, I can only provide a snapshot of where the monies are now used. Please believe me, we definitely can be doing much more if we had the monies. The obvious use is daily operation and care of our Diocesan home, the Chancery located in Bronxville, New York. This serves as the home for Archbishop Peter and the offices for the Diocese. We publish our Diocesan paper which you are currently reading. There are two of our diocesan seminary students which receive minimal support from us. We also have five mission churches in the Diocese. There is also a widow=s fund. There are small amounts available for youth and music work within the Diocese. Without a doubt, all of the areas should increase. But in the short run, I recommended to the Diocesan Council that we concentrate on three areas until they become strong. This is a vision for the future. I currently sent a letter to each member of the Diocese and asked for support. You will notice in the letter that I marked three categories for giving. They were missions, maintenance and seminary. These areas were selected because they are the largest non-operating expenses and can give the greatest short term rewards to the Diocese. There really is only one long term investment that we can make and that is in our youth, but we need to walk before we can run. As this vision developed, I became more excited about the possibilities for the future. As everyone in our Diocese knows, our population has changed in our thirty years of existence. There has been a shift from the city areas to the suburbia. Also, we have a new influx of immigrants from Russia. The good part is we need new churches and actually have five missions. The bad news is that we cannot stabilize the mission churches because they cannot afford a full time priest. Let us face the facts. We live in a high cost area. We all must recognize that without a full time priest, growth is limited. A weekend priest is not going to fill the need of the parish. Whether you want to believe it, a parish priest=s job is 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Our ability to help the missions is important. Once a mission reaches a certain size, they are eligible for matching funds up to $15,000 a year from the OCA Mission Fund. Thus if the mission parish has enough families and can raise $15,000 a year they can get the same for a three-year period from the OCA. Our goal is to be able to match the OCA monies. With those combined monies, we can have a priest in residence to help the parish grow quickly and strongly. You may have also noticed that we have graying clergy. There is a need for young talented priests and other seminary trained individuals, such as choir directors and youth coordinators, within the Dioceses. Frankly, it is a shame that any person who has the academic ability and calling from God should be precluded from attending the seminary because of the costs. Our goal is to establish a fund to assist the seminary student from our diocese. All Diocesan seminary students will receive monies from this fund in the form of an interest free loan. The loan will be forgiven, if upon graduation the student works within the dioceses in an official capacity for at least three years. Thus if a person from the Diocese decides to go to the seminary, he or she will receive money which will not have to be repaid so long as they serve within our Diocese. As to the maintenance fund, there is only so much work that needs to be done on the Chancery. The goal is to establish a fund to perpetually care for our Diocesan home. Beyond that, the fund should be available to assist our parishes on their projects as a short term loan. Often it is hard to raise the monies quickly to complete a project. We all know how difficult it is to get monies for an emergency repair. Financial institutions are not fond of lending monies to a church. If this fund can be grown, we should be able to provide short six month loans to help the local parishes care for emergency or other projects without the hassle of banks. Thus once the Chancery is repaired, we need to grow a solid fund to help the local parishes. The current fund drive seeks to begin this vision. Half of all monies used will be placed into one of the endowment funds. The other half will be used immediately to handle current expenses. We will be seeking trustees from the parishes for each of these funds, to govern the parameters of use of the reserved monies. As you can see, the greater the funds, the more self-sufficient becomes the Diocese. I hope to run the fund drive after every Pascha, so plan ahead. If the funds can generate enough interest to become nearly self-sufficient, we will expand the area to other funds, such as youth work. The long term vision of these funds will have a significant impact on the Diocese. I finish this with a thought. Like the parable of the three servants left by their master with the various numbers of talents. We, like the servants, must invest our monies wisely to have a profitable return for when the master makes them accountable. Look at your gift to the Diocese as an investment in the future. The more investment we each make into our Diocese, the greater return for the good of all of us. |
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