When I served FUMC Denton, I learned an inspiring piece of its long and strong United Methodist history. The church in the early part of the 20th century was struggling financially and had fallen behind in its mortgage payments. The end of the year was approaching and the church was told it needed to come up with $30,000 to get current — an extraordinary amount of money in that day. There was a lot of hand-wringing by the leaders of the church about the church’s future. What will happen? What will we do? There seemed no easy answers.
That is when a group of faithful women took the issue head-on and got to work. They began to bake … and bake … and bake—cookies, cakes and breads and began selling them in Denton. People loved the women’s goods and rushed to buy them.
At first it seemed an incidental effort that could only make a small dent in the enormous shortfall. But as they began to make headway, more women in the congregation joined in and the baking campaign expanded. Pretty soon it seemed every member family was cranking out chocolate chip cookies, sourdough bread and lemon cakes. By the end of the year, the entire $30,000 was paid in full to the bank and the church spring-boarded into the next year with ministry, mission and confidence.
We are currently $52,000 in the red for 2022, or 3% of our $1.94 million budget — not uncommon for this time of year. We will need to make that up and support about $2.003 million in 2023 to continue the same level of ministry, staffing and mission. As it was a hundred years ago, the economic headwinds are real but the goals to finish this year in the positive and to expand our budget to cover increased costs in 2023 are attainable; but it will take the whole village.
It probably won’t be an all-church bake sale but it certainly can be an all-church participation in regular giving and turning in an Estimate of Giving card that makes the difference — whether you are in person or online. The success will turn on faithful participation of each person who considers herself or himself part of the FUMC Plano family. Thank you for your prayerful financial support of the church and its ministry that you and others count on. Bon appétit!
Connecting God and Grace to Self and Community,
