We are increasing our House Church Missionary Matching Fund

Today was the last Leadership Team meeting of the year. Everyone was present. Team leaders take turns to provide breakfast for each other. We don’t use church budget to buy food for ourselves. This is how I have been running New Life for 25 years.

I have taught you to tithe from your gross income as faithfully as possible. I have tried to be generous towards others but frugal on myself. I have emphasized the work of missions and evangelism. I think I have done my best to stay close to the truth I see in the Scripture. God seems to have been pleased with this effort I have made over the years. New Life is financially very strong because we operate lean in doing our ministry. We spend less than 25% on staff compensation when typical churches spend well over 50%. The main reason for this is that we equip our members to be ministers and we deploy them to do ministries when other churches heavily rely on professionally trained paid staff to do ministries. House church certainly makes this way of doing church ministry possible for us.

All of us have gone through something very unusual the past two years due to the coronavirus. As a result, we are experiencing various kinds of disruption in life. One noticeable disruption we are feeling is inflation. The cost of the essential goods has gone up significantly. The last time I went out to have a bowl of large Pho, it was less than $9. Now, I hear that it is around $12. This Friday, my auto insurance company sent me an email saying that my premium will go up by 50%. I was totally stunned.

However, we must not forget that we are not the only ones who feel and struggle with this inflation. Missionaries living and doing ministries abroad do, too. Yet, we so easily fail to pay attention to them and their needs because we are so caught up with our own set of problems, which often times don’t even measure up to what these missionaries go through overseas.

In order to help and honor our house church missionaries, the Leadership Team has decided to make some positive changes in regards to our House Church Missionary Matching Fund. First, we have decided to increase the matching fund to $200 each month. This means, New Life will match your house church missionary giving up to $200 each month. Second, we have decided to use 0.25 to 1 ratio for our college house churches. This means, if a college house church collects and submits $50 in one month, then they will get the maximum matching fund of $200.

House church is a small church that meets at people’s houses and a lay shepherd pastors over this house church. Since house church is a small church, it must have all the elements that the big corporate church, New Life, has. Giving is one of those elements that must be present in each house church. This is why we have a time of giving during our house church meeting and the entire amount of our giving plus the matching fund from New Life go to our house church missionaries. I assure you that your house church missionaries are very grateful for your regular and generous giving.

Our annual family meeting during which we review the current year’s income and expense and pass the budget for the following year is going to be on Sunday, December 11 at 1:15PM. We usually don’t have more than 15-20 members present for this meeting. I want to encourage many of you to come and participate in this meeting to see how God has been good and gracious to us this year that will be shown through our finances.

Thank you, New Life, for your generosity. Let’s continue to give sacrificially for God’s kingdom work.

Your pastor,

Eric