Mein Kampf

The short story here is that the diocese is in serious financial trouble because of past mismanagement. Because of that, the diocese implemented a 5-Year Plan. The idea was to jump start the assisted congregations into taking financial responsibility for themselves and quit living on diocesan handouts. The plan was that the diocese would reduce its support by 20 percent a year for five years, while the congregations picked up 20 percent a year.

I won't bore you with further details, but suffice it to say that this plan isn't really feasible for one of my congregations. So they have this obnoxious and vague 20 PERCENT thing hanging over them and not really fully understanding or being capable of meeting.

I will admit here that part of this is my fault. I have never been a financial genius ("Oh, I get a paycheck? Cool."). So while I have been busy these past three years learning how to be a parish priest (and barfly, and firefighter, and city councilman, and whatever else), I haven't exactly been the best financial steward here.

But I'm learning. And the other day I had a plan jump into my head. I played with it for a little bit until I finally developed my Grand Master Plan. In short, it breaks things down into workable, manageable, doable, short-term goals. For starters, I am asking one congregation to pick up the tab for a Specific Item. This will require a certain number of people to pledge and extra $40/month, or an extra $10/week. Certainly a workable, manageable and doable figure.

Next year, we'll add another Specific Item to the budget. And, the plan is to keep this up until we are where we need to be.

Reverend Ref -- The Mad Priest of Montana