Video message from Tom Are Jr., Interim Pastor

Reports on Long-Range Planning and Financial Transformation

Co-Clerks’ Annual Reflections on 2023

Presented by Jared Light, Co-Clerk of Session

It’s an honor to be here and reflect on another year in the life of this congregation. And what a year it was.

• We had two beloved pastors — Shannon Kershner and Lucy Forster-Smith — move on from Fourth Church.
• We took the new step of hiring an intentional interim pastor, and we’re thrilled to have Tom and Carol Are with us.
• We returned to two services on Sunday morning in September, and I’m happy to report that we’ve seen a consistent increase in in-person attendance since that time.
• Led by the pastoral staff, the Sunday afternoon service was reimagined to be a new way of connecting as a community. 
• We held a church picnic during the summer to come together during the time of pastoral transition.
• Chicago Lights and Session affirmed the mission imperative of affordable housing, and Chicago Lights is moving forward with First Presbyterian Church to build and serve affordable housing in Chicago.
• The sanctuary has reopened during weekdays, as we continue to try to provide a welcome to all who come through our doors.
• We’ve moved forward with a Member Census, which is giving us an accurate view of our congregation while also giving us an opportunity to reconnect with Fourth Church members.
• We’ve seen a renewed emphasis on faith formation, with vibrant worship, adult education, mission trips, and even an upcoming pilgrimage.
• The Long-Range Planning Task Force continued their work, which will define the mission of Fourth Church in the next decade.
• Joint Finance worked to develop a financial transformation plan to close our structural budget deficit and pave the way for a financially sustainable Fourth Church for the foreseeable future.

This really only scratches the surface of the ways that staff and volunteers touch the lives of our community every single day. It takes an immense amount of time and effort to make all of this happen. And it’s truly a testament to the passion and skill of all involved that this happened during a time of pastoral transition.

This is an important legacy that Shannon Kershner left with us. During her time at Fourth Church she brought a model of collaboration to leadership here. She did her best to get us to adopt the idea of the “group project that is Fourth Presbyterian Church.” The way that church staff and lay leadership took that lesson seriously has been inspiring. We have not just existed in this time, but we have moved forward with enthusiasm to the next stage in the life of Fourth Church.

Coming together as a community is especially important, because while we have accomplished a great deal over the last year, there is so much work that still must be done. As with most churches these days, we see membership and budgets shrinking and we struggle to reach the next generation, who is spiritual but largely spurning organized religion.

The question at hand is, in this new reality, how do we move forward and continue to make Fourth Church a welcoming, magnetic, and vibrant community that shows the world God’s love? What does it mean for us to be a light in the city as our place in this world changes?

One of the ways we’re attempting to answer that question is through the work of the Long Range Planning Task Force, as you will hear in their update.

Long-Range Planning Update

Presented by Eric Wu and Allison Youngblood,

Co-Chairs of the Long-Range Planning Task Force

Friends, we are going to tell you a story about a church on Michigan Avenue called Fourth Presbyterian Church. It is a large church with layers of complexity both in the architecture of the building and its culture. And it is steeped in the history and stories that emanate from inside these walls. While we honor the history and the tradition, it is at this juncture that we must focus our collective vision on our path forward. This story is about the chapters that are unwritten for us that we will collectively write together.

We live and breathe in a world that is continually evolving, from the shifting demographics in our global ecosystem to the city that we sit in. We also recognize that at Fourth Church we also need to evolve with the world.

Well, how do we do that? It starts off with intention.

Background

A year and almost a month ago, the Long-Range Planning Task Force came together to start that intentional journey of helping steward the congregation, with the charge of identifying what God is calling us to do and to be in this transition.

Did we know what lay before us? I will speak for myself here, but I can safely say that none of the task force in our first meeting knew the magnitude of the task at hand.  Pastor Are often jokes that we didn’t know that we weren’t signing up for a committee but a lifestyle. But that word life — that is what it’s about. It is about our life together, our relationships with God and also with each other.

We recognize and acknowledge that there have been challenges that may have had us doubting ourselves and there is ambiguity in the path forward. National trends point to a broader trend of dechurching and the rise of the religious nones. We are also working to wrap our heads around the results of our Member Census and what that means for Fourth Church.

We also recognize that at the same time there is immense energy and desire from our congregation, you all, for revitalizing Fourth Church in our congregational life together — revitalizing not only how we are together, but our mind, body, and spirit.

Where We Are Now

So our work together brings us to this point. As you know, we recently conducted listening sessions with the congregation as well as with our Elders, Trustees, pastors, staff, and the Chicago Lights Board. We are grateful to have heard feedback from almost 400 participants; we also received more than 50 emails with additional comments. Thank you to everyone who has participated!

Through your input and feedback, we have honed the strategic directions and goals from their original drafts and feel confident we are on the right path in focusing on these four things:

1. Connection and Belonging  — building and deepening relationships in both our physical and virtual spaces, caring for each other, and embracing racial equity and inclusion

2. Faith Formation  — honoring the music, preaching, and liturgy of our worship and nurturing learners along their journey

3. Community Engagement  — living out our faith by serving as a catalyst for a flourishing community through targeted, impactful programs grounded in community needs

4. The Sustainability of Our Operations — focusing on our staff, governance, financials, and facility

This month we are sharing this work with Trustees and presenting it to Session, who will then vote on the strategic aspects of the plan: these strategic directions, the corresponding goals, and overarching progress measures. 

And then (finally) we will embark on the next phase: to plan the implementation by working through our structure of committees and councils as a way to engage pastors, lay leaders, staff, and the congregation in identifying priorities for the tactics and implementation progress measures.

The Long-Range Planning Task Force will bring this work together in May, developing an implementation plan designed to carry us three to five years into the future. We will share this plan at the Session retreat in June, and we anticipate starting to implement at least some of the identified actions in the latter half of 2024.

The Work Ahead

There is still much work ahead, and we are committed to continuing to keep you informed and engaged throughout this process.

Please continue to reach out to the task force with your questions and how you might like to participate in the work ahead.

If we think about the purpose of the Long-Range Plan, it is designed to create a compelling vision of what God is calling us to do:

• A vision that clarifies our priorities and focus, including that which may be new and also that which we need to be sure to “hold onto”
• A vision that is intended to create new energy to engage or reengage our members, regular attenders, potential new members, pastors, and staff 
• And, we hope, a vision that will also inspire generosity so we can fulfill our mission

As we move forward with the vision, we know that it’s also critical that we address our near-term financial concerns, so Vern Broders, Co-Chair with Gary Graham of the Joint Finance Committee, will share more about the Financial Transformation Plan (see below). The timelines for these two plans are consistent, both with a three- to five-year outlook, and our work will further align as we move into implementation.

What’s important for you to know and remember is that these two task forces are working together, because it takes both inspiration and discipline to ensure the sustainable vitality of Fourth Church. 

Friends, here we are near the end of this story about our adventure in long-range planning, but this story is only one chapter of this Book of Fourth Presbyterian Church.

As Jared’s Top 10 list showed, 2023 was a full year of important, challenging, and meaningful work. We’ve made some great progress, and we are not done.

Our new chapter opens with blank, unwritten pages that we are only beginning to draft together. The path forward may not seem as clearly lit, but the light in the city is still on.

We thank you for your energy, your ideas, and your love for Fourth Church, because that is what will drive how we move forward into our future, in relationship with God, and with each other.

Financial Transformation Plan

Presented by Vern Broders, Co-Chair of the Joint Finance Committee

In 2023 Fourth Church incurred an operating deficit of just over $1 million, a deficit that was covered by unrestricted one-time gifts. Session and the Board of Trustees are concerned that changes in giving patterns will lead to continuing budget shortfalls in the future. In fact, our 2024 budget projects an even larger deficit.

Fourth Church is fortunate to have already received a one-time, non-recurring gift to cover the planned deficit in 2024, a gift that Session has set aside as a Transformation Fund.

However, we cannot expect that we will receive one-time gifts every year to cover operating deficits. Session, Trustees, and the Joint Finance Council agreed that this practice is not sustainable.

In concert with the Long-Range Plan now in development, the Joint Finance Council recommended a Financial Transformation Plan to the Board of Trustees and Session.

Trustees and Session approved the three-year process to achieve balanced annual budgets relying on pledged giving, unpledged giving, program revenues, and sustainable withdrawals from our invested funds.

The goal of this initiative is to thoughtfully and faithfully examine our sources and uses of funds to balance our revenues with our expenses. The emphasis of this initiative will be on increased generosity while we are still good stewards of our resources.

The Financial Transformation Plan has three primary tasks:

1. Analyze the revenue patterns and cost drivers in our operations to better understand the financial effect of our activities and actions. Financial scenarios will be developed to consider a combination of increasing revenue, reducing expenses, and changes in vendor buying patterns.

2. Align future financial commitments with the Long-Range Plan of Fourth Church, Chicago Lights, and other affiliates, which will be completed in 2024. We will use the results of the Long-Range Plan and our updated Census data to set up strategic directions for our ministries, missions, and programs: what do we need to do less, what do we need to do more, and what should we look at adding. The alignment will ensure that future budget allocations and program investments follow the strategic directions and goals of long-range plans and consider the results of the 2023 Fourth Church Census.

3. Connect the impact goals of Fourth Church, Chicago Lights, and other affiliates at the program level directly with their program budget for 2025 and succeeding years, using both subjective aspirations and objective numeric benchmarks. We will provide the program leaders with training to understand and better manage the financial impacts of their program activities.

Teams from the Joint Finance Council and Trustees will work on each of these tasks during 2024 and beyond, with the intention of meaningful reductions in the operating deficits each year and the goal of a balanced budget for 2028. The progress of the Financial Transformation Plan will be reported to the governing boards monthly and to the congregation annually.

Guided by the Long-Range Plan and the Census and with staff and our governing boards, we will build budgets that best achieve the ministry, mission, and program goals of Fourth Presbyterian Church while staying within our achievable revenue expectations.

We go forth remembering, in the words from Tom Are’s video comments, “The days ahead of us matter as much to God as the days behind us. The God who has been our help in ages past will be our hope for years to come.”