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Superintendent's Notes
First... important business (please don't skip) :
There are two assessments each church is assessed as a part of the Free Methodist Church USA.
The first is EPP - Equal Participation Plan. This is a 3.2% assessment for all of our churches which goes to support the FMCUSA - Communications, Bishops, Finance, HR etc...
The second is Apportionment - Each FM Conference (around 20 right now) has their own formula for receiving funds to support the Conference ministries - Superintendent, Office, Business, MEG, MAC etc...
For New South, the percentage is 4.8% - making the total assessed for both at 8%.
For Wabash, the percentage is (was) 8% - making the total assessed for both at 11.2%.
I say "was" for Wabash because the Wabash Board of Administration just lowered the assessment to 6.8% - making the total assessment for 2022 10%.
This 10% is where most of our Conferences are in their combined assessment.
There is always a fine balance between assessing the amount needed to fund the Conference and Denominational ministries needed to help the local church and also helping the local church by not over assessing them.
As a side note, this is one of the most complicated issues as we seek to work together as Conferences - Wabash and New South, the difference in apportionment.
But here is why this all matters at this point: In late fall, the Free Methodist USA Board of Administration directed a change in the assessment of our EPP.
Normally, EPP was calculated on the income a church received 2 years ago. This helped for planning on the denominational end.
Until this fall, each Conference was simply given the number to pass along to our churches.
But this year with Covid, they felt that each Conference needed to be responsible for bringing the assessment as up to date as is possible so that we are not being assessed on income levels from 2 years ago.
So... over the past few weeks, Patti in New South and Jody in Wabash have been crunching the income numbers from all of our churches (about 20 in New South and about 60 in Wabash).
And this week, both BOA's met to determine how we are going to move ahead and we are now communicating these amounts to the FMCUSA headquarters and to you.
I recognize that most of you have already created your budgets for 2022, but there will be some important changes from our end. Sorry about the timing.
Here is what you need to do next:
For New South pastors - you and your treasurers should have received an email yesterday with your EPP for 2022. Please pass these numbers onto your finance team and plug them into your budgets. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to connect with Patti.
For Wabash Pastors - it's a little more complicated. Please watch this video that I prepared to explain the system changes we are implementing:
Wabash EPP and APPORTIONMENT changes for 2022
You will be receiving the assessed amounts for EPP and for Apportionment in this next week.
As always, thanks for your patience and your prayers as we work together to accomplish the mission of Christ!
God bless
Superintendent John
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