2023-24 Ministry Share Allocation Adjusts to Organizational Changes

At its February meeting the Christian Reformed Church’s Council of Delegates endorsed an allocation of the 2023-24 fiscal year ministry shares with 29.5% going to congregational ministries,  27% to the CRC’s governance offices and the rest distributed between the denomination’s mission agencies and Calvin University and Theological Seminary.

Ministry shares are the funds that CRCNA congregations contribute to the running of the denomination and the ministries it operates. These contributions used to be requested as a per-member annual remittance but in recent years have switched to a pledge-based system where congregations decide the amount they intend to contribute and then a budget is created based on the pledged amounts.

Ahead of preparing budgets for the 2023-24 fiscal year, the CRC’s Council of Delegates has endorsed the allocation for those ministry shares, determining which portion of received funds would be used for which functions and ministries of the denomination. 

The Council works on behalf of synod in between meetings of synod. Delegates met Feb. 15-17 by video conference.

The Council endorsed the following allocation for 2023-24:

The numbers represent a significant redistribution compared to the allocations for the 2022-23 budget.

When looking at the difference in percentages between the two years Andy de Ruyter, chair of the Council, said, “It’s not comparing apples and apples because the total amount is different because it goes by a total percentage of what was pledged by the churches.” In other words, if the churches are pledging less but the offices have fixed costs, a greater percentage of the total is needed to run those functions. Greta Luimes, the Council treasurer, shared that the governance offices were just being established last year, along with the re-worked congregational ministries. “We also need to remember this was in a time of transition,” Luimes said. 

Shirley DeVries, chief administrative officer of the CRCNA, said, “We took a lot of time to come up with better budgets going forward, this is a recommendation from the shepherding team and the goal is to give something (a clear picture) to the agencies upfront this year as they make their budgets.” She said, “There are a lot of components in the (governance office) budget(s) including staff, executive leaders of both ministry offices … and then we also pulled in some of the things that had been in different parts of the (other) budgets,” such as denomination-wide ministries such as The Banner. 

DeVries said, “We know we have to do more work to make it as lean as possible, but this is where we landed for this year.” 

Joel Huyser, interim director at Resonate Global Mission, said, “Ministry shares do two things. One, they support us being a denomination … and two they support ministries. One valid question is, ‘Should those be called different things?’”

Kristen deRoo Vanderberg, director of communications and marketing, said that a group of staff “is exploring ways to improve ministry shares and plans to solicit feedback on this idea and others in the coming months." 

Ministry Share Income this Year

For the current year’s budget, Terry Veldboom, chief administrative officer (Canada), reported to the Canada Ministry Board, that “While ministry share received is below budget, it is above prior year by over $500,000 (+24%). Church offerings and individual giving are also above budget by $365,000 (+14%) and above prior year by $940,000 (+46%).” 

In the U.S., at the end of December, which is halfway through the fiscal year, DeVries said that ministry shares were 2% lower than the denomination had budgeted for that point in the year. “That is very close to where we wanted to be compared to last year, when at the end of December 2021, we were down 17%.” DeVries said, “We are seeing a significant increase in church offerings and missionary support—this category in the budget is well over 100% of what we were expecting. Some of this is the result of significant gifts from two churches that closed and designated funds to Resonate and Reframe.”

DeVries said, “We are grateful for the churches that support the denomination through ministry share giving.  The ministry share system enables us to collectively carry out the mandates of synod and it enables churches to participate in the global mission of the church.”