2020 Finances: Budgeting to Build #3CFriendships

At LifeChurch Auburn Hills, we believe that building a multicultural community that is being transformed by the grace, truth, and love of Jesus begins by forming 3C Friendships. These friendships are marked by 3 distinct values: committed, cross-cultural, and Christ-centered. When people have relationships with these values, we believe they are living out the way Jesus calls us to live, building lifelong connections across cultures that reflect God’s heart of love, kindness, mercy, and justice. These are the kind of values that transform potential enemies who don’t share life together into true friends who can call on each other at all times. And, as is the case with Ministry Director Marcia Partin, it’s these friendships that inspire radical action, like stepping away from a job to devote one’s life to this pursuit of helping more people experience the love of Jesus. 

At LifeChurch Auburn Hills, we budget for 9 key areas.

Personnel

The average growing church in the United States devotes 45-60% of its budget to personnel and staff. At LifeChurch we are the same, investing in quality leadership before anything else.

Administrative

Our administrative budget line covers everything from accounting fees to office supplies to liability insurance and digital infrastructure, as well as all of our payment processing fees.

Outreach

Meeting new people and helping them learn about LifeChurch is key for growth. Through events, advertising, and promotional materials, we help people hear about us and come to a Sunday service.

Worship Design

We use the term worship design to describe everything that happens on a Sunday. This includes costs associated with rent, LifeKids, LifeStudents, First Impressions, signage, music, and tech.

Connections

Connections is our process of helping a first-time visitor become a fully-devoted follower of Jesus. We do this through activities like welcome lunches, one-on-one follow up, and more.

Small Groups

We want to help people find a close community to journey with Jesus together. We invest in this by hosting Wednesday night community groups as well as support and curriculum to all groups.

Leadership
Development

In order to build the kind of leaders who can lead a growing church that plants other churches and community initiatives, we need to invest in people through assessments, training, and education.

Mission and
Ministry

Accomplishing our 2040 vision of 10 church planters, 20 community initiatives, and 30 global missionaries requires funds for strategic planning, residencies, and grants for leaders in whom we are investing.

Financial
Stewardship

We want to ensure our church is giving all that it can to help accomplish our goals as well as the goals of the larger church through giving to our denomination, conference, and church planting.

In 2019, our dream was to build the structure to support outreach, weekly services, and our initial connections.

This chart reflects our 2019 expenditures, with the biggest chunks allocated toward Personnel, Worship Design, and Launch Expenses, which was a one-year budget line for costs associated with starting up a church (initial signage, audio equipment, lighting, children and student ministry supplies, road cases, trailers, etc.)

Thanks to the incredible support of our Launch Team, Supporters, and Friends, we have been able to meet almost all of these expenses while getting off to a strong start with weekly Sunday attendance around 135 for our first year. This is a very solid foundation for a new church plant in our denomination.

In 2020, it's our dream to build #3CFriendships.

In 2020, we desire to grow 3C Friendships, which as mentioned above, are committed, cross-cultural, Christ-centered relationships. We believe if we build more of these friendships, our church will grow in both deeply while increasing in number. 

To accomplish this, our proposed 2020 budget increases the areas of personnel, outreach, connections, and small groups significantly to do three things:

  1. Meet more people who desire these relationships (outreach)
  2. Properly staff our church with leadership to aid in building these friendships (personnel)
  3. Fund the infrastructure to help these relationships grow (connections and small groups)

Help us build the future that God has called us to build.

In 2020, we are hoping to increase our overall giving by just over 50%, from $202,000 to $315,000. While we can operate with less, we believe we can operate the best with the new total amount, broken down in the charts to reflect income sources.

2019 Giving
2020 Desired Giving

How you can help be a part of our dream in 2020.

Pray

Ask God who he is asking you to get to know and build a #3CFriendship, and ask God how he wants you to make time to connect with that person.

Invite

Helping more people become a part of what God is doing at LifeChurch Auburn Hills is the first and most important way to help us build #3CFriendships.

Give

Begin making a one-time or recurring gift to LifeChurch Auburn Hills, or increase your current giving in order to help us build #3CFriendships.

Help us by making a pledge for 2019 and 2020.

You can help us budget for our goals by filling out this form with your pledge. 

Pledge Form

Give Online


Give by Check

Please make checks out to:

LifeChurch Auburn Hills

Mail checks to:

LifeChurch Auburn Hills
P.O. Box 211018
Auburn Hills, MI 48321

We believe #3CFriendships are the building blocks of all that God wants to accomplish through LifeChurch Auburn Hills.