The Portal

Catching up just in time...

“They are being tested by many troubles, and they are very poor. But they are also filled with abundant joy, which has overflowed in rich generosity.” These words from 2 Corinthians 8:2 could easily describe NeoXenos this past month.

The turmoil this past month was amazing: losing our CT meeting, dealing with accusations from all directions, lining up unplanned meetings, Body Meetings, Prayer Meetings, and more – yet we were able to “be diligent to preserve the unity of the body” (see Ephesians 4:2) in a most amazing way, as last week’s Progressive Dinner demonstrated.

Despite all this harassment the Body of Christ was amazingly generous, giving $14,803.25. That was our best month of the year!

Isn’t it amazing how wonderfully our Savior, Jesus Christ, is taking care of us?

Now we must find new facilities, and do it immediately. This will increase our budget as much as $15,000 for 2009.

We’re at a vital crossroads: when we talk with new landlords about renting another facility, we must demonstrate some financial stability, and our buffer is our only asset.

In order to rebuild our 2-month buffer and stay on-budget for 2008, we still need $13,531 this month!

The Lord has blessed us with a great fellowship. We’re impacting in ways we never envisioned earlier this year. How edifying it is to hear about the new International Bible Study and the Western Ohio Enterprise (a.k.a. “WOE”) at last week’s prayer fest – where did all those new ministries come from?

The Lord is moving!

We’re seeing growth, salvations, and more excitement than we’ve ever before seen in our groups.

Fill out an ACH form for direct withdrawal. We highly encourage you to use the ACH option for your giving if you do not already do so. This is critical in this time of flux. You can also mail checks to our address:

NEO Xenos Christian Fellowship
PO Box 1631
Stow, OH  44224

For those interested in Automatic Clearing House (ACH), you can now download this ACH form.

When you fill it out, either mail it to us or bring it to CT and give it to Katrina. With an ACH form, you can setup regular, monthly giving straight from your bank account.

The third quarter is now over. The summer was rough. And September was still poor. Now we enter the final quarter and we need to catch up!

You can see that our expenses are in line with our budget, but giving for the year is $8,372 behind for the year through September. In order to make our budget for the year, we have to average $10,722 per month these last three months, something we’ve only done one time this year! We have just under $10,000 in our buffer which is way below the comfort zone. The lack of pledged giving accounts for most of our deficit: only $6,000, which means we’re effectively stuck and unable to get new ministry initiatives supported!

Impact

October hasn’t started off that strong with only $2000 collected the first two weeks.We are not really able to incur huge deficits without making cuts. But we really do not have room for many cuts. Over 90% of our budget is for paying people to do ministry (the McCallums), to administrate, and for our facilities. The other roughly $10K is what supports our entire ministry, equipment/supplies, and leadership/FST retreat needs. There really is no room to make cuts which won’t be very painful to ministries.

We are being used by God to extend His Kingdom into this dark world. He calls on us to use the world’s unrighteous money to pay for it (Luke 16:9-13). We all have this great opportunity to loosen our ties with the world and to prosper eternally.

We have to do better these last three months!

By the way, October hasn’t started off that strong with only $2000 collected the first two weeks.