Thursday, June 9, 2011

Lottie is considerably skinnier for 2010

Lottie Moon offering: $145.6 million in 2010

That's a lot of money but the offering for 2010 is down about $3.2 million from the previous year. Nobody should feel good about that.

The average cost of keeping an individual missionary on the field is said to be $47,600 so the decline translates into 67 less missionaries, other things being equal.

Even though everyone is saying the right things, I don’t see anything that will make a big difference in the funding going forward.

Money is short for a lot of things here, paychecks and other expenses, but our church made it a point to give a tiny bit more to Lottie Moon than last year.

9 comments:

Gary said...

William,

What is included in the "average cost"?

Thanks,

Gary

William Thornton said...

The BP article I linked said: "...housing, salaries, medical care and children's education. The cost averages $46,700 annually per individual missionary."

Since IMB counts couples as two mssys, I'd guess that we're close to $100k for a family. If you divide the IMB's budget by the number of overseas mission personnel you get about $62k per mssy.

We will see how Elliff intends to handle the reduced money flow - cut elsewhere to keep mssy numbers around 5k or let the mssy numbers fall, or work some good old Baptist budget magic and massage the numbers.

Gary said...

So, knowing what I know about rates and overheads (hazard of my job), we are paying our "Average Missionary" "Senior Custodian" wages.

That about sum it up?

William Thornton said...

Not sure I understand. You think a 'Senior Custodian' has a family income of just under $100k?

Gary said...

$!00K "Gross". Start removing the overheads which the IMB has to such as health care, travel, retirement, etc., what each missionary is "paid" is far less. It's good that most of them aren't in it for the money.

Anonymous said...

William:

Are you positive about the married couple counting as and compensated as two people? I thought they used the "unit" term referring to either a single or a married couple. And the figure quoted is "average" so I would assume a single would be at a lower rate and a couple at a higher rate in terms of net cost to the IMB.

William Thornton said...

I made a presumption based on the language in the article. I think I'll email and ask for clarification.

Kevin said...

I'm a former IMB missionary (now independent). You have to consider several things in the package missionaries get: medical insurance, rent, transportation expenses (including plane tickets), etc.

Anonymous said...

First, as an IMB missionary, let me say THANK YOU! all for supporting us. We are so blessed to have the LMCO, CP and World Hunger Funds (for human needs projects). Singles get a base salary of about 60% of a couple. I can't speak for insurances, etc. but with kids in tow and going to school I would guess that couples cost at least twice that of singles.