WHERE
HAVE WE BEEN?
It has been nearly a year
since the last WACUM newsletter. What
happened to our regular quarterly publishing schedule?
Simply put, we ran out of
money. Since January 1, 2001, we
have received $6,554 in income from all sources (including Annual Conference
luncheon, Spring and Fall Meetings). Our
expenses for the same time period were $7,601.
We started with $1,655 in the bank, so our current balance is $607.82.
Our newsletter list
included all the annual conference members (lay and clergy), all contributing
members of WACUM, and many who had not contributed but were added to the list as
interested persons. By doing that,
our mailing list was well over 2,000. It
cost us over $1,500 to print, assemble, and mail the newsletter to that many
people. We did not have enough
money to do that over the last 12 months.
This newsletter is going to
a much smaller list of around 350 people. We
are limiting the circulation to those who have at one time or another supported
WACUM financially. We do not
believe WACUM has fulfilled its purpose, yet.
As you can see from the articles in this issue, we face a strong
theological and political challenge from the “Progressive Christianity”
movement within our denomination.
We are willing to speak and
act on your behalf to maintain the Doctrine and Discipline of the United
Methodist Church. But we cannot do
so without your help. Our 2001
budget was based upon receiving contributions from supporting churches of
$2,000. We have received less than
half that. We projected 200 paying
members (at $15 each), but we ended up with only about 125.
In addition, our Spring Meeting in 2001 “lost” $450 and our Fall
Meeting in 2001 “lost” $630. Because
of that, the only membership meeting we are having in 2002 will be our Annual
Conference luncheon (which almost broke even in 2001).
Our next membership meeting after that will be in February 2003.
We invite you to act today,
using the response form in this newsletter, to renew your membership in WACUM.
We also invite you to prayerfully consider an extra gift of support at
this time. We believe we need to
reach our wider mailing list with the message of what we are doing to preserve
the future faithfulness of the United Methodist Church and enlist the support of
others. Without your financial vote
of confidence, however, we will not be able to accomplish that.
WACUM as an organization
will continue to exist as long as there is a need for us in Wisconsin.
The question is: how effective will we be.
You hold a big part of the answer to that question.
