I was just blown away by the idea that we are starting our seventh year of ministry. It is hard to believe how far we have come and how much work we have done to help churches and families. I sat all morning remembering those early days of forming a board of directors and applying for non-profit status. I remember driving back and forth to Troy to meet with potential board members and Rayanne asking me if we were going to move to Troy. There was no way to know then what God was doing and all that He was going to do through Legacy and in the life of our family here in Troy.
Two of our children were born here and they have all grown up here and think of it as home. We promised friends that we would visit churches when we moved here, but we immediately knew Bush Memorial was home. We could not have know then that we were choosing the church family where we would invest the next six years of our lives.
Just as our family has changed over the years, Legacy has also. We began in those early days to partner with churches to help develop volunteers and adult leaders who could invest in the lives of young people. As we worked with churches all over the southeast, we came to see that we were accomplishing our goal of equipping leaders for the next generation, but we were not helping youth ministers have longer tenures in their churches, we were not helping increase the number of students who lived from a distinctly Christian worldview, and we were not helping to decrease the number of students who dropped out of church after high school.
I remember being heartbroken in 2006 when I began to read statistical evidence that seemed to support what I had been seeing anecdotally in the churches we were evaluating. Praise God for the new vision He gave us for Legacy when I was asked to participate in an advisory board discussion at the International Center for Youth Ministry on Strategic Youth and Family Ministry. At that point, God called us to be part of a larger movement to help recover the biblical roles of churches and families in the spiritual development of children and youth.
Since that time, we have worked tirelessly to help equip churches to partner with families, and to help equip families to take on their primary role as spiritual leaders. We have hosted and participated in conferences, we have published Legacy Leadership, along with other articles on the topic in various magazines and state papers, as well as my regular blog posts at reidward.blogspot.com.
Over the past year, difficult economic times have caused us to struggle to do ministry and God has at various times called my focus to rest with my family and church family. It has been very difficult to balance everything God has laid on my heart this year. I know that we can not go on like this forever. Our financial situation has become such that something must change.
We prayed over two years ago that something would change so that everything did not have to change. It was at that point that God opened the door for me to come on staff at Bush and help lead this church toward a family equipping model. We were able to do this as an extension of what we were doing with Legacy.
It was a great asset to have a place where we were implementing ministry elements and could show that success to other churches we were trying to help. I believe it has been a great asset to the church as well, as we have networked with leaders all over the country to be on the leading edge of family equipping ministry.
Unfortunately, neither Legacy nor Bush Memorial is in a position to be able to support our family for the long-term. Legacy’s annual budget is $61,342. That is based on the projected cost for us to do ministry the way we believe God has called us to.
Roughly $40,000 of that budget is required for the basic operation of the ministry including salary, taxes and fees, office supplies and insurance. Up to that number, we are not able to invest anything but time and energy into actual ministry.
For the past two years, our actual receipts for the year have come in at just about that number. What that has meant is that for every dollar we have invested in ministry, for the Youth Leaders Conference or publishing Legacy Leadership, I have not received in salary.
This year, our total receipts from monthly donations ($22,365), and fund raising and other income ($2,190) have totaled only $24,555. As a result, we are praying for some major change. We are praying that God would meet our financial need according to His will. That might mean that our support base would pick back up and we would be able to meet our obligations. Or, that might mean that God moves us into a new phase of ministry where he leads us to a new place and invites us to join Him in a new activity.
I pray that maybe both of these things would be true in the new year. God has been leading my heart toward this moment for over a year. At various times in the past year, I have thought this might mean various things. Even now, I am not sure what it might mean, but I am sure that I have learned to trust in Christ alone and I have great joy in the anticipation of what He might be doing.
I ask that you continue to pray for us and to support Legacy in any and every way you can. Our goal is to continue to serve churches and families as we continue to follow God in developing leaders for the next generation.
