Giving in November 2024 was $214,450.29. Giving in November 2025 was $196,130.84. Truth is, comparing the numbers from last November to this November cannot be reduced to a direct indicator about this funding shift for our holiday giving. In 2024, we hosted the All In giving campaign, and in 2025, we hosted the Ordinary Faithfulness giving campaign. These campaigns influence the November numbers for both years.

We realize this new approach to Thanksgiving Baskets and sponsoring children for Christmas is different than years past, but these opportunities are a good example of why One Fund is a helpful and needed change. We decided to budget for these opportunities precisely because they are so important. The ministry leaders for these were delighted to make their sponsorship commitments with the full confidence of our One Fund budget. Unlike years past, they were no longer nervous about how many people would be willing to provide extra. We are also aware of families who were able to participate in this activity who could not afford to do so otherwise.

It’s important to realize insurance costs across Texas are increasing, and insurance carriers willing to write coverage in Texas are decreasing. This is true for both residential and commercial. Northside Church is not alone or unique facing insurance challenges.

The pool of carriers willing to write specifically for churches is already small. Churches tend to have large needs for property coverage, and sadly, churches also need liability for sexual abuse. Claims have increased in both of these categories across the United States. These increases limit the number of carriers willing to consider churches at all. Northside specifically had a property claim for flood damage in 2020 which also contributed to fewer carriers willing to consider us.

Our insurance broker shopped twenty carriers when our former carrier chose not to renew. Our broker canvases the market each year to find the most competitive program for us without compromising the coverage we need to be responsible.

Northside has zero debt. This is a goal that we set for our family before starting the development of this property in 2008. Time will tell, but our intention is to remain debt free, even if it means putting off capital expenditures until we are able to pay cash for them. In addition to being debt free, don't forget we maintain an Operating Reserve Fund of approximately six months of our operating costs, so we are actually in better condition than being debt free.

All except one of the churches we used in our staffing research have worship ministers. Similar to our situation, several of these churches have the role of worship combined with additional responsibilities.

• In 2019, we started with six minister roles (preaching, youth, children, adult education, connections, associate children) and then added a part-time worship minister role.
• In 2020, we added a communications role and combined it with worship to become full-time. We added the role of executive minister, and we added the role of congregational care. The associate children’s minister role was removed, the adult education role was removed, and the connections role was removed.
• In 2021, we replaced our youth minister.
• In 2023, we replaced our preaching minister.
• In 2024, we added a youth minister role and replaced our executive minister.
• We currently have seven minister roles: preaching, youth, associate youth, children, congregational care, worship/communications, executive.

Total giving through October 2025 was 1.25M. This is a 4.5% increase.

Regarding worship attendance: Overall, church attendance across America has been in decline, and the Covid pandemic also contributed to many churches declining and even closing. Since the pandemic ended, Northside attendance has mostly increased, but we have not reached pre-pandemic attendance levels (547).

Average worship attendance:

• 2021: 286 (end of Covid)
• 2022: 369
• 2023: 368
• 2024: 417
• 2025: 402 (through November)

Regarding membership: our overall membership decreased in 2024 (from 618 to 597) and in 2025 (from 591 to 556 through November). Part of this decline across both years reflects our intentional work to clean up our database for accuracy. We’ve also had a typical mix of some members moving or leaving while others join.

Numerical growth is certainly something we would love for God to provide, but outlining our priorities here is delicate. Please remember, one of our highest values is “grow,” but this value is specifically about spiritual growth. Our vision statement outlines our priorities: growing in Christlikeness, providing generous service to others, and embracing God’s diverse creation which we embody in joyful worship. We will directly pursue these goals, and we will trust God to provide numerical growth if He chooses.

Please see the answer to Question #7 as it addresses several aspects of these questions. As we heard Jim Martin articulate at the Family Financial Meeting, there have been numerous strategic initiatives over the last five years for the sake of improving our holistic health and effectiveness as a church family. This includes the development of our mission, vision, and values. It includes our leadership model change, it includes the expansion of our youth ministry, and it includes our transition to One Fund. We believe directly improving our holistic health and vision effectiveness will indirectly make us more attractive to new people who share our vision.

Rather than create strategies to directly pursue numerical growth, we would rather start by inviting our existing ministries to consider how they might be more intentional to make new relational connections. For example, our Senior Adult Ministry is taking steps to purposefully connect to new people in our neighborhood as a part of their established activities like Game Day and Meal Deal. Additionally, several children’s and preschool activities already draw numerous guests. We would like to explore how we can be more intentional through these activities to cultivate new connections.

Years ago, Northside operated on a September 30 financial fiscal year end. There were a number of reasons this was changed more than a decade ago to a calendar fiscal year. Although a different fiscal year would eliminate the uncertainty of member contributions at the end of the calendar year, that uncertainty would then be moved to the summer and early fall period leading up to the September 30 year end, when giving patterns can also be somewhat unpredictable.

Additionally, a fiscal year other than a calendar year complicates our year end payroll and other IRS reporting requirements, which must follow a calendar year.

Overall, we have found that a calendar year is preferable for these reasons and the fact that a different fiscal year does not mitigate the challenges we face with uncertainty in timing of contributions from our members.

That is correct, an elder made that statement as a part of our year-end push, possibly in 2016 or 2017. It was never a “plan,” but rather a “dream.” As Jim Martin mentioned in the Family Financial Meeting, a host of working groups and strategic planning occurred starting in 2018. Our current Strategic Vision outlines many goals and initiatives connected to spiritual maturity and the development of more intentional ministry and service in our community.

Remember what we’ve championed during the Ordinary Faithfulness campaign: everything we do is part of the mission of God. Our expenses for operations are essential to how ministry gets done. This gets back to the heartbeat of One Fund: Every Sunday is mission Sunday because everything we do is an investment in the redeeming mission of God.

We firmly believe that once all of our members settle into One Fund, and once everyone who was giving to special fundraisers like Missions Sunday begins increasing their regular contributions to include the amounts given to those fundraisers in past years, our year-end pushes (or shoulder tapping) will once and for all be a thing of the past.

The heartbeat of One Fund is to move away from directed giving and campaigns for specific needs. This is partly because our ministries and operational expenses are mutually dependent, and the facility is a prime example of this. Our facility is used every week for the purposes of multiple ministries. So an investment in the facility is an investment in ministry, and an investment in ministry is an investment in our facility. We like the One Fund approach because it captures this important truth. We would rather acknowledge that our expenses for facilities and operations are an essential part of how ministry gets done—we would rather understand all expenses as ministry expenses. And we would rather call our family to give for the sake of mission and ministry.

One hundred eighty individuals responded to the survey, which is a strong representation of our adult members. As a result of this response rate, we have a 95% confidence margin. In other words, the margin of error for our survey results is only 5.4%. The specific results mentioned at the Financial Meeting were based on those who took the survey. As with all data, it is most meaningful when put in its proper context. To do this, David Sessions and Luke Perkins will be creating a video presentation with a more extensive presentation of the survey results.