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November Apportionments: We Will Stand

by | Dec 3, 2018 | Not In USe

Some of you know that my elderly mother has been living with Susan and me the past year. She is largely bedfast, so she spends a lot of time watching television. Since living with us, she has discovered the wonders of YouTube. She will spend hours on end watching southern gospel music videos, which means I spend a lot of time listening to them!

One of my mom’s favorite performers is an artist named Russ Taff, and one of his signature songs is “We Will Stand,” a song he co-wrote with his wife, Tori Taff, and a friend, James Hollihan. The lyrics of the refrain to that song are as follows:

“You’re my brother, you’re my sister so take me by the hand together we will work until He comes there’s no foe that can defeat us when we’re walking side by side as long as there is love we will stand.”

I share these lyrics because they remind me, perhaps oddly enough, of apportionments. Of the ministry and, love we share when we work together. And to me, that is what apportionments are. They are a vehicle that allows us to accomplish great things together – much more than we could ever accomplish on our own. So please know that I am so proud to have all of you as my brothers and sisters in Christ. We may not always agree about everything, but as long as we work together for what is truly important, as long as we love each other, we will stand.

Now for the numbers. Our year-to-date apportionment contributions through November are shown in the following graph:

November’s apportionment receipts declined slightly, but we remained ahead of last year and our historical average. For the first 11 months of 2018, our churches contributed 73.5% of their apportionments. As you can see from the detailed report, this was 2.0% above last year and 0.4% below our average apportionment contributions through November for the last ten years. The North and South districts showed excellent improvement from last year, the West District was up slightly, and the East District was down modestly.  At this rate, we project an overall year-end apportionment contribution percentage of about 87%.

Remember that apportionments are a way to look beyond just ourselves. Please do all that you can to help our churches and our ministries continue to change lives by contributing apportionments as fully as possible in the last month of 2018. Note that the cutoff for receiving 2018 apportionments in the Conference office will be Friday, 1/11/19.

Thanks again for your commitment; it truly provides the financial stability for our connectional programs to work.


Editor’s Note: Click here to download the November Apportionment Status Report or visit dscumc.org/apportionments to find the rest of the year’s status reports.

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Author: Randy Bowman

Finance and Administration Assistant Treasurer

The Desert Southwest Conference is a diverse and loving organization with open doors to a variety of people and partners in ministry. Celebrating our connection and diversity, we offer various resources. Content on this site includes information from other organizations that may not reflect the official policies or Social Principles of The United Methodist Church or the Desert Southwest Conference.

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