ECCU Blog

 “If you can attend only one conference this year, Summit is it.  Join us and others who care deeply about adoption, foster care, local church ministries, and global orphan care to learn…real solutions that reflect the heart of God. It will transform your church, your ministry, your family and your life. If you want to show the world God’s love, begin with orphans.”

—Pastor Rick Warren, Saddleback Church

More than 2,000 adoptive and foster parents, pastors, orphan advocates, and other Christian leaders from across America and beyond will gather at Saddleback Church in Southern California May 3–4, 2012 for the Christian Alliance for Orphans’ National Summit.

Now in its eighth year, Summit has become the global hub for what Christianity Today recently labeled “the burgeoning Christian orphan care movement.” Christians are re-earning a reputation as people who “defend the fatherless” (Isaiah 1:17) through adoption, foster care, and global initiatives. Summit is both a catalyst and measure of this trend, growing from 38 attendees in 2004 to more than 50 times that number expected this year.

Sessions include Pastor Rick Warren (author of The Purpose-Driven Life), Kay Warren (author of Dangerous Surrender), Francis Chan (author of Crazy Love), Ambassador Susan Jacobs, and Grammy-winning musician Steven Curtis Chapman performing the closing-night concert.

More than 80 workshops will offer instruction from top national experts on topics such as:

• Parenting and attachment issues in difficult adoptions
• Engaging in local foster care
• Building effective global church-to-church partnerships.

Summit also features a special students-only conference, a training day for government social workers, extensive resources for adoptive and foster families, more than 75 booths and exhibits, a marketplace of global arts and crafts, and a bookstore—all designed to inspire, connect, and equip families and churches to become communities known for adoption, foster care, and global orphan initiatives.

“At many of the best moments of Christian history, churches have been especially known for the ‘pure and faultless religion’ that seeks out and cares for the orphan in distress,” said Jedd Medefind, president of the Christian Alliance for Orphans. “It’s thrilling to see Christians rising to this call once again. We join together at Summit to learn how to do so wisely and well, and in a way that reveals God’s heart to a watching world.”

For registration information, visit www.summitviii.org.

You can learn more about the Alliance here.

My mother is selling her vacation home in Palm Desert. It isn’t used often, and the maintenance is becoming a burden. Over the years, she has amassed a lot of treasures in that home; now she needs to downsize and let go of many of them. As she was struggling over deciding what to keep, she realized, “If everything is a treasure, nothing is.”

That same principle can be applied to our efforts at work. If everything is important, nothing is. Maggie Fox, founder and CEO of Social Media Group, recently tweeted, “If you have more than three priorities, you have no priorities.” While I am not sure that three is the magic number, I have learned that by clearly focusing on fewer goals, we have a better chance for success.

We live in a world that is rapidly changing, with new opportunities around every bend. How does your ministry focus on the opportunities that can have the most kingdom impact?

A finding in the 2012-2013 Compensation Handbook for Church Staff indicated that more churches operated in the black in 2011 than in 2010. While that is encouraging, I was alarmed by the percentage of churches that still spend more than they take in.

Across the United States, the percentage of churches spending more than their income ranges from 22 percent (in the Pacific and New England regions) to 36 percent (East-South Central region). That means somewhere between a quarter to a third of churches are spending more than their income. Doesn’t that sound really high?

The article was meant to be good news, but I find it hard to believe that—even after coming out of the Great Recession—many churches still have not learned to live within their means. How is this possible?

Most likely, it boils down to one of two problematic methods of operation:

No contingency. Overspending can happen in a nanosecond when ministries create a budget without factoring in a contingency or savings component. It’s no secret: We can’t spend more than we make without forcing ourselves into debt. Yet churches somehow think that as long as they have a balanced budget, they are fine, even if that budget does not include preparing for the unexpected. In fact, churches that don’t have adequate cash reserves are often forced into survival mode and begin to take their focus off of accomplishing ministry.

Overly optimistic. The second reason churches find themselves in the red is due to overly optimistic revenue projections. Here’s what that looks like: Figure out what you want to spend, set the revenue number to match, and—Voila!—the budget balances. Little effort, research, or thought is put into the projection. (Stay tuned: Help is on the way. Look for our upcoming blog post providing a method of projecting revenue from donations that’s based on sound principles.)

Undeniably, overspending year after year puts a ministry in jeopardy. So, why do you think ministries often spend more than they take in?

Hackers never seem to tire of devising ingenious ways to inflict mayhem. An alarming new threat has emerged known as “Spear Phishing.” This phishing technique uses a personalized email message that’s designed to pique your interest. It might be a conference invite, an invoice, or a missions support plea.

Spear phishing messages, which appear genuine and often convey a sense of urgency, are ruses to get you to provide sensitive information (such as your login and password) or entice you to click on a link that contains an infectious virus. Often, these email “spears” pass through SPAM filters because they appear to be legitimate.

RSA, a security software firm, reported that about one in every 300 emails in 2011 was a phish. A growing number are being received at work email boxes as personalized “spear” messages addressed to specific employees, sometimes including details mined from social networks to make them appear valid.

Keeping your anitvirus software and spam filtering up to date will help weed out these nefarious emails. However, hackers are adept at getting them to pass through undetected. This is where employee training helps. Microsoft lists the following components of scam emails:

• Alarmist messages and threats of account closures
• Promises of money for little or no effort
• Deals that sound too good to be true
• Requests to donate to a charitable organization after a disaster that has been in the news
• Bad grammar and misspellings

A best practice is to only open email from trusted sources.

What is your ministry doing to guard against spear phishing attempts?

If you’re like me, last week’s bank card breach involving Global Payments prompted a question: “Was my card affected?” While the odds of the answer being “yes” are small—just a fraction of the billion or so cards in use in North America were affected by the breach—the thought of nearly 1.5 million cards being compromised is still alarming.

We received an alert from the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) this week that says, in the wake of this card breach, you’re wise to be vigilant about card security. Quoting from the alert:

In the wake of the card breach, the next several days or weeks are critical for credit union members to be on the alert for any suspicious emails, text messages or phone calls requesting personal or financial information, especially card data. The card information that may be requested includes, cardholder billing address, 3 digit CVV2/CVC2 code found on the back of the card, or enrollment criteria/passwords for Verified by Visa or MasterCard SecureCode. This card information was not part of the recent Global Payments breach. Criminals may ask members for this information to add to the other card data they may have obtained from the breach to perform card present (key entered) or card-not-present (mail/telephone/internet) non-magnetic stripe transactions.

Given this cautionary note, here’s a reminder: NEVER respond to emails, text messages, or phone calls requesting this type of information. If you receive a suspicious request, contact ECCU immediately at 800.634.3228. And be sure to monitor your financial accounts closely, and report any discrepancies.