The Music Budget

...or lack of.

As I mentioned before, I am a non-paid Minister of Music at my church. We are not a huge church and we don't have budgets for a lot of things. So, that means I do not have a music budget. I'm always told by our deacon board to get whatever I need and the church will pay for it, but I just don't feel right about doing that. I know that we need every penny that we get to pay the bills, pastor's salary, association fees, missions, etc. So I very rarely ever ask for anything.

Every year at Christmas, all of the officers of the church are presented with a check of $25.00. I normally just put it back in the offering plate. However, this year I cashed it and used it to buy a new bookshelf for the choir room. I felt bad about cashing it but was really grateful to get a new shelf. I've already filled it up and could use another one but that's beside the point.

It is coming up on Easter time and I've been looking at different Easter Cantata music. A few months ago I was at the Evangel Christian Book store and bought a dozen or so used cantata books for $2.00 each. I sorted through them and found one called, Amen, that I thought would be good for our choir to learn. I went back to the Evangel yesterday and found 2-more of the same book. It is produced by Lifeway and retails there for $5.99 a piece. I usually get at least 23-copies of music to go around, 20 for the choir, one for me, one for the pianist, and one for the organist. Some folks end up having to share but it works out good. So I am 20-copies short right now. To purchase enough books I will need $120.00. Where will that money come from? Should I ask choir members to pony up and buy their own copy? Should I ask the church to pay for them?

Tonight while I was at my parent's house we were discussing church budgets. They attend a different church than I do and they have several more members and a pretty large budget. I noticed they have over $6,000 allotted for choir music! Wow, what I could do with that! I guess I just need to turn it over to God and trust Him to work things out for me. He always does but it sure would be nice to not have to worry every time I need new music!