 I want to thank you for joining this workshop. We are all flying by the seat of our pets in so many ways, and I'm definitely in there with you. But I'm so grateful for all of the work that you each do in your ministries and in your communities. Thank you for your attention to the work of God in the midst of this crisis. As we begin, I'd like to start with a word of prayer, and Chris Yoast, could I call on you to open us in a moment of prayer? You bet. Thank you, Jody. Let's pray. Almighty God, we thank you for this Lenten season, and we thank you for your grace that shines through any clouds of our lives. God, I pray a special blessing upon each person in this group today that as we seek to be good and faithful stewards of the gifts of your people, the gifts given to you, God, that you help us to be mindful, that you would give us clarity of thought and wisdom. God, I pray that you would also work to assuage the anguish, the hurt, the unknowns, God, that drive us in our humanity nuts. We ask that your Holy Spirit would pour out that peace that passes all understanding to guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Lord, we're very mindful of those who as we talk about these important matters, there are people making life and death decisions right now, and we ask that you would grant them an extra measure of your grace. God let them to make clear and faithful decisions, and God, we pray that you would use them as your instruments of healing on this good earth that you made well. God, we pray that you'd bless Jody, that you'd bless her staff, and we thank you God for their diligence, for their wisdom, and use of their gifts and grace to get us this information today. Thank you, Lord, for this ability to gather in Jesus' name, amen. Thank you so much, Chris. I really appreciate that. And as people continue to join us, I will continue on. And I'm going to try not, it's sort of hard because I see messages coming in on the chat, but I'm going to try to stay focused here. I need to reiterate numerous times that I am not providing legal or accounting advice. You may need to hire a professional, and nothing that we say or do here overrides what guidance you receive from that professional. What I am trying to do is let you know that the laws that have been passed in the last couple of weeks apply to our churches in various levels. Some of those levels are not yet fully known. So the information that I am presenting today is subject to change. It's subject to change through tweaks to the legislation. It's subject to change as attorneys and CPAs are interpreting the acts. The CARES Act alone is 880 pages long. And I assume you guys probably don't have time to read through that. So I'm just trying to get you started and point you to some resources, particularly as I have become aware that some of our churches have started laying off staff in response to this. I want to make sure that you know that there are some options to help you through this time that may or may not work for you. So I want to get started. And I'm going to share my screen. If you go to the North Texas website, do you all see the picture of the bishop? Okay. If you go to NTC UNC, you'll see a North Texas conference response to the coronavirus pandemic. And there is a message from our bishop there. And as you scroll down, there is a link called the coronavirus resource page. This is one way to get to it. I'm sure there are others. But I wanted to make sure that you were able to find this as quickly as possible. So once you get to this page, if you haven't already been here, there is an awful lot of information that we are trying to get out to our churches with information about helping you live stream services and a number of videos that help you navigate pastoral care and so many other issues. So at the top, and also we have an online giving platform at the conference, if you do not have online giving right now and do not want to set one up or just want to use ours on a temporary basis, whatever money comes into the conference will be sent directly to your church within the week. We will issue checks once a week. And the expectation is that you will be acknowledging those gifts and posting it to your participant accounts so that you have an accurate reflection of the giving that you have received. You will receive enough information to know who said the gift. Are there any questions about the online giving at this point? I don't see any. Okay. Scrolling on down the screen, here's a number of webinars coming up that you may want to be, want to attend. I want to point to, as we move down here to resources, there is a link here called ask a question. And what I want to encourage you to do is, if you have found, I do have a question, is there a way to list the online giving on Facebook for each individual church? I don't know. I'll check into that and I may need to follow up with you as to fully understanding that question. Okay. So, ask the question is a link that I really want to encourage you guys to use. We are all in this together. We are trying to navigate our way through this. You are certainly free to call me or email me. I have received a number of emails already. But I think it would be best if we try to move questions to this resource because many of you are asking the same question. And then I can respond to those questions. I'll put those responses here on the page at some point and give you answers as is appropriate. I also would like to invite any of you that are particularly well-versed in law or accounting or interpreting these laws quickly. I do like to surround myself with people who are more knowledgeable than I am in various areas. And if you would like to assist me as we try to respond to these questions and find the answers, I would love to have your help. I would love to create a small temporary committee that helps navigate these. There are a number of questions that come up related to churches that are hard to find in the overwhelming amount of information that is out there. So anyone who would be interested in helping me force good answers to good questions, I would appreciate it. I know some of you have daycares and other preschool, other entities that you're going to have questions about. And you'll have questions that I haven't thought of, but I'm sure your peers have thought of them. So I really encourage you to use this link and ask your questions and we will try to take advantage of the connection in yet another way using this resource. Down here under financial, we have added a number of resources for you to use to go to as you are trying to determine how to navigate this. The CARES Act was passed on Friday. So there has not been a lot of time to really read through that entire act. But I put a summary on the page and again, this information is subject to change in law as well as interpretation. It is not intended to replace advice or counsel, attorney, CPA, or the professional. So I wanted to highlight the items that I think are going to be pertinent to our churches. And as time goes on, I will update this if I learn of the 880 pages. If there are other items that we need to pay attention to, I will also tell you there are some items that I cannot answer yet. I don't have the answer. But the most important thing, most promising source of help that I have seen at this point is this Paycheck Protection Program. This Paycheck Protection Program is possibly, it provides a loan to you and your churches and it is based on 8 weeks of your salary, your normal salary, and your other expenses. You can take up to two and a half times that monthly salary, the average monthly salary. There is a place that I can show you that helps you figure out how to calculate it and apply for this loan. The great thing about this loan is if you do follow all of the rules, the government has agreed to turn the loan into a grant and forgive that portion of the loan that is spent in compliance, that is spent in compliance with this loan. See, there is a question. The maximum is $10 million per church, but it is $100,000 comes in to any employee's salary that exceeds $100,000 cannot be used. And I see someone else has already answered that, so that's good. Okay, so these Paycheck Protection Programs are available to churches and church-related entities like preschools. Please know if your preschool is on your same federal ID number, you, for your 941 and your Payroll 32 reporting, you definitely need to include them in your calculations. And technically, it appears that they are looking at some of these restrictions based on how many entities you may have underneath you, whether they're separate or not. I don't think that any of our churches are going to exceed the 500 employee provisions that this is geared towards. This is geared towards entities that have 500 or fewer employees on their payroll. So it is available to our churches. It is temporary. It is a loan that is effective as of February 15 to the end of this year. And here I note that the maximum loan amount is 2.5 times the average monthly payroll for the last 12 months or $10 million, whichever is less. I have seen a couple of different websites list just this payroll number and others go ahead and list the payroll number, the interest on your mortgage and utilities and the other items that qualify. So there are not, that is not real clear as to what all counts, but there is a link to, but I'll show you in a minute, to the SBA that will help you determine that. So there's a question about what if all staff members except the pastor are contractors. That's a good question. I don't know. I know that we do count contractors for a payroll audit, but that is a question that many of my colleagues have asked and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. And the employees whose salaries exceed $100,000. The salaries that exceed that amount are not eligible for the loan. So only the first $100,000 is eligible. And that salary cost includes their wages, their health insurance, any payroll taxes that you, the church would pay, retirement plans, your retirement program. That's a good thing that the church spends. Now I see that there are some answers and I'm just going to move on. So the funds that are borrowed can be spent on a number of items. What is here under one and two. You may use these two, but the only the first four are going to be eligible for the forgiveness. And that includes the payroll costs, the utilities, the mortgage interest expense and rent. And all of these items, the utilities, mortgage, and rent have to be on contracts and leases that were in place prior to February 15th of 2020. So you can't go out and use this opportunity to get a new loan or to buy more property and that sort of thing. It's only for that which is already existing. You can also use the loans for interest on debt other than mortgages and a paid sick medical family leave, but as of this time and this interpretation, those would not be eligible for the loan forgiveness. The amount that's eligible for the loan forgiveness at this point in time is limited to an eight week period, which is beginning with the date of the loan. How quickly can we apply and which thanks, that's a question that's on here. You can start the process today. I'm going to give you a little more information about that later. Okay, to maximize your refund eligibility, I want to say this up front before you go borrow money, it may be prudent to open a separate bank account and put the loan proceeds in that account and pay these expenses, particularly the payroll, utilities, mortgage, loan and rent. That may make it easier for you as a church to document the portion of the money spent that would be eligible for the loan forgiveness. That was just some advice that I heard from a fellow CPA and I don't normally encourage opening lots of extra bank accounts, but in this case, I would agree with him that this may be the best way to do it, to make sure that you are very careful about where those monies are spent. This program is designed to help you retain your employees, to retain your staff so that they're not filing for unemployment. So if you are laying your employees off or reducing your staff or reducing even the salaries that you're paying, that can have a negative effect on how much of the loan can be forgiven. But if you hire the people that you may have already furloughed or that you have to furlough in the coming weeks, if you rehire them by June 30th, then that can positively affect how much you will qualify for forgiveness. So a question about what kinds of approval do we need from our committees? And is this treated like other loans that need charge conference approval or any approval from the DS? That is a question that we are looking into, Pam. It's a very good question. It is the loan is not, these loans are not secured. You don't even have to prove credit worthiness. So if your church does not have a good credit record, you can still qualify for these loans. But we do need to be careful with discouraging churches from getting in over their heads where they'll never be able to dig back out. So I don't have an answer to that one yet, Pam. Yeah, anyone, there's a question about any nursery workers who aren't working because no in-person worship. There are some links here that are going to talk about how to address those kinds of issues as you as you move on. If you can continue to pay a leave, well not a leave, but if you can continue to pay them, then you're in good shape. There's another act that we'll get to in a minute that talks about penalties for laying people off and that also applies to churches. But I'm going to come back around to that. So the loans that are not forgiven, the payments will be deferred for at least six months. So you won't have to start making those payments back for six months. And you can have a note that should not exceed 10 years and the interest should not exceed four percent. So there's a lot in this first one, in this pay check protection program. To me, this is the best resource that has come out. And I have confirmed it is available to churches. And I have confirmed that the pastor's salary does count. It appears the pastor's housing allowance counts, but not a personage allowance. But those are still things that we're looking at because the pastors are self-employed. So those are definite questions to keep an eye on. I want to go and touch on a couple of other things that came up in this act that I thought were pertinent to our churches. The first one is expanded unemployment benefits. The first act that passed the Family First Corona Response Act expanded these unemployment benefits somewhat, but it didn't make it available to those who are self-employed, the gig economy, if you will. So it was not, it was not, could not be expanded to those who were contract. This does extend it to contracts, but it does, it appears that it does not apply to ministers. That is still something we are looking at. Many people are surprised to learn that churches do not participate in the State of Employment Insurance Program. So any employee that you lay off from your preschool to in your church staff, anything related to your entity, those employees are not eligible for State unemployment. So there is a safety net that we need to be attentive to as we are working with making those decisions about our staff. There are some other resources. The CARES Act expands unemployment benefits to a flat 600 per week maximum and the church employees, even though they didn't have, even though they don't qualify for state unemployment, they do qualify for this expanded unemployment benefit. So you have this opportunity and in a minute, actually I'm going to click back over. There is another resource here and that is FEMA. FEMA has disaster unemployment insurance for any state that has been declared a national disaster by the president and he did declare Texas as a disaster area last Monday. So our churches should qualify. So this is a secondary possibility if you have had to lay your staff off and they come back to you and they find out they don't have any state unemployment resources. This is very new territory for all of us. There's one other source that I've become aware of but I have not confirmed that it will work for churches. So I will put it up here if it does in fact work for churches. Moving back to this CARES Act. There are two more benefits down here that if you participate in this top one in the Paycheck Protection Program, you cannot take advantage of either these or some either or situation. So the C is a deferment of the payment of the employer's share of social security taxes and this is just a deferment. Like it says, you do have to pay it back. So you don't have to pay it this year and you can take that deferment through the end of the year but half of that money will be through back next year and then the other half would be due the following year. So again the Paycheck Protection Program is really the best program but if that's not going to work for you, this is certainly another option. And these taxes are, they create refundable credits. There's also an employee retention credit for Employer Subject to Closure by Government Decree. This would specifically, this would specifically apply to our preschools. You have to show that there was 50% or more revenue that was lost due to the closure and again you can't use this if you're using the Paycheck Protection Program. Jan Chapman read that laid off furloughed employees should file for the FEMA unemployment first and then file for the expanded unemployment benefits. That may be true. I don't know. I think they would probably want to apply for everything they possibly can get right away. So I will keep updating this resource and it will remain on the page as best I can but again this is not legal advice and it's not even though I'm a CPA this is not accounting advice specifically tailored to you. I want to spend a minute on the the FFCRA. This is the Family First Corona Response Act. This was the second piece of legislation that was passed a little over a week ago and this is a law that does apply to churches and to entities operating under the church so your preschools. It expires December 31 of this year but it requires that you provide basically for any employee that has coronavirus or has to test to take care of a family member because of the coronavirus epidemic. So the first one takes care of the first two weeks of the sick leave and then the Emergency Family and Medical Leave Expansion Act extends that leave as I understand it out to a total of 12 weeks so if their job is protected they are unable to come back to work if they are unable to work or telework then they're eligible for leave payment and you do have to keep the job for them. They are eligible for this. So these do apply to our churches and it's critical that you extend these benefits to employees because this is the law. This is not something that we have ever been subject to, the FNLA laws, even though we are somewhat subject to them they're different in this case. This is overriding that particular issue. So you will want to pay attention to those laws as you are making those decisions about your staff whether or not you are going to lay them off or put them on leave or again I think the payback paycheck program is the strongest. It provides you with the monies to keep them on your staff. They're trying to do that. The government is doing that because the employees are overwhelming the unemployment system and so there will need to be ways to show that you have done everything you can to retain your employees. There are several resources here. There is a small business emergency loans with payroll calculator. So this is a, this is put up by the US Chamber of Commerce and the first part goes through the high level questions and this is going to answer questions for any business not just churches and tell you what the lenders are looking for. So as you start to apply for your loans this will help you, this will help you find your way to the information that you're going to need to have for that. And then it also on the last two pages has some sample calculations of how do you calculate those average monthly payroll costs what all is included and then what is excluded. So here we come back to the compensation of an individual employee in excess of a hundred thousand is not included in your payroll cost calculation and will the loan be forgiven this tells you if it will depending on if you follow these particular guidelines I think this is probably the most succinct resource I have seen as to what the guidelines are and it shows you what the calculation process would be for how much you can get back. Seasonal employees and employers have different rules and your priests so depending on your other entities there may be something that pertains to you and to your church. So there as I mentioned before the payroll forgiveness could be reduced by an evidence that you laid off staff but it can also be increased by any time that you've hired staff back. Let's say the employee rights poster, yes someone noted that the employee rights poster is on the Department of Labor and I believe that I have that here so maybe I don't. Small Business Association loan application I'm really impressed I just found this less than an hour ago and our team got this up on the website quickly. This is a streamlined process requirement and I think this will help you help guide you as you are sorting out how you would proceed with applying for these loans. Again we do need to confirm whether or not the churches will need to go to the district committees or call a charge conference via phone. What those steps are we will keep you updated on that. I have not gone through this process I just found it and I thought it looked quite helpful in a confusing time of so much confusion when you guys have so many other things that you really need to do. So you guys let me just make sure you see the disaster loan assistance right Chris is the disaster loan assistance page showing up on your screen. Okay good back to the other resources horizon tremendous resources I'm so impressed with the different things that they've done in terms of providing you links to to understand how this is going to affect you and I see they've added a few since the last time I looked at it I use the case and cross quite a bit myself so I encourage you to go to these links to see what may help you discern how to answer your particular questions they also have information on how to manage your daily cash flow which is hugely important for many of our churches right now. So I encourage you to go to this I went ahead and signed up for this giving 365 newsletter with Horizon so that I could get that information it is free so I encourage you to do that. TNS has a number of resources as well and they've they've done a great job of presenting these and highlights that help you navigate to the information that you need right now. So I encourage you to go to this one as you as you are helping your church navigate these times Westpac has a coronavirus page where they are assisting with all of the many questions that may come up particularly with retirement information and your health flex currently health flex is going to cover all of your tests at a hundred percent. There there is still discussion of the full treatment issues and I'm actually going to be on a call Wednesday as we discuss that a little further. It's it's complicated because we do have health savings account high deductible plans that make it difficult for various reasons to extend the free free support to all levels of treatment but didn't we want you to know that the test will be covered at a hundred percent and and the refills are letting you refill faster than or more often and and sooner than they normally do. Other resources GCFA I have not given that to them GCFA has oh it's down here they do have a number of links as well they have not done a lot with the financial piece of it yet like I said this just came out on Friday so we are all trying to catch up and they're going to be offering a far more legally supported resource than I can give you so I encourage you to to use that resource. The church law and tax resources I use this resource very frequently for a lot of the things that I deal with in my office. There is a webinar coming up with Richard Hammer who is who is to me one of the premier he is the premier attorney and CPA who interprets how to read these laws and how they apply to our churches that is a free workshop and it is helping you weather the cash crunch so he is I highly recommend him and I recommend this webinar it does conflict with the the session that the bishop is is hosting Thursday morning but I believe it will be available you know a recorded version will be available so you'll have a way to get back to it so at this point I am going to see if you have questions hope I hit record someone asked if this was all being recorded and I certainly meant to hit record it shows that this recording Jodi okay good thank you yeah thank you thanks so much okay are there any other questions uh I I may have scrolled through these quickly it's one new message yes we will make it we will make the recording available for later review and Kim just said it will be posted to the website can you get one loan for the preschool and a second loan for the church staff it's unlikely you would get them separately if they have a separate federal ID number and they're separately incorporated it is conceivable but from what I have seen of the links that are coming up I I don't believe that's going to be possible I think you'll have to lump them together and are there other questions for preschool that normally ends and may do you need to extend their payroll to qualify for forgiveness I do not believe that you do I believe that in some of the resources that I've seen there are exceptions for uh for season that's not really a seasonal employer because they work nine months out of the year but but there is recognition of uh that they that some payrolls do not extend through the summer and would I recommend a second bank account over setting up a restricted fund in QuickBooks um you can do that either way it uh it's not you can do it either way but you're you're going to want to make certain that you can prove to the government how the money was spent how much money came in and how you spent it so um this is like I said earlier and first time I've ever recommended that church has set up separate bank accounts because I think it really will help you navigate this uncharted territory the banks that you would apply to would be banks that offer small business SBA loans so if you go to the small business association loan application it looked to me like there was a link there that would help you find the banks near you that would offer this I also encourage you to go ahead and speak with your local banker they're expecting to hear from you let them know if you are if you're facing a cash crunch if you're in need to look at your outstanding loans uh and maybe make some temporary adjustments in those and even though this goes against every every part of my being there I have seen uh some of my colleagues recommend that if you have credit cards and you can carry the balance you might wish to do so to keep your cash position strong I realize you need to pay that off as soon as possible uh when will the decision on if we need a church conference for approval of the loan request happen I really don't know that we're going as fast as we can I sent that question to the bishop yesterday and uh and he and I are supposed to visit later on and then I'm not sure what level it will go to but we will let you know as soon as we know okay were there any other questions that I may have missed uh someone has posted the employee rights poster uh Deborah Hubs-Mason posted that it that that really does apply to our churches that goes over the family first acts that I mentioned about the federal law that was enacted to prevent you from furloughing your employees so uh thank you Deborah for posting that and I will uh add this to the links on the web or how actually I have him add this to the links on the website so that you can find it uh I I cannot address what banks to apply with they just they need to be uh SBA banks that are approved to provide SBA loans okay well thank you I'm reading all the thank yous so I appreciate that uh yeah if you if it does require a charge conference you would have to do that via zoom and the recording I believe will be on the website and I think Kim Kim can take care of that so I want to thank you all for joining me I hope this this was helpful to you and like I said we are all just trying to navigate this and I wanted to to get as much information out to you as I could as quickly as I could so thank you all and um that's Diana would you would you close us in prayer please I was trying to unmute I'll be happy to do that thanks Jody let us pray dear god we thank you for this precious opportunity we come we have to come together as a annual conference we thank you for Jody's leadership we thank you for her knowledge and her willingness to share with all of us oh god please continue to be with us guide us oh god and let us do this work for your glory we pray for every pastor and every lay person that is on this call and let them know that you have them in the palm of their hands we love you oh god we worship you and adore you and we ask it all believing that nothing is too hard for you in Jesus name amen amen thank you all appreciate you