DENVER — Trinity United Methodist Church has been a focal point of downtown Denver since 1859. In order to keep serving the community for another century and a half, leadership said it needs some help.
"It’s been challenging," said Sheila Alishouse, finance committee chair. "We’ve used all of our reserve funds. Our congregation has been really supportive and kind and generous and we’re still falling short."
Alishouse said the church has been waiting on a large payment from the IRS for the last 15 months. The church filed a claim through the Employee Retention Credit (ERC) program, a pandemic relief package that came out of the 2020 CARES Act.
"We budgeted about $170,000 in our budget for this year," Alishouse said.
In the meantime, the church has had to prepare to scale back on certain operations.
"We have a contingency plan in place and our cash position dropped below a certain threshold and that meant that we would have to look at potentially a reduction in our staff," Alishouse said. "We’re trying to avoid that all cost because we can’t have programs and reaching out to our community without our staff."
Along with potentially cutting staff, the church is also considering its electrical usage and renegotiating network service contracts.
"We are working really hard to find every way possible that we can cut expenses and we feel like we’ve really done at this point everything we can," Alishouse said.
On Aug. 8, the IRS addressed delays in ERC payments. The revenue service said it's been flooded with claims and even had to temporarily stop processing them. The IRS said improper and fraudulent claims are holding the government back from fulfilling legitimate and valid claims.
"We’re hopeful it will happen soon but there’s no way for us to know exactly when," Alishouse said.
Alishouse said the church isn't the only one facing financial struggles like this.
"Like many churches around us and really throughout the US, we have fiscal challenges and financial challenges with keeping a historic church open," she said. "It costs a lot of money to keep a big church open."
Alishouse said the church can see up to 280 people every Sunday for service and 130 people typically join online. She said since explaining the situation to the congregation, they've raised $57,000 to help meet needs.
The church said until it hears back from the IRS, it'll continue to strategize on ways to reduce costs and ask the congregation for additional support.
Despite the situation, Alishouse said she's confident in the future of the church because she knows its secure with a higher power.
"We strongly believe in walking humbly with God and we believe God is going to meet us where we are. So our hope and prayer is that people will hear this message and know that there is a home for them," Alishouse said.