As a Network Leadership Team, we are continuously praying and looking for opportunities to fulfill our mission – to encourage, resource, and equip our ministers and churches. The property market in Florida is in a volatile state. Many of our Network churches have felt the pressures of higher premiums, higher deductibles, and more exclusions.

We have has been exploring options to assist with property insurance and it appears our best possible solution is a “Master Property Policy” concept. This concept has the potential to lower property premiums, make uninsurable churches insurable again, remove exclusions, and prevent drastic premium increases. A Master Property Policy would combine Network churches together, creating a consortium. Thus, in theory, creating buying power and reducing the hurricane exposure for the carriers because we spread the risk from an East to West range of 200+ miles. This will also enable the consortium to lower the total policy coverage limits, which should lower the overall insurance pricing.

This concept does have a few contingencies. Larger churches participation is vital. Larger churches hold a bulk of the “buying power” and a consortium of smaller churches would not interest the carriers nearly as much. Also, we will need carriers willing to participate in covering the consortium. Recently, many commercial carriers are on hold for writing new businesses. Therefore, this may take a year or two before it comes to available, if at all.

This would be a two-phase project:

• Phase 1 will be data collection for certain selected churches. We have selected churches throughout the Network because we need to prevent too much participation from a single city. Once we’ve collected enough data, our property insurance consultant will contact his carriers and brokers about quoting the Network. Once we have a quote, then we make sure the selected churches are still willing to participate, before we move forward with binding the coverage. After coverage is bound, then we can proceed with Phase 2.
• Phase 2 opens the policy for all of our churches. Remaining churches can then be added to the Master Policy throughout the year.

Please note: While we believe this concept, which is not new and is used by other denominations and entities, could be a huge blessing to all of our churches, in the end, we cannot guarantee, even if our consortium policy is written, that every church would be covered. However, our goal is to do our best to ensure that they could be. With all of this said, what do we do now?

Pastor, we are asking you to please attend one of four regional meetings we have scheduled. Please register below. Each meeting includes a working dinner and there is no cost.

• March 3rd: Pace AG, 6:00 – 7:30 pm CST
• March 4th: New Foundation AG, 6:00 – 7:30 pm CST
• March 10th: Generations Church, 6:00 – 7:30 pm EST
• March 11th: Evangel Church, 6:00 – 7:30 pm CST

This will be a great meeting learning about the concept and possibilities for property coverage and lower premiums. Please consider joining us. This is an opportunity to use the power of TEAM.

Laborers together, Mark Jakelsky Network Secretary/Treasurer