WELS Church Extension Fund, Inc.
WELS Church Extension Fund (WELS CEF) provides financing through loans and grants to mission congregations so they can acquire land and ministry facilities to be used for gospel outreach in coordination with WELS Home Missions. WELS CEF also provides loans to self-supporting WELS congregations and schools for land and facility projects. The money to carry out CEF’s mission comes from investments and gifts from WELS members, congregations, and affiliated organizations.
In fiscal year 2017–18, $26.7 million of new loans and $2.3 million of new
grants were approved to mission and mission-minded self-supporting congregations. In addition, WELS CEF provided a grant of $837,070 to the Board for Home Missions from its annual unrestricted net asset grant program. WELS CEF ended fiscal year 2018 with assets of $208.3 million and net assets of $104.3 million. Three thousand four hundred WELS members invested $101.6 million. The loan portfolio held $159.4 million in 208 loans to congregations and affiliates.
For more information, visit wels.net/cef.
WELS Church Extension Fund has supported Beautiful Savior, Lakewood Ranch, Fla., with grants and lower-interest loans to help the congregation build its worship facility and early childhood center.
WELS Church Extension Fund provided a loan to Atonement, Milwaukee, Wis., that helped the self-supporting mission-minded congregation build an addition to alleviate crowding in its school’s classrooms. Before the space was even complete, some teachers began taking advantage of the extra room to spread out for certain projects.
