Video Transcript: Budgeting, Spending, and Giving

This is lecture 30 in the practical ministry skills course. And if you've stuck with  us thus far, praise the Lord. We are in the home stretch. We're going to make it  through today. We're talking about budgeting, spending and giving from chapter  17 in the pastoring the nuts and bolts book. This, again, deals mainly with a local church, a congregation, but there is a lot here that will apply to any kind of a  ministry. Our key verse is, you cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.  Matthew 6:24, you cannot serve God and be enslaved to money. I had a bishop  once, Bishop Joseph Yeakel, who used to say, don't tell me what's important to  you. Show me your checkbook. In other words, show me what you spend  money on, what you can have the nicest vision and mission statement in the  world. But if what you actually do, if what you spend your money on, if where  you put your priorities, your resources and your time, that shows what's really  important to you. You cannot serve God if your church is encumbered with so  much debt that all your efforts have to go to paying off the debt. That's just  another way of saying that's the the church wide application of You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money. If your church is encumbered with so much debt that all you can think about and all your efforts have to go to paying off the debt,  then you are enslaved to money. And if you're enslaved to money, you cannot  serve God, whether you're an individual or a church. So let's talk about budgets. Nobody wants to talk about budgets. Yoohoo Reverend Douglas budget time  come out wherever you are and he's hiding between the file cabinets. Budgets  are not generally the favorite thing of any minister that I know of, but there is real value to having a budget. I believe a written budget puts your priorities in  concrete form. An annual written budget forces an annual review and evaluation  of your ministry, and a written budget can place ministry spending decisions in  the hand of those doing the actual ministry. A written budget provides  transparency and increases confidence in the people in your congregation, your  donors, especially if they are used to dealing with businesses, they expect to  see something written out, some kind of written accounting. It makes them much more confident that the money that they are giving to the church is being  properly used and cared for and accounted for. Here's one that most people  don't think about, but a written budget can encourage creativity through the year. Can encourage new ideas if you are able to include a line item in your budget  that says, new ministries. I had probably been a pastor 20 years or more before  I realized this, that so often someone would come up with a new idea six months into the year, and the answer would be, well, there's no place in the budget for it. Well, that's a great idea. We'd love to do it, but there's no place in the budget for  it. Can you hold it off until the next time we make a budget? And by then it may  have been too late, the person may have lost interest, or whatever. I finally  realized, if we put a line item in the budget, you know, there's the line for paying  the insurance, and there's the line for the evangelism ministry, and there's the  line for Sunday School material. And if you put in a line for new ideas, and you 

set a certain amount of money in there, it can just. Be a token. It can be a fairly  small amount, but as long as there is something in there, seed money for a new  idea. Then when people come with new ideas, then you have something to give  them to get it to get it started. Now, not all new ideas cost money, and praise the 

Lord, if it's something that doesn't cost any money, but very often, you need at  least some little bit to get things started. So if there's that line item for new ideas  in your budget that can really encourage creativity, and it can not only  encourage your people to be creative, knowing that there may be funding for an  idea, but the big thing is that the the people whose job it is to watch over the  money will not be inclined to say, oh, you can't do that because there's no  money. They will be reassured that well, what do you know? There is this line  item here, and we haven't spent at all. And so yes, I guess you can do it. And  finally, advantages to a written budget is that a written budget can aid in  fundraising, because there are some people, and especially, again, people who  are used to dealing with businesses, and these may be some of your bigger  potential givers, if you can show them how you intend to use the money,  because that's what a budget is. It's how you intend to spend money, the needs  and your your hopes of what you hope to do, and the budget is actually a list of  the things you plan to do. It's not so much a list of how you spend money. I  mean, that's not your problem is that you have all this money you need to figure  out a way to spend. The budget is a list of the things that you want to do or feel  called to do or need to do. Some of them you need to do. If you have to pay a  mortgage, you have to pay it. So it's a list of the things that you want to do and  an estimate of how much they'll cost. That's what a budget really is. So it's a list  of programs and plans. It's actually an aid to dreaming and planning and then  bringing it down to earth by tying it to an estimated cost. So how do you go  about developing a budget? And by the way, I've said all of this written budget, if you're very small, you may wonder, why do I need a written budget? And I think I go into that in the church, in the in the book, some but somebody has a budget. I mean that you know, or whoever handles your money, knows pretty much what  you're going to have to spend, and how much you have. And they may not have  it written down, but it's in their head, and it's still a budget. So writing it down is a way that everybody can see it and agree on it. How to develop a budget? Well,  there are a number of methods used by different churches. The first one is to  start with your current budget. Let's take this year's budget and for next year,  we'll adjust by the rate of inflation. We'll just leave everything exactly the same  way it is, and they expect the inflation rate to be 6% and so we'll just add 6% to  everything. That's easy, but it is not at all creative, and there is very little faith  needed. And you say, what does faith have to do with the budget? Everything  you do in your ministry should be designed toward helping people grow to faith  and maturity in Christ. So if you're doing something that doesn't exercise  anybody's faith, that's a lost opportunity. So second method is you start with 

what you expect to bring in. You subtract your fixed expenses, and then you try  to fit all your ministry into whatever money is left. If there is any now fixed  expenses, are the things that you have an obligation to pay. It may be a legal or  contractual obligation, like a mortgage. Maybe you have a mortgage on a  building. Maybe you have to pay an electric bill, and it's not, may or may not be  a set amount every month, but you can estimate it, but you know you're going to have to pay it. Insurance, utilities, which could be electric, water, sewer,  whatever that. Kind of a thing. If you have any salaries to pay, or any taxes to  pay, or anything else like that, those are your fixed expenses, and they're the  ones that if you don't pay them, somebody could come and shut you down. So  you start with estimating your expected income, and that could come from some kind of an annual fundraising drive for the budget, or it could just come from  what you extrapolating from what you got last year. However you come up with  that and subtract your fixed expenses, and then whatever is left, you try to fit all  your ministry in, because, if you notice, the fixed expenses are all just  supporting the ministry. The building is not the ministry. The building is a tool for  the ministry. And so you're trying to fit all of your ministry, all the things that your  your ministry actually exists for, all the reasons your church is there. Those are  what you're trying to cram into whatever money might be left after the fixed  expenses. That's again, this is an easy way to do it. It's not as easy because  there's a little work in anticipating expected income. But again, there's little faith  needed, and it can be downright discouraging when you discover that 95% of  your expected income is going to fixed expenses and you only have 5% left for  actually funding the ministry that you exist to do and that that's there are cases  where those are accurate, accurate percentages. Unfortunately, that's very  discouraging. Third method, make a wish list and pray for God to supply the  funds. Now maybe I shouldn't call it a wish list. List all the things you would like  to do, and then just say we're going to go by faith. We're going to trust that  God's going to provide for it. This has the advantages. It encourages creativity, if you don't start with a budget constraints, then it encourages creativity, and it  encourages faith to believe, you pretty much have to believe that you have a big list of things you feel like you want to do, or you're called to do, and you don't  know where the money's coming from. You've got to believe the downside of this is it can lead to looking at God as a magic genie, saying God, we prayed about  it, and we felt like you wanted to tell us to you told us to do this, and therefore  you have to provide the money. And even it can lead some people to say, well, I  don't have to give, I don't have to tithe, I don't have to donate to the church,  because God's going to provide the money. Well, I heard one pastor say, I've got good news and bad news for you. He said, we hit we have a we're behind in the  budget. We have these bills to pay. I've got good news and bad news. The good  news is, God has the money. The bad news is, it's in your pockets. God's money is in the pockets of your people. So this kind of way can look to lead to looking 

at God as a magic genie, and it can lead to questioning God if the money  doesn't show up. And that can happen if you have not followed what the  Scripture says about asking I John 5:14, this is the boldness we have in Him,  that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. If we ask anything  according to His will, He hears us. You can be bold in asking if you know that  God wants to give it to you if you are trying to persuade God to give something,  if you're not certain that he wants to give it to you, if you're just hoping, or if  you're saying, Well, I followed all the formulas, and therefore he has to. First,  God doesn't like being put in a box like that. He doesn't like being forced in a  corner and told that he has to do something. So that's that's not a good direction to go in prayer. But then, if you just say, Well, gee, I sure hope God wants to do  this, that's not very much faith. So the boldness that we have in him is that if we  ask anything according to His will, He hears us. So make sure through prayer,  through using your mind, through consultation with others through all the  different kinds of biblical processes for discerning God's will, and this isn't a  course in that, but use all of those processes for discerning God's will and make  sure that God is wanting to fund all the things on your list, you may need to go  through and cut some of them out. If indeed, God told you everything on the list,  then that's good, and you can count on it. But that is a difficult thing for the most  mature Christians to do, and the odds are that at least some of the people  helping you put your budget together are not going to be the most mature  Christians, and may still be thinking much more along the lines of the world's  ways of calculating and doing things, which is not, I mean, we're hoping to grow  past that, but if that's where we are, that's what we work with. And so the fourth  method, and the one that I usually use, was a trying to balance all of that  together. Of course, as we've said before, about a lot of things, pray first last and always. Then look at how well you're meeting your current budget. And that  gives you some direction, some information, list all the things that you feel God  would like you to do in the next budget year and their expected costs, and that's  similar to some of the other processes. As part of that, you evaluate your current ministries and make changes as God leads. You evaluate your current fixed  expenses and make changes as God leads. And again, remember that all the  fixed expenses are just tools for enabling the ministries, and include a line item  for new ideas. Estimate your projected income from all the sources, and then  compare the cost of the things you feel led to do with your projected income. If it looks like you're going to have more money than you need, then praise the Lord  and put the extra in the new ideas column. If the projected income is less, then  praise the Lord anyway, because we praise the Lord for all things. And then you  brainstorm ways to increase income, and you brainstorm ways to decrease  expenses, and you prioritize your ministries, and you say, well, we're going to try and pay for them in this order. And if we get down to these down at the bottom  and we run out of money, maybe that can wait till next year, or maybe there will 

be somebody in the congregation who will just really like that idea and say, well,  I'll pay for that. So how do you present your budget? How do you get this in front of the congregation? You should have a policy as to who is entitled to see the  budget. And remember, most people are not interested in the detailed numbers.  I used to hand out all the details to everybody, and most of them, their eyes kind  of glazed over, and they didn't know what was going on with it. So keep a copy  of the detailed numbers for those who are interested in it, as well as for the  people who are actually keeping track of the money and need to know it. And by the way, make sure each ministry leader, if you have a discipleship committee,  and you have allocated X number of dollars to the discipleship committee. Make sure that the discipleship committee leader knows they have that money, and  make sure that when they spend it, you know, we used to say you're free to  spend up to this amount, if you need to spend more than that amount of of your,  you know, if you need to spend more than half of your your allocated budget, or  something like that, just if you're going to spend any large amount, check with  the treasurer to make sure the money's actually there, because there. Because  on paper, on the budget, it says they're going to have this much money to  spend. That doesn't mean that much money has come into the bank for them to  spend, but make sure those people who need to know have the detailed  numbers. But for your congregation, for your donors, present your budget in  terms of ministry and results. And I'm not going to go through here how we  arrived at this. It's in the reading. And I know it can be complicated, but what you want to wind up with is something like this. You want to be able to tell your  people 45% or whatever, whatever the percentage might be, 45% of the money  that comes in here goes to provide for our worship services. And most people  won't have a problem with that, because most people the worship service they  see as the biggest thing that the church does anyway, and so that makes sense  to them. And the reason that's usually so big is because usually they're the most of the expenses of the building would go into that so but then you want to say,  these are the priorities that we have as a congregation. These are, let me do it  this way. These are the things that we have said are important to us, and ideally  you want your ministry funding pie chart, or however you present it, if you say,  worship is the most important thing to us, and worship is where most of the  money goes. That fits. But if you say evangelism is the most important thing to  our church, but we only spend 3% of our money promoting evangelism, then  that's a that's a disconnect, and so you need to be aware of that, and your  people will want to see those things. Use testimonies from people whose lives  have been blessed by your church. If you have somebody who was really  blessed by one of your ministries when it comes time to be presenting the  budget and encouraging people to set aside money for next year, if that's how  you do it, or if you just, throughout the year, encourage people to share how the  church, the ministry, has blessed them, and then your people will see that, and 

they will say, well, then I guess the money that I gave really did accomplish  something worthwhile. And so they're much more likely to continue giving or  increase their giving if they can see that it's actually accomplishing something  worthwhile, so quickly spending money, have clear policies about purchases or  other use of money and resources. Who can spend money, who can authorize  expenditures? How much can they spend? What can they use it for? How are  they going to know if it's available again, as I said, just because it's in the budget doesn't mean it's in the bank. How should they report the expenditure? Is there  anybody else that has to approve it? And here's an important point, sometimes  failing to spend money when necessary can be as harmful as spending it  foolishly. Maintenance on a building is an important example, or possibly  insurance. Sometimes, there are things that if you don't spend a little bit of  money now, you're going to wind up spending a whole lot of money later. So  sometimes failing to spend money when necessary can be as harmful as  spending it foolishly. So you need to look out for the people who just want to  hold on real tight and see it as their responsibility to see that none of the  church's money is ever spent for anything. There are some of those people  giving money the Bible is not clear whether or not the principle of tithing applies  to churches as well as individuals, but it does show four causes for which the  early church gave money. They supported the needy, when a brother or sister  was unable to or when a person, let's put it this way, when a person, specifically  a widow, did not have a family member to care for them, then the church  stepped in. Disaster victims. Acts 11 describes a gift sent from one local church  to another one when they had a famine, Evangelists and missionaries, they  supported the traveling ministries Paul and Barnabas and Apollos and others  and cooperative ministries in Romans 15, Paul writes about a joint effort  between their churches of Macedonia and Greece to raise funds for the  Jerusalem Christians, who, I believe, at this time, they were undergoing a  famine, and today, that might take the form of denominational support or  association dues or supporting a parachurch ministry. Now it's interesting, and I  don't want to go too far into this, and I don't want to read too much into this, but  in every biblical example, those the church helped were other fellow Christians,  there's no place that I can see that implies that the church that Christians have  an obligation to help everybody in need. If, if there's somebody in need and  there are no Christians in need, then sure, help those people. And of course, it  can be a wonderful Evangelistic Outreach. But if you have your brothers and  sisters in need, just as much in need as other people, help your brothers and  sisters first, among other things that has evangelistic impact. Jesus said they'll  know your my disciples, by the way you love each other, and they'll know how  you love each other, because they'll see you doing something to take care of  each other. Finally, real quick, learn to recognize con artists. Con artists are  people that come to you with some kind of a sad story. Sometimes it's a get rich 

quick scheme, but with the church, it's usually some kind of a sad story, and  they are asking you to help them out. And I am, I say this because I am terrible  at recognizing con artists. I'm very gullible. I tend to believe everybody, and so I  set up shields and I let somebody else handle the giving out of money to people  that come to the church, asking for requests, because I'm just not good at  recognizing and so many times I've given money, and it's found out that it was  used. Basically they stole it under false pretenses. My own personal attitude is I  would rather give to somebody who doesn't need it than not give to somebody  who does. But given that, I would rather reduce the wrong giving to the bare  minimum, and make sure that in my stewardship of God's money, that I only  help out people who really are good. Now it may also be, as I said, a get rich  quick scheme, or here, here, if you if your ministry, we can provide this  wonderful service for this low cost, and you just give us this down payment up  front, and then they skip town and you never see the money. So be careful.  Learn to recognize con artists, and we are done with that one. See you next  time