For most Alabama Baptist churches, this is the beginning of the budget-making season. Church program directors will be asked to estimate their financial needs for the coming year. Ministry leaders will be asked to plan the coming year’s efforts and then translate those efforts into dollars necessary to undergird them.
Church trustees will examine the needs of the church plant and request budget money to keep the buildings and grounds neat, attractive and usable. Pastors will work with personnel committees to recommend appropriate adjustments to the salaries and stipends paid staff members. Others will be advocates for the pastor.
All of these requests and more will be laid alongside more mundane things like the electric bill, the water bill and all the other bills incurred in the ongoing life of the church. Even though the church’s mission is a spiritual one, it takes dollars to keep the church functioning.
Dreams and essentials
The figures will reflect the hopes and dreams of program and ministry leaders as well as the essentials to keep the church doors open. Some churches may have to prioritize requests because projected income does not match projected expenditures. Some churches will budget to maintain what they already have. Others will project growth in the coming year and plan for it in the budget.
Preparing a budget is a serious challenge for a church. It requires careful planning of the coming year’s program. It demands prudent decisions by responsible parties. It takes individual effort as well as a spirit of cooperation.
Making a budget is a churchwide effort. It is not the role of a small committee whose members think they know what is best for the church. It is not even the role of the pastor, even though the pastor may have the best overall view of the church’s needs and the church’s resources.
A church budget starts with the people. When it is completed and the process is done correctly, the church’s whole program for the coming year can be calendared, the purposes for each event clarified, the desired outcomes communicated and the amount of money needed determined. If a church does not know what it is going to do, why it is doing something and how the action fits into the priorities of the church, putting money into the action is like throwing money at a problem with no real solution in mind.
A church budget is built on the requests of the people. A church budget is approved by the people and a church budget is underwritten by the people. A church budget is a people’s doing from beginning to end.
Occasionally a church will be tempted to judge its duty done when the budget is approved. The church followed all the steps. It received the requests, prioritized the needs and proposed a budget that did the best possible with the expected resources. Now raising the budget is someone else’s job.
That “someone else” is frequently the pastor. In those rare incidents, church members seem to think that it is the pastor’s responsibility to raise the budget just like it is the responsibility of a business’s chief executive officer to make sure a sales quota is reached.
Such a notion is mistaken. Yes, the pastor is the spiritual and administrative head of the church. He is to preach the gospel, to care for the members, to promote harmony in the fellowship, to lead by example, to administer effectively and efficiently. All of these impact the culture of the church, to be sure.
Members’ responsibilities
But no church can pay a pastor to be religious for the members. A pastor cannot study and pray for the members. He cannot be evangelistic for the members. He cannot live in obedience to God’s Word for the members. Each task is the responsibility of the members.
Financial stewardship is an individual responsibility. A pastor can encourage financial stewardship, but he cannot write the checks for the members of place offerings in the church offering plates for the members. That means a church will reach its budget only when the members determine to live in obedience to biblical teachings concerning financial stewardship.
Making a budget is important. It requires the best input from all the members. Reaching the budget is equally important and it, too, requires the best input from all the members. Reaching the budget is much more than the pastor’s job. It is the job of all the church members.
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