An Evaluation of Church Budgets
Just like any other entity in the world that has a constant flow of money and resources, churches have to manage their finances. However, this management is not like any other management. It is a stewarding of the resources that God has given a church to use for His glory and His people.
Church Budgeting
Just like any other entity in the world that has a constant flow of money and resources, churches have to manage their finances. However, this management is not like any other management. It is a stewarding of the resources that God has given a church to use for His glory and His people. Moreover, as Jamie Dunlop says, “it is a spiritual mutual fund” in which the church manages the money of its congregants to be used for the Great Commission.1 As an effect, those Christians will receive a “heavenly return on that earthly investment.”2 Therefore, Christian churches have to do their best to manage this money for God’s people and God’s glory.
A church budget does a lot of things for a church. Most importantly, a church budget aligns itself to the culture and purpose of the rest of the church: to worship and glorify God. However, it does this big goal through the process of a smaller goal. This goal is the facilitation of faithfulness.3 A church budget promotes faithfulness in three ways. First, when congregants give money they proclaim God as better than their money. Second, a church budget ought to align itself with the desires of God in the Scriptures, and when congregants give their money to it they are trusting the Lord to accomplish His purposes. Third, God will deliver on His purposes through the use of the congregants’ money, and they will be in awe of Him for it.4 This faithfulness compounds when it is expressed in a church budget because it invests in the “command and promise of the Great Commission.”5 It leads to the multiplication of believers whose goals are to worship and glorify the Lord.
Dunlop states, “The spiritual investing [of a church] requires spiritual leaders.” This is because church budgets can be incredibly complex, not just administratively, but also spiritually.6 The church budget concerns itself with topics of eternal reward, faith, and obedience, and it therefore demands Spirit-minded leadership who know a great deal about such things.7 The elders of the congregation are the ones who have met this requirement of spiritual discernment, so, ideally, they ought to be responsible for the budget of the church.8 However, they should not have exclusivity over the contents of the budget. They should rather represent the desires of the entire congregation when making budget decisions, and they should do so all while being faithful to the Lord.
Practically, a healthy budget can be facilitated through the two steps of teaching on financial faithfulness and praying for the budget. The former requires teaching congregants about “the why, the how, and how much” they ought to give.9 Christians give their money because they express gratitude for what has been given to them in Christ. They give regularly and “should be giving substantively to their local church.”10 The latter of the two steps involves regular prayer either privately or publicly at the time of the offering. Once these two steps are done, those in charge of the budget should discern what is expected from the congregation in order to be financially responsible, faithful, and worshipful to the Lord.
In conclusion, churches should practice budgeting for their ministries as an act of faith to the Lord and to help facilitate that faith for the congregation. Budgeting is spiritually complex and requires Spirit-minded believers to preside over it. These believers are to teach about giving for the right reasons and to pray over the budget before anything in it is finalized or changed. When they do this, they set the example for the church in its entirety and promote a culture of giving to the glory of God.
Bibliography
Dunlop, Jamie. Budgeting for a Healthy Church: Aligning Finances with Biblical Priorities for Ministry. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2019.