In Search of the Mythical Money Tree
This is the next installment in our ongoing “Large Church” series, which looks at guest services through the lens of the larger congregation: those with an average attendance of 800 or more. See the entire series here.
Let’s kick off with a numbers-nerd storytime, shall we? (We shall.)
On and off for the last few weeks, I’ve been working on a project to take years’ worth of ministry notes and finally scan and digitize them. (I refuse to be a physical hoarder anymore…it’s time to take this clutter party digital.)
In the piles of papers, I came across fiscal year budgets from three churches I’ve served in the past 30+ years. Two were from quite early in my ministry. The third was a budget from my first year at the church where I currently serve.
Around the same time of my scanning project, I was also finalizing our ministry’s proposal for the upcoming fiscal year. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s four budgets. Three churches. Four wildly-varying eras of time.
Budget #1 was for a church of 300-ish. Budget #2 was for a church I served in seminary of 200-ish. Budget #3 was for my current church, but when it was proposed, we were running 500-700. Budget #4 (the latest one) represents a ministry at a church of 12,000+.
In this trip down numbers-crunching lane, I found two things to be fascinating:
- The entire annual budget for my particular ministry area in church #1 was less than some individual lines I’m now responsible for stewarding. In other words, I now spend more on communion supplies in one quarter than I did for a whole year of ministry in the late 90s.
- But the biggest realization was this: no matter the size of the budget or the size of the ministry, the dollars never seemed to stretch quite far enough.
In an earlier article in this series, I proposed seven ways that larger churches struggle with hospitality. Struggle #2 is The Assumption of Plentiful Resources. So many of us – me included – assume that churches bigger than we are have no worries with money. We think that big churches = big budgets.
But that ain’t necessarily so.
Even in larger churches, a guest services ministry can find itself fighting for scraps when it comes to ministry dollars. The hospitality team can find itself at the wrong end of budget cuts. (And no matter your ministry, those things can still be true.) So how do we give up the search for the mythical money tree and actually budget for a purpose? I think there are five ways:
1. Demonstrate stewardship when there’s not much to steward.
I think Jesus knew what he was talking about when he talked about being faithful with a little. Wherever your budget stands right now, ask yourself: am I using these dollars for the best purposes possible? Am I creatively seeking solutions or am I just throwing money at problems? Am I seeing a healthy return on investment, even if the investment is small?
[Related post: Ten Low Or No-Cost Ways To Up Your Guest Services Game]
2. Clear vision must precede a clear budget.
If you don’t know where your ministry is headed, you can’t possibly expect your finance team or your tithers to allocate dollars to it. A vague forecast of “a few things we want to change around here” gets lost in the shuffle of more pressing and clear needs. Do you have a clear guest pathway? Does your ministry have a proven track record? Have you stopped just dreaming about it and started putting dollar figures to what it’ll take to do it?
3. Categories of responsibility must be matched by categories of dollars.
If you lead “Guest Services,” what does that actually entail? Our areas of responsibility have grown over the years to include baptism supplies, portable signage, volunteer resourcing, those aforementioned communion crackers, and a ton of other things that I didn’t oversee when I started over two decades ago. If it falls under your purview, there should be at least an acknowledgement of that in the budget…even if the resulting numbers are smaller than you’d like.
(I would add a little soapbox argument here: your guest services budget shouldn’t be an afterthought line item tacked onto “adult discipleship” or “weekend worship.” Give that ministry its due, break it out of the line, and break down your annual budget into identifiable spending categories.)
4. Triage the non-negotiables.
To follow up on point #3, you won’t always have every dollar you think you need for every responsibility you actually have. Most budget cycles, I end up reallocating dollars within my overall budget to make sure the “must-dos” get done. We’re not going to stop doing first-time guest bags. We won’t cease communion. So either those dollars have to be found, or we need to say “not yet” to some other things that – while we’re responsible for them – can maybe wait a bit longer.
5. Give a defense for every dollar.
I will be the first to admit that accounting is not my strong suit. True story: I was a business major and nearly flunked Principles of Accounting 1. (Me: Doc, I can’t do this. I’m not good at math! My professor: Danny, it’s not math, it’s accounting. Me: It has numbers. It’s math.)
But if we’re going to move past the assumption of plentiful resources to actually having the budget necessary to lead, we have to prove the spending.
Throughout the fiscal year and especially during the prep phase for the following one, my team and I look at what we’ve spent and how the next year might need to change. Some lines get trimmed so others can get more. A big idea with big dollars needs to see those dollars come from somewhere. But I’ve learned that asking for a budget increase with no accompanying rationale isn’t “big faith” … it’s just poor stewardship.
No matter the size of your ministry or the strength of your budget, you’ve discovered that the mythical money tree is just that: a myth. If resources aren’t infinite and dollars don’t appear out of thin air, how do you fight that assumption of plentiful resources?
