The questions of good stewardship and responsible financial policies face pastor and layman alike. Five laymen talk about why money and ministry go hand in hand.
Pastors know that lay leaders have definite ideas on the financial problems facing their churches. In many churches these leaders wield considerable power in making monetary decisions.
LEADERSHIP asked several of these leaders to share their thoughts on the money questions facing the local church: Can maintenance costs and salaries be met? Will ministry programs have to be cut? How can good stewardship be taught to church members?
Executive Editor Paul Robbins led the discussion with five Christian laymen from Illinois who hold offices with financial responsibility in their churches: Richard L. Brubaker Robert M. Hall John W. Rice Richard E. Sackett and Mark Sweeney. Each had his own view of how finances should be handled and stewardship cultivated.
Harold Fickett, a contributing editor to LEADERSHIP, edited the proceedings.
Paul Robbins: To set the stage, I’d like each of you to give the size of your church and describe the financial shape it is in.
Dick Brubaker: The First Baptist Church of Geneva is a relatively small congregation. We’re currently working with a budget of about $140,000. We’re gearing up for a building program that calls
for us raising one million, four hundred thousand, and increasing our mortgage payment from $9,600 a year to $103,000. That’s a big jump, but it looks good right now.
Dick Sackett: We’re a somewhat smaller church, with about 200 members at Bethel Presbyterian. Our aggregate budget for all activities is about $120,000. We’re not having any trouble raising the money we actually need.
John Rice: I have the low card. Our church, Free Methodist Fellowship, is just getting ready to celebrate its second anniversary. As treasurer, I’ve had the interesting and frightening experience of putting together a budget for a brand-new church, making estimates that actually were just guesses or prayers. But our total budget right now is about $35,000 a year, and this last year we exceeded our budget both in income and expenses by about $5,000.
Bob Hall: Our budget for this fiscal year at the Evangelical Free Church has been just under $400,000, and I’m optimistic too. Our general fund is running somewhat behind, but that fund can absorb a certain amount of fluctuation. We went through a successful renovation program in 1979, and we have confidence in the willingness of the members to give.
Mark Sweeney: I’m in a church of 800 members with approximately 275 giving units. Our budget at the First Baptist of Wheaton is just under $400,000. Our fiscal year ends in April and we are not making our budget. Actually, we’ve had a series of meetings lately to see where we can cut back. Somehow we’ve become enmeshed in a “catch-up” mentality, where we come to a watershed and must raise a significant amount of money overnight. You can’t keep doing that. So right now we’re designing new programs to educate the people in stewardship.
Robbins: Many ministers feel, in light of their training and experience, that they’re underpaid. They sometimes come face to face with the attitude that they should make less than other professionals because it’s part of their commitment; it’s a part of Christian service. Where do you stand on this?
Brubaker: We hired a new pastor three years ago. Several considerations were uppermost in our minds: we wanted to pay the pastor in accordance with his training, his abilities, and his experience; we also wanted him to be able to live comfortably in our community. We thought about his future and his retirement, so we sold the parish home and encouraged him to buy his own home. The pastor who believes he’s being treated fairly is going to be a more effective worker. I was pleased with how we kept away from an attitude of false spirituality.
Rice: I’d like to speak from the perspective of someone in a small church. We’d like to have the same attitude Dick mentioned. But given our financial structure, it’s not possible for us to pay a pastor as much as we’d like. The pastor who is called to the small congregation must recognize this fact of life and say to himself, “I’m probably not being paid as much as I’m worth, but I’ll accept that as part of my commitment to this congregation.” Understand, I’m not saying at all that anyone willing to work in full-time ministry should be ready to work at pauper wages. We must not take advantage of people.
Sweeney: A number of people in the church still believe pastors should take the vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience; others would say two out of three isn’t bad. Seriously, I think you should strive for a salary scale that’s in the median range of the constituency and the surrounding community That way, you show the pastor’s training and talents are valued and, at the same time, you don’t create jealousy.
Sackett: I agree that pastors should be paid at the median level of the community, although that’s almost impossible to determine and remains a matter t,f judgment. Still, it’s a good rule of thumb. But at the same time, I hope people don’t enter the ministry with any thought that they’re going to become wealthy. They should recognize that a limited income goes with the territory.
Hall: That old attitude that pastors should be kept poor really galls me, and I want to say it out loud so members of church boards who read this will reexamine their attitudes. When you have a board with the right attitudes, however, you still can have problems. Most of these stem from a lack of communication
We called our pastor from an area in Wisconsin where the cost of living was substantially less than it is here in Illinois. The board made its evaluation of what his needs would be, and I think the pastor felt pleased about what we intended to pay him. But when he moved into the community, he saw everyone had simply underestimated what he would need. Then, of course, it was embarrassing for him to come back to us and say he wasn’t able to get by on his salary. He waited far longer than he should have, and when he explained the situation to us, we saw what a mistake we had made.
Robbins: How can awkward situations that touch on the pastor’s personal finances be handled in a non-embarrassing way?
Brubaker: I’ve found that once the pastor accepts a position, the lay leadership often stops talking to him about money and other personal concerns. The pastor can overcome this to a certain extent by developing a core of friends with whom he can feel free to discuss those questions. He can do this only, of course, if the lay people are willing to enter into such relationships It’s up to us to accept our responsibility to bring the pastor into our church family, to create relationships that have the intimacy and frankness of familial ties.
Sackett: I think that approach can sometimes be too chummy. A pastor should be his own person. He has a right to privacy about financial affairs like anybody else. I also think the pastor should be compensated at a level that allows him to pay the going rate for whatever services he needs. Part of the old attitude rests on the assumption that a communitv will extend many free services to the clergy. Well, that’s no longer true, and I think it’s a good thing. Pastors shouldn’t be beggars; we should compensate them so they don’t have to be.
Rice: Frankly, I prefer Dick Brubaker’s approach. I suggest that when a pastor goes to a new church he ask his immediate governing body, “To whom should I go when I have a financial problem? Who can help me with health care, who can help me evaluate my performance?” He needs to create, and we need to help him create, a support group. Pastors are like public figures whose actions are constantly under scrutiny. We need to recognize they live with unusual pressures, and we need to help ease those pressures.
Brubaker: And I would stress the importance of such a core group for the success of the church as an institution. If I were a pastor looking at a church that had called me, I would try to identify the core group of people that makes the church work. If there is such a core group willing to help him out, he can be confident about moving into the leadership of such a church. If there isn’t, he’ll have all kinds of problems, not simply financial ones.
Robbins: I applaud your emphasis on a core group of supporting friends in the church. But pastors often say it’s difficult for them to develop intimate relationships with members of a congregation. Do you think this is true? If so, why?
Rice: The question is: When, and under what circumstances, can the pastor afford to stop being a public figure and let the ministerial mask slip? Even when chatting around the coffee table, many lay people expect the pastor to be God’s viceroy. That’s a terrible problem.
Brubaker: To develop such relationships the pastor must be willing to take risks I’ve played racquet-ball and golf with my pastors, and I know they need friendship like everybody else. I’ve heard stories of pastors who hesitate to get too involved with three or four people in their churches because they’re afraid of making others jealous. The pastor simply must take that risk. The core group of people and the pastor must be willing to spend time together and work toward creating close, trusting relationships. Most people, I realize, tend to set the pastor up on a pedestal. But here again, we have to be willing to bring the pastor into our family, to accept his misgivings, doubts, and failings as we would accept the problems of any other family member.
Sweeney: I can understand a pastor’s difficulties in opening up to members. Many churches have a “critique mentality” when it comes to the pastor. It’s not that they don’t consider him their friend, or that they don’t appreciate him, or aren’t encouraged by his ministry; they just cannot get out of the rut of thinking of the pastor in terms of rating his performance. Pastors realize this, so they become wary.
Robbins: Dick, you seem to be saying that the laity must be willing to accept the humanity of their pastor in both its good and bad aspect. But most often pastors are considered models. How can they be models and still be human?
Brubaker: Obviously, the pastor must be a model of the Christian life, but there must be other models among the laity who show what it means to be a Christian. If there aren’t, a church will be very unhealthy. We need many different images of Christian character in order to understand what it means to be Christ-like. The pastor is only one of these.
Hall: You have to realize a pastor has feet of clay. If you set him up as an ideal figure, his failings will seem more important than they really are.
Sweeney: This raises the whole issue of the nature of the church, whether we think about it as a body with everyone playing their part, or an institution with a staff that performs a service for its clientele. I’ve known people who have moved from large churches to small churches and their entire attitude has changed; where before they wanted to hire new staff, they suddenly accept the idea that it’s up to them to get involved in the youth program-so they do.
Hall: But, Mark, it’s not simply a matter of how we think about the church. Even if I have a strong view of the church as a corporate body, I still can be intimidated by the sheer size and complexity of a youth program in a large church; whereas in a small one, I might feel more confident of my ability to help.
Robbins: LEADERSHIP has received a number of letters from pastors who feel overburdened with the weight of making financial decisions and} given the nature of their seminary training, feel ill-equipped to do so. How can we help them?
Hall: This may not work in a small church, but in a large church the pastor should be free of any responsibility for day-to-day financial operations of the church. He must, of course, advise his board as to what he thinks will be best, but the laity should shoulder the burden when push comes to shove. They can only do this, of course, if the pastor allows them to.
Sackett: I agree with Bob that a church’s finances should be looked at as a corporate responsibility Too often the church treasurer becomes a financial czar-the man who takes on the responsibility of deciding where and how the church will spend money An effective budget should delegate to committee and individuals the authority to spend funds.
Robbins: Does this approach work in your church?
Sackett: Yes.
Robbins: On a scale of one to ten, is it a ten? And if it’s not, what tends to break down?
Sackett: I’d rate it a seven. My church tends to rely on my financial expertise more than it should. I’ve been treasurer now for six years, and the church feels too comfortable with me in this position. I’m trying to build a finance committee now so other people will help carry the load; not because I’m unwilling to do it all, but because I think for me to do it alone is not a healthy situation.
Robbins: Is your budget developed by a committee, and if so, how?
Sackett: Our finance committee makes an estimate of the income we can expect. At the same time, the individual committees determine their operating budgets. Then the finance committee, ruled by its estimate of income, sets priorities, and cuts, shapes, molds, frets, and prays. The budget then goes to the session, then to the membership. We allow amendments from the floor, but we try to discourage them because most have already been considered in one form or another in committee.
Rice: We also have a finance committee that puts the budget together and then it goes to the executive committee. They bring the budget to the congregation, not to get ratification, but simply to get general reactions. If someone feels something is terribly wrong, we reconsider the budget in the executive committee. Although we might bring it back to the people, the executive committee is our ultimate authority.
Brubaker: We don’t tie ourselves to an income number at the beginning, which I think is an advantage. For example, six or seven years ago we planned a new youth program. When we looked at the figures, we saw this program would increase our expenditures substantially. But we decided to go ahead and propose this budget with its unusual increase to the congregation. Ultimately, after much grinding and gnashing of teeth, it was approved. If we’d started with a figure of projected income, we never would have proposed that budget.
Hall: Our financial approach is much the same as Dick Sackett’s. We make projections, but they don’t guarantee anything. Last year when we presented the budget to the congregation, a man jumped to his feet and said, “Well, we haven’t increased the missionary budget in proportion to other increases. I’d like to propose that we increase our missionary budget by ten thousand dollars this year.” Well, then the missionary chairman had to get up and look foolish because he seemed to be speaking against his own cause. The people were put into the position of voting against apple pie, so the amendment passed.
Rice: Amendment situations can get ridiculous. The same thing happened with us. We voted to up the missions budget by twenty-five hundred dollars and it went through in no time. Then we spent almost an hour discussing the pros and cons of having flowers in the front of the sanctuary, which costs only a few dollars a week.
Sweeney: Nothing is more sacred than the missions budgets of churches. We had a system a few years ago where any overage per quarter was given to missions. We were put in a difficult situation where we had to decide what an overage was.
Sackett: I can see that trying to spend the overage for each quarter on missions would put you in a fix, Mark, but I think the principle of designating any year-end surplus can be very useful. It can help us solve the problem of the man who always rises to his feet to propose budgetary increases for missions, for example. If that man knows that any surplus will go to missions at the year’s end, then he has no cause to complain that the church isn’t doing all it can for missions.
We must make these people see that missions isn’t a separate budget; it’s part of the total picture. All the money the church spends, it spends on ministry, whether the money goes to preserving the physical plant or into the pastor’s salary. We’re not putting a dollar amount on saving the lost in foreign countries; we’re saying that after we have been good stewards in terms of this corporate body, we can have this much money to give to other ministries. Our church receives very little designated giving and I think that’s the best way. Generally speaking, special appeals only drain money away from a church’s financial base.
Sweeney: It concerns me that people get worked up about special-emphasis giving and neglect the consistent stewardship of their wealth, the true lifeblood of every congregation. People, for some reason, are just more excited about giving to something which turns them on. Parachurch organizations capitalize on this all the time.
Brubaker: But people do respond to specific needs. I remember several years ago in our church we received a phone call from a missionary family. Their van had been washed away in a flash flood. This need was announced from the pulpit one Sunday, and a week later a new van had been purchased at a cost of sixty-two hundred dollars.
I don’t think we should lament this pattern of response. We should be challenged by it to educate people about the specific details of how our church operates. When we pass our budget, for example, we do so with barely 10 percent of our members present. Inevitably we fail to do anything effective to communicate to the rest of the congregation what this small group has done.
Hall: Let me respond to what’s been said by talking about our campaign to renovate our physical plant. Our building suffered badly from the heavy snows of 1979; the plaster was cracked in many places and the whole building needed painting. The committee in charge proposed that the sanctuary be fixed up. At first the people were very hesitant; we could see they were rejecting the idea. So we took pains to question everyone about what they wanted, and we also carefully explained to everyone what we were proposing. We raised an extra seventy-five thousand dollars that year for the renovations, in addition to our regular budget. In our case, this special appeal did not take away from the general level of giving; but I think it was only because the channels of communication were wide open.
Robbins: Who should be on the church’s finance committee? Hardheaded businessmen? People with lots of money? Visionaries?
Hall: If I were going to hand-pick a board, I would want two types: the hardheaded guy who measures every penny, and the person who concentrates on results .
Rice: I agree. What I’m about to say may be hard for many pastors to accept, because they’re constantly in touch with people they could help more effectively if the church had more money. But in terms of good stewardship, pastors need people on their boards who always seem to take a position contrary to their own; they provide balance.
Robbins: What’s the weak link in your church’s financial structures? Points of constant irritation, or even breakdown?
Hall: I’m frustrated by the fact that, according to our treasurer’s estimates of giving units versus members, probably 75 percent of the giving is being handled by 30 to 35 percent of the congregation. Many people figure stewardship is a tipping process; they throw in a dollar to salve their consciences and that takes care of their obligation for another Sunday Those people have never received proper training in stewardship. Ordinarily people don’t begin to tithe at forty years of age. It does happen sometimes, but unless they’ve been schooled in the blessings of tithing from an early age, it’s pretty hard for the preacher to get up in the pulpit and convince them God will bless good stewardship.
Sweeney: I think it’s difficult to tell the whole story from your treasurer’s report, Bob. People are increasing their giving outside the church to other ministries and charitable organizations. Our church historically has had a storehouse tithing mentality, and we have many people who give 10 percent of their gross income to the church. Many others, though, give 10 percent away, but it’s not all going to the church. Recent studies indicate that 40 percent of our congregation’s charitable donations are going elsewhere; for every six dollars coming into our church from our people, four dollars are going elsewhere. In the context of a $400,000 budget, we’re talking about a lot of money.
Brubaker: I think 20 to 25 percent of the people carrying 75 percent of the load is common. You’re right, Bob, that good stewardship is the result of understanding what a spiritual blessing giving can be. But many in the church don’t have this degree of spiritual maturity. The new Christian has a great deal of enthusiasm for the Lord’s work, but might not understand right away the spiritual responsibility of giving. That’s something it takes time to learn.
Rice: Here’s another point of weakness that relates to what Dick is saying. A rapidly growing church like ours tends to run into financial problems because many of the newest members haven’t been adequately instructed about stewardship when they first joined the congregation. Yet, at the same time, the church must provide the facilities and services this group needs. It’s an inevitable tension.
Sweeney: In the larger church there’s another kind of tension the smaller church does not have. All the members of John’s church know their giving is vitally important to the whole stewardship program. In a church our size, we lose a measure of that personal identity. A person is likely to say, “I’m not that important; my activities, attendance, and giving aren’t that important to a church of this size.” We have to speak to this issue in our larger churches.
Robbins: As laymen, you all seem to agree there’s a need for educating people in stewardship. Is enough being said in our churches about stewardship?
Brubaker: I say no. Many pastors feel uncomfortable talking about money. Of course, many lay leaders don’t feel comfortable talking about it either.
Rice: Our church has been brainstorming about how to deal with stewardship education, and I think we’ve decided on a sound approach. First, periodic emphasis from the pulpit. Second, regular presentations from laymen-not just the official leadership of the congregation, but all the faithful givers. We want them to tell why they give and what it means in their relationship to the Lord.
Sackett: We don’t say a great deal about stewardship in my church, and I feel more comfortable with this approach. Too often finances are blown out of proportion. Churches try to solve their own problems instead of letting the Lord solve them. Stewardship is only one aspect of the Christian life. I’m the treasurer of my church, and I feel happiest when we’re in the black, but I maintain finances can be overemphasized.
Brubaker: In twenty years of church experience, I’ve never been involved in a year-end canvass. As far as I know, our building fund campaign last spring was the first time any effort ever has been made in our church’s history to ask members to pledge a specific amount of money. Basically, we depend on the positive attitude of the people toward their church. We encourage that attitude by acquainting them with the spiritual principles of tithing and by nudging them toward seeing how the church meets their needs. We have to use a gentle hand in this. We cannot try to foist these attitudes onto people; that has a negative effect in the long run.
Robbins: How can the pastor and board work together in creating this awareness? How can we get away from the stereotype of the hardheaded board that, because of a limited financial vision, cramps a pastor’s ability to respond to the congregation’s needs?
Rice: We’re in the process of putting together next year’s budget, and I’ve asked the pastor to use his imagination and try to anticipate what programs will be needed. If we can plan ahead, then we won’t get into the situation where the pastor comes in and says, “We need to do this,” and the board, not having expected such a request, becomes his adversary
Sweeney: But unexpected expenditures can actually contribute to good fiscal policy. A few months ago we considered hiring a new youth director. We couldn’t afford one, we thought, but after further consideration we decided we couldn’t afford not to have one. Many of our families were so concerned about their young people they might have left the church if we hadn’t hired a youth director. We couldn’t afford to lose those people.
Sackett: I don’t believe we should respond to every situation by hiring more staff. We faced this same question of hiring a youth director in the last year and saw we couldn’t afford even a part-time youth director. We handled the problem by readjusting assignments and freeing the paid staff to recruit volunteers for tasks the paid staff had been doing. We need to address problems creatively and not fall back on hiring another specialist every time a need arises.
Robbins: If we had a pastor in here, he might be up tight about now. It’s fine to talk about being creative in our response to needs, but isn’t it the pastor who is usually stuck with figuring out how the church can solve its problems? It’s easier to talk about creativity than to actually be creative.
Brubaker: Not if the governing board is doing its job properly. We faced this same youth director issue and the board decided to try something different. We asked three couples to be sponsors of the youth group, but we limited their responsibility to being present with the kids on Sunday morning and at some of their social activities. Then we developed a support group, people who wanted to help but felt more comfortable doing the leg work than being teachers and counselors. For us, this was a process in which the pastor, board, and congregation all worked together to solve a problem that concerned all of us.
Robbins: There’s a lot of “doom-saying” right now about the economy. How will this affect your churches in the coming decade? What are the challenges for your church in terms of money and mission?
Sackett: There are always doom-sayers. One day they’ll be right, but I think the timing is completely beyond the ken of any individual. Therefore, I think the church has to chart a cautious course, but still move ahead. We are in the Lord’s church, and he will care for us; we need to act on the basis of this assumption.
Rice: There may be churches in communities which rely almost completely on one industry that will go through hard times; churches in Detroit, for instance, where massive layoffs have occurred. But even in these areas, there will be businessmen whose profits will rise during the slump and, if people tithe, churches will get by. The corporate nature of the church makes it, at least in theory, capable of surviving times like these. Whether particular churches do not is up to the members.
Brubaker: Historically, people have turned to the church in times of difficulty, and I expect the same thing to happen in the coming decade. I think we’ll see a spiritual awakening in this country. The biggest financial worry I foresee will come in building costs. They might rise so sharply that churches will be forced to adopt strategies other than putting up new buildings to meet the needs of growing congregations.
Sweeney: A few months ago I was having some carpeting laid in the house, and the workman and I talked about business. It’s an axiom in my business, religious publishing, that economic difficulties result in people buying more books. He said, “That’s the same way with my brother; he owns a bar, and he’s never had better business in his life.”
The point I’m making follows what Dick said. People in economic straits turn one way or the other. There will be less apathy; people will commit themselves to the hope found in faith, or to the despair of violent and destructive forms of behavior.
Hall: “Cautious” would be my watchword. We need to move ahead cautiously. As Christians, we should never act as if we are scared. We might very well be scared, that’s only human, but we must act out of the knowledge that our Lord is the final arbiter and shaper of history, that we can rely upon him absolutely. It’s during the tough times that we can have the greatest sense of his presence with us.
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