Season 2 Episode 12: Budgeting

Welcome to the Small Town Church Podcast, the weekly podcast where we discuss all aspects of being in a small-town church. Whether you are a member, on staff, or have just begun attending a church in a small town, this is the podcast for you. 

In this week's episode we discuss budgeting.

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Transcript

Zach Leonard 0:02

Money is a tool. It's a tool like rope. With money, you can pull a man out of the ditch or you can hang yourself. Jared C. Wilson. Welcome to the Small Town Church Podcast, the weekly podcast where we discuss all aspects of being in a small town church. Whether you are a member on staff or have just begun attending a church in a small town, this is the podcast for you. Welcome back to the Small Town Church Podcast. We are back with yet another episode in season two, and we are moving right along. This is episode 12, and we are going to be talking about budgeting. Every favorite term to talk about in church, money. Right, yes. So we're going to be discussing that. But this um this chip uh season, I wanted to say chapter, this season is all about the overseer pastor. So we're going to be talking about it from that role, but there will be portions that are good for everybody in the church. My name is Zach Leonard. As always, I am joined by my co-host, Brad Borgren. Brad, how are we doing? I'm doing well. It's good to be here. It's good to be here. Yeah, we haven't seen each other in a while. Since we've actually just sat down and got together. In the last couple episodes, we've had to record via Zoom and things of that nature. It's it's good to be in the same room with you again. Um we uh had a preaching meeting where we a bunch of preachers get together and we study each other's sermons and provide insight and and those types of things before we did this. And it was a good time of fellowship, and and as always, I uh I I just enjoy being around other godly men. And so so it's been it's been a good day. But today we're gonna be talking about budgeting, uh, really just money in general, stewardship, those sorts of things. But we'll uh we're just kind of putting it under the budgeting blan uh umbrella, if you will, because it's just a little bit easier than just saying we're gonna talk about money, right? So um, Brad, why don't you just kind of jump us off and just kind of talk about um just your ask your thoughts on how pastors should interact with the church finances, who all should be involved, just kind of go and we'll just kind of see where the spirit leads us.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Yeah, we were we were just talking. I'm probably not the best one for this because our church doesn't abide by an official budget. You know, we're uh a small church that that we kind of um we almost operate more like a family checking account than we do like a an organization, so to speak. And so what we're really good at is making sure that uh that we're not spending more than what is coming in. Sure. Uh and so I think there's there's there's some pros to not necessarily having a budget, but there's also you know, you think about growing, you think about okay, what is God really called us to do, uh, that there is an element where where you we need to be setting money aside uh for for that aspect and not just like okay, we gotta pay the bills and pay the pastor and keep the lights on. Right. Um but but our church, what we do at Salem, uh we've got a stewardship committee. We're a stewardship team that gives financial oversight. And so they're the I guess the first line of financial decision makers. And so uh I can go to that group and and I'm on on that committee. Uh but I can go to them with ideas, suggestions, saying, hey, what do y'all think about setting money aside for this or that, or hey, we've got this problem, we need to we need to throw some money at it. And then of course they they will make a recommendation to the entire church, and then we would vote on it at that point. And so um again, small Baptist church, we vote on, we used to vote on everything. Like if we were gonna buy a vacuum cleaner, like that had to be brought up at a business meeting, you're like, okay, maybe we don't need to vote to buy a new vacuum cleaner. Uh, and so that's kind of where the stewardship team came in, and and we can kind of not that we're gonna go behind the church's back, uh, but we are gonna we can make things more um what's the right word? Streamlined, I guess, or just more manageable. Yeah. Um we have we have different people who count the money, uh, just from a practical standpoint on Sunday. If you we still pass the plates at our church, we also we have online giving, uh, but not really very many people use that avenue. Uh, and so the majority of our income is coming from uh from from the offering. And so we've got we've got different people that that count that to provide oversight. Um, and then we we have a our financial person is someone that that everybody in the church trusts, and so and they they're one of those people that will um if they're gonna cheat something, they're gonna cheat themselves before they cheat the church. And and that's the kind of person you want, right? Sure, absolutely. If if they're gonna make a mistake, um it it's not gonna be on the church's dime. It's it's they're gonna take the hit for it. And so and so everybody in the church uh trusts this person. Uh and so and I'm really not even sure, you know, kind of where I'm going, but just thinking like um depending on your structure and depending on how you as a church, as a pastor, uh, as a layperson, how your church handles money, uh, just to be thinking through some some ways to make sure, okay, are we one uh above board when it comes to finances? Correct. Right. Uh are we putting our people in a in a in a spot that's gonna bring temptation? Right? We don't want to put anyone in a situation where it's like, oh, um, I was watching the movie, uh pretty bad movie, but I watched it anyway. Netflix, the the R.I.P. The Rip, uh, and it's about this Matt Damon and um Ben Affleck or Miami police officers, and they come across this massive drug bus. They're thinking like maybe $200,000 is in this house, and it turns out to be like 20 million. Oh wow. And it's like, wow, like that's I'm sitting there thinking, my goodness, how tempting would that be for me as a man of God, right? Uh, much less, you know, anybody put in that situation. And so obviously, you know, we're not gonna find $20 million in the in the halls of our churches, more than likely. Right. Um, but we don't want to put anybody in a situation where where the enemy can get a foothold, right? Uh and so just I'll stop rambling and and Zach, you can talk more more than that. No, I think it's good. Now we're really and truly. But uh but just kind of if nothing else, maybe this episode will help us think through okay, what could we do to improve um our process, our to make sure that we are setting aside money to do what God has called us to do, thinking for the future, sure, thinking for growth, uh, but also safeguarding, I mean, because it's um we've talked about giving in the last season, and it's just more of a statistics tell us it's more of a divide, right? That the generation that faithfully tithed, um, I mean, that generation's not gonna be around forever. Right. And people our age, it's like, why do I need to give my money to the church? And so we really have to make sure that um when people are giving money faithfully and joyfully, uh, that we as the church are accountable accountable for that ultimately to God, but also to to those who give sacrificially. Sure, absolutely.

Zach Leonard 7:51

That's a good point. And for our church, it it it works honestly about the same way. Um I think it also is going to largely depend on the type of person you are as a pastor. And I say that as so I one of we'll just I'm not going to give you my entire testimony here, but um I ended up in ministry after running from my call from God for a ridiculous amount of years. Um it's really kind of embarrassing. And and be with with that came a myriad of jobs. One of which was I served in the U.S. Army for a while. And um I enjoyed my time in the Army. I'm I'm proud of that time that I did. But I realized that the reason why I excelled in the Army was not because I am a super disciplined person, but because I had a drill surgeon yelling at me 24-7, right? Like when somebody's yelling at you to do push-ups, you tend to learn how to do push-ups pretty well, right? The structure of it worked really well. So when I ended up at it, you know, when I was brought on at FBC Tarzan, um, there was not a set budget for my youth department. And I know how I am wired, and I knew that the structure would help me. And so over the past two and a half years or so, I have been slowly incorporating um my own budget, if you will. I created a budget a couple of years ago that was just a plain, it was simple. I arbitrarily divvied up my department into sub-departments so that I could they could kind of know where I was going to be spending money, and I presented it to the church. The church said, Yeah, that was great. And then I got to the end of the year and realized I'd I did not do as good of enough job tracking spending as I should have, right? So this year, um, in that role, I've expanded the Google Sheet to where I actually have the ability to put each receipt in, and it auto-populates on the next page, and it shows me how much I've spent in each department and how much I have left to spend in each department. That is not something the church has asked me to do. That I'm sure if they ever asked to look at it, I mean they would enjoy and they would like what they see, right? Because there's it's it's an overabundance of data. But at the same time, um it's something that helps me. Um and and not that I am tempted to spend the church's money, it's not that. It's like you said, you want to be above board. Um, and I I think it's important for us as pastors to have full transparency in things. And so as we move from there, when we talk about budgeting, when we talk about stewardship, I think it's important to actually talk about where the term stewardship came from to begin with, because it's I grew up in a different denomination than what I am now. As my as my theology has has matured and changed, I I found myself aligning more as a Reformed Baptist, Reformed Southern Baptist than where I grew up. But there was a a money drive every year for whatever we were going to build that year, you know, whatever it was, whether it was gonna be a building or a building campaign. Right. And it was called the stewardship drive, and that's what it was called every year. So now, even in my 40s, I hear stewardship and I immediately think we're building a building. It's not a Christian term. Um, the steward is it's actually a like a medieval term, if you will. And so when the King James Bible was written, the Lord was over all of the land, but his right hand man, the person who handled crop rotations, who handled um the salaries for people who did receive a salary, uh, labor, all of the different things of the kingdom, he was the secondhand man and he was known as the steward of the land. It wasn't his to begin with, it was the Lord's, and but he was in charge of it, he was the manager of it. And so when we talk about stewardship, that's what is comes in mind. When they were writing the King James Bible version of the Bible, they saw this and said, Oh, it's not mine, it's God's, I'm the steward. Yeah. And so that's where the term comes from. If you've never actually looked that up, congratulations, you got a history lesson today. Um, but that's where the term comes from. So it's not a Christian term, it's a it's a it's actually kind of like a medieval term that we still use today that's kind of become Christianized, if you will. So when we talk about stewarding the money, that's where we need to start, is understanding that it's not ours to begin with, it's God's, and we are tasked with using it faithfully. That being said, each church is going to need to decide for themselves what that looks like, whether it's going to be a large sheeted budget that is got multiple pages, and they're tracking everything to this is the amount that we have to spend this year, these are the goals that we have, and everything else day-to-day needs to be within those confines. Um, at first Baptist Church Tarzan, I I understand as it has been explained to me that we were this kind of the same way as you guys were. We voted on everything until finally someone came along and said, Okay, this is ridiculous. We're we're we're voting on way too many things. As long as it's under this amount, you know, just go handle it. You know, you need you need more paper towels, go buy more paper towels. You don't have to vote on it, right? Um so um that's kind of where we're at these days. If I have a larger amount, I mean, uh obviously um I have my budgeted amounts, I present it to the church each year. They say, yes, great, no, you know, you need to fix this, whatever. Um, and if I had something, even if I had something that still fit within the confines of that budgeted item, if it was a large amount, I still would probably bring some people in on it just to make sure we're okay, you know. Um, not that anybody would necessarily care, but if it, especially if it's a company I've never used before, that's another one. Um, if I'm buying something from, you know, like for example, camp t-shirts, they're gonna cost them a little bit because we take a larger group to camp. Everybody knows that brand that I use for t-shirts is the brand that I use for VBS t-shirts and the brand that I used for if we were to have like a women's conference or we did FBC Tarzan t-shirts several years back for everybody. They know that brand. So if they see that on the bank statement, they're like, oh, Zach, it's camp time again, right? But if I were to buy something with a larger amount that was from a brand that or a company that I had never used before, I would probably loop somebody in, just say, hey, this is gonna show up on the bank statement. This is what I'm buying, it falls under this subcategory. And nine times out of ten, a deacon is gonna basically go, I don't know why you're telling me this, but thanks, right? Um, but I would rather have that communication out there so that if someone else is questioning the deacons or whoever it is that I the secretary or whoever it is that I looped in on it, they go, Oh, yeah, no, we had that conversation. This is what he said it was for. And even then, I have receipts that I keep. I don't just input it into my budget. I also keep the receipts in my filing cabinet and in my office. And so I can go, here, here's what I spent, right? And if you were listening, I just did hand motions because you know that's what I do. If y'all have learned uh about me, I did hand motions as if you could see that. So I opened a proverbial folder and then handed someone a receipt. So Brad, we got to do video at some point.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

That's what I don't stand like an idiot. There are some things that that it's better to over-communicate on uh and and to be safe, right? We we don't want to have ananiasis pop up in our church, uh, and we don't want God striking down people because of the temptation to steal or to lie or um I mean just to cover up, right? That you know, and and we've kind of taken that like we don't have an overall budget, but we have implemented some areas that we do have a budget. One was a steward, uh not a stewardship, um benevolence fund. Sure, yeah like preaching through acts. I'm like, hey, we're we're seeing the church was bringing money to the apostles, laying it at their feet for the benefit of church members. And I said, okay, it instead of doing a love offering every time a need comes up, what if we vote on us an amount of money that we set aside in in a benevolence fund, and then we have people who are who we trust to disperse that when needs come up. We do the same thing, and and so there's an element of that. We also put in uh an evangelism budget. I don't a verse per se for that, but I'm like, well, if we're gonna waste money, and this might sound bad. If you're gonna waste money as a church, it's probably wasted on getting the gospel out right or spend it. Uh and so I'm like, we need to have we should be spending more on trying to do something for our community than we spend on electricity. Sure. Uh like our our gospel spending should should outpace our um yeah, just mundane tasks, right? And so uh so we have those two and and I'm a like you send me your your budget spreadsheet. Absolutely. So I I could I'm sure I could learn a lot from it. And and probably my goal is you know, as we've kind of started with those two things, start, okay, what about what about this? What about this? You know, just kind of gradually adding on to the point that we may have more or less uh uh a traditional budget at some point. Um our system works, your system may work, and if your system works uh and it's above board, then that's yeah, don't broke what's fixed, yeah.

Zach Leonard 17:16

Yeah, um, or don't fix what's not broke. That's what I meant to say. Yeah, yeah. Um Brad and I record these on Mondays, and every time we go to record, we always say the same thing, and that is why do we do this on Mondays? Um our brains are shot from from not that the Lord's Day is anything but just joy with our church, but it's there's a lot going on. And you overseers that are listening to this, you know that. Sundays is a busy day, and oftentimes you you get to Mondays and you just think, Oh, I gotta use my brain today. And we decided to take it one step further and bring you guys all into the crazy so um yeah, um, but let's so let's shift uh as we kind of downhill this episode a little bit, um in time, not in in quality, but um let's talk about some things for people who are looking to make stewardship, to make budgeting, to make those sorts of things more of a culture in their church. What do you think are some things that need to be first not first fruits? That's not the word I want to use for, but what are the what are the main things? You know, we talk about the main things and the minor things as in regards to Christianity. What are the main things we need to be we focused on as we look at what it means as a church to steward God's money and maybe look at budgeting?

SPEAKER_01 18:35

Yeah, you know, I think of it I I mean I do I compare a lot of um and I'll be brief so you can share your thoughts also, but um almost the same way I would approach our household budget, you know, like I and I I guess I take this for granted, like me and my wife are are both like-minded in the sense that we're not going to spend money we don't have, right? Right, and unless it's an emergency. Like on the whole, uh, if we don't have money, we're not gonna go out and just buy things. And I think that's something that that as you if you put together a team, uh a finance team, like you need that you you want people that they don't have to be the wealthiest people in the church, but at least know how to manage their own household budgets. Um another thing we we we tithe our budget, right? That we whatever money comes in, and we've talked about tithing too and uh different views on that as far as New Testament tithing, but but whatever money is given to Salem, we send out more than 10% to missions the same way that that I, you know, whatever comes into our household, we're gonna give at least 10% back to to the Lord. And so uh I think that's a healthy, whether that's the cooperative program, if you're Southern Baptist or state, uh Southern Baptist of Texas Convention or whatever you're affiliated with, you know, find some way to say, hey, God has blessed us with this, uh, and we need to do more than just sit on it, right? We need to invest it in in the Great Commission. Uh and so I would say starting there, you know, we want people who know how to uh you don't have to have a uh I've never really taken a finance class, but I know like, okay, if I don't if I've got five dollars in my pocket and something costs ten, I know I don't have enough, right? Right. And so I'm gonna wait uh and and not just rack up debt. Sure. Uh and then at the at the flip side, you know, being churches can give. We should be if we're gonna ask our people to give, we must be willing as a community of giving people to be blessing uh and and furthering the kingdom. Amen.

Zach Leonard 20:56

That's great. So what I would say is here are the things that I think you need. If you let's just say you find yourself in the boat as an overseer, maybe you've taken over a church, maybe you've been at a church for a while, and you know that a discussion needs to be had about money, but you just don't know where to start. Here is what I would suggest starting with call a business meeting or whatever your denomination calls it, and just say, We need to discuss what we do with our money, and then just say, sit back and just say to the congregation, I want your opinions on what you think God has called us to do with our money. That doesn't mean that these plans are gonna hold. It just means I want to know what you and then just sit there with a pad and just write down everything they say. And then you'll start to see trends in that conversation. You'll start to, oh, we want to give to missions, or oh, we want to do a backpack drive, or oh, we want to feed the homeless, or it's gonna be, it's not going to be if you've got 75 people in the same room, I mean, first off. Congratulations, you have 75 people in a room. That's just the number I went with. But if you have 75 people in the room, you're not probably not going to get 75 different answers when you're when you're talking about giving. It's all going to fall under the same five to ten things. Now, they may differ on which missionary to give it to, but they you're you're gonna see where the heart of your church is. Then from there, tell just basically tell your church, I would like to put together a team of people that we can pray over this. Um that's where you need to start. Go to the Lord in prayer and pray over it and seek his face in this. And then that what whatever you call it, a budget committee, a money guru squad, whatever it is that you come up with, that group gets together and they decide based off of the recommendations from the church where the money needs to be spent. And then you start putting together that amount based off of what's been spent. And what that looks like is going to differ from church to church. It may be, as I said in the past, a full-blown budget. I mean, you may just have a full-blown multi-point, you know, that spreadsheet is 35 tabs long and you are just all about it. Or it just may be this is the amount we bring in, this is the amount we spend in budget or in uh missions, this is the amount we spend on the light bill, this is the amount we spent on this, that, and the other, and this is how much we have left over at the end of the year. Let's make sure we stay in that realm, right? I would say that it's probably wise for a church to be able to track spending in some regard. So whether you just have um QuickBooks and you just print out a report at the end of the year, and this says this is how much we spent, and if it's you know, over that amount, you go, we need to do better next year. Or if you're printing out regular reports, that can show you in real time, you know, it's just kind of dependent. For me, it will it helps me a lot to be able to go back to that spreadsheet and say, okay, I've got my monthly amounts that I think I'm going to spend. I'm never going to spend over the total amount for the year, but I've, you know, if I've gone over in a certain month, let's say we had five weeks instead of four for youth meals, and I spend a little bit more, okay, I still okay on the back amount because summer's coming up and we may be meeting less because of camp and things of that nature. It's gonna, it's gonna change my amounts. And so I can forecast that out. That helps me. Not everybody's wired that way, though, right? And so when we do these sorts of things, you need to make sure that there are lots of people touching it. Um, you don't want everybody touching it because then you've just got, you know, too many chiefs in the room, basically. But you do want a lot of eyes on it because it takes out the idea of impropriety, right? Um we've talked about this kind of in the in the integrity issue, you know. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the fact that my wife knows where I'm at 24-7 because of Life 360, right? There's absolutely nothing wrong that I bring a child with me just about everywhere we go because we homeschool and we can bring the school with us, right? One, they get one-on-one time with dad, but two, temptation's not going to run up in my mind when my child is sitting next to me in the car. And if it does, I don't need to be in the pastorate, right? So the same thing is true with the church budget. You you just you don't want to create the atmosphere where impropriety can take place. So you want lots of eyes. You want to be, you need to be willing. Like if any single person that is a member of our church walked through the door and asked to see my budget spreadsheet, two clicks and it's pulled up, and they can see every single thing I've spent, everywhere I've spent, every receipt that I put in there, I put where it came from, what the date was, and how much it was. That's just for me. I I just I want to go above and beyond to make sure that there's no level of impropriety. Each church is going to be different. My one thing that I would say is make sure that people can see what's being spent and make sure that there is accountability there so that when you get someone that does question if it happens, you have the ability to just and you don't have to feel incredulous about it either. I want people to ask me, I want people to question things, not in a like, I think you're up to no good. I want more of just a hey, how are things going? What do you need? How can we help you? And even if somebody did come to me in that sort of way, that just like, what do you you know, why are you spending this? I want to make sure my heart is in the spot where I'm like, no, I want people to see what's going on. I want that full transparency. That's a good thing. So, Brad, kind of what are your final thoughts on this subject as we close out the episode and we'll go from there.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

Yeah, that's a that's a good way to to end it. And also just another reason to have multiple eyes on it is we we talked about delegating last week and and we've talked about leadership development, thinking towards the next generation, that that it could be that you know, the financial person of the main financial person in your church isn't going to live forever. Amen. And then if or you know, if something were to happen to that person, or if they have to move suddenly, like, you know, we don't want the church to have to fall apart because there's only one person with access.

Zach Leonard 27:20

Yeah, it was told to me one time it was it was told to me one time, start your job with your successor in mind. Yeah. Um and I think that's good advice.

SPEAKER_01 27:27

And that's not a maybe it's becoming more of a I I still think that's that's a biblical trait. It's not necessarily a secular thing, I don't think, because we want we want to build ourselves up, sure. We don't want to pass, we don't want to give anything away. Right. Um But yeah, thinking like, okay, what have that contingency plan in place?

Zach Leonard 27:52

Um, that's good. Well, as we wrap up this episode, we just want to thank you guys for your listenership. Um this is a little bit of a shorter episode, um, mainly just because we know that a lot of some of these episodes we're gonna kind of be preaching to the choir. And so um but we think these are good conversations to have for the person who may not be who have have thought about these things before. Uh some episodes are going to be ones where we reach a lot of people in what we're talking about. Some of them it'll be one or two that are, oh, that's something I hadn't thought about before. Uh but we regardless of who's listening, we thank you for your leader, your not your leadership. Well, we thank you for your leadership too, but we thank you for your listenership. We appreciate the fact that you keep tuning in each week. Um that gives us, I mean, it doesn't give us the opportunity. We do this for free. We enjoy doing it, but it makes us want to continue to do it because you guys are tuning in and we want to keep having these conversations.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

So And if you're listening and you're like, man, these guys are financial idiots, like you can you can give us help. Right. We have a comment section.

Zach Leonard 29:01

Send we have an email, the smalltownpod at gmail.com. Feel free to comment. Yep, 100%. Give suggestions. Yeah, we don't we never claim to be the arbiters of truth in anything we talk about. We are we're just um we're crooked sticks trying to draw straight lines by God's grace, just like everybody else in this. So if you have a comment, if you have a uh advice, if you have something to keep the conversation going, leave a comment where you listen. We'll get it on our uh our podcasting uh hosting service. And if you have a question and want to reach us directly, our email is thesmalltownpod at gmail.com. And uh we would love to do a question and answer episode if you uh if you have any questions, we'd love to do that. And we would uh the the way you can support us is by sharing this episode with somebody. You don't have to, we don't ask for a dime in this. We're not looking to do this for any monetary gain. We're just looking to have conversations for uh what we consider to often be an underappreciated area of the global church, and those are small town churches, groups that are they don't get the the airtime online that big churches do, but they are faithfully serving God, and we are so thankful that you are there in the trenches doing that. Amen. So as we close out, we just thank you for another episode, and we will see you next week on the Small Town Church Podcast. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Small Town Church Podcast. We pray that you have found this episode useful. If this episode has blessed you in some way, please share with someone else who might benefit from it. If you would like to partner with us, leave us a review so the algorithm can share this podcast with other people. If you have a question, please email it to thesmalltownpod at gmail.com and we will do our best to answer it either in a later episode or in the QA episode at the end of the season. Also, if we can partner with you in prayer in any way, email us so that we may have the honor of joining you in that prayer. Until next time, we pray you delight in God's mercies, which are new every morning, and remember to stay faithful to your small town church.