Financial Office Contact Info

Posted on September 22, 2015 Written by

What is the email address for your Finance Office? Too many times churches use the name(s) of staff. It’s good and necessary for your Finance Office staff to have an email address for their professional needs. However, your Finance Office needs a generic email address for companies use for sending invoices or acknowledgements or other financial docs.

I recommend that every church create a fictional person which will be the point of contact for all routine Finance Office correspondence, snail or email. This “person” is:

  • First Name: Finance
  • Last Name: Office
  • Email finance@church.org (where “@church.org” is your church’s email server)
  • Address: your church’s main mail address

Creating this will ensure that whenever there is staff turnover in the Finance Office, you won’t have to change email addresses on all the various accounts the church has with vendors. This also creates a standard by which everyone in the office (and even the membership) use with vendors to get bills sent to the church. This keeps things simple – simple is good!

 

Lead On!

Steve

Filed Under: church administration, church staff Tagged: ,

Monthly Employee Meetings

Posted on September 15, 2015 Written by

Every employee must know on a monthly basis how she or he is performing according to the supervisor. Saving all the info and “dumping” on the employee at the annual meeting is unfair to the employee, the supervisor, and the organization. Monthly meetings are a must for the health and well-being of all. These monthly conversations will also help the organization progress faster and farther.

Some managers are fearful of what to do and say in a monthly meeting. The following is a “Staff Development Conversation Guide” from North Point Ministries in Alpharetta, GA. All rights to this material belong to them. This is a tool they use to help their supervisors know how to craft these meetings. I appreciate that church sharing their resources.

Goal: Ensure that every employee has routine conversations with his/her boss allowing for a full bilateral dialog about all aspects of the job and permits discussion about the current situation and his/her personal and professional development.

Method:

  1. Every staff member should have a one-on-one meeting with his or her boss on a monthly basis. Those conversations should be designed to discuss one or more of the items mention in the goal above.
  2. The following five questions are examples that can be used to capture information, emotion, and foster conversation.
    1. What are you most excited about right now?
    2. What’s most challenging?
    3. What’s bugging you?
    4. What do you wish you could spend more time one?
    5. What can I do to help?
  3. Additionally, here are five questions/statements which can be used periodically to allow conversation around the work environment, personal growth, and the staff member’s future desires.
    1. What changes, in areas outside of your control, could be made to improve your job?
    2. Let’s identify specific growth area and develop a plan for improvement.
    3. Do you feel ready for more responsibility? If so, what type?
    4. Let’s discuss your priorities for your job for the next 6 months.
    5. What changes would you suggest to help make our team function better overall?
  4. Managers should have some written method to capturing critical elements of the conversations and actions that come from each one-on-one meeting.

 

Lead On!

Steve

Filed Under: church administration, church staff Tagged: ,

Email Address Format

Posted on September 8, 2015 Written by

The format for email addresses for most companies is firstname.lastname@company.com

However, many churches use the firstinitiallastname@church.org format and that leads to some interesting combinations. Here are some that I’ve collected over the years:

I strongly encourage churches to use the standard format used by most companies and organizations. There are several advantages (you’ve already seen the disadvantages above!).

  • The email contains the full name of the employee which makes it easier for people new to the church to remember the staff person’s name
  • It differentiates between people with the similar names: James Smith and John Smith would have different email addresses (under the older format the church would have to come up with something to differentiate between the two and that can cause confusion to people trying to contact them if they presume they know the church’s email format).
  • Writing an announcement becomes as easy as: “Contact john.smith@church.org for info on the deacon retreat.” You don’t have to write out the contact person’s name because it’s in the email address.
  • You can still have email aliases for the other email addresses that people might use while you train them to use the new email format.

 

Lead On!

Steve

Filed Under: church administration, church staff Tagged: ,

Video Inventory

Posted on September 1, 2015 Written by

If you pick up a church building and shake it, what falls out? Inventory.

Everything that can be moved or removed from a church is inventory and all inventory should be documented. I’ve done inventory counts several times and several ways including the way that I dislike the most – paper and pen writing down an item count and a brief description: 6 chairs and 1 table. The problem is that type of inventory doesn’t differentiate between really nice chairs or crummy chairs (unless you go into a lot of description.

There is an easier way – shoot a video of the entire church, inside and out. Two people (or one person in a pinch) can video an entire church in a matter of a few hours. One person has the camera while the other person opens doors, drawers, and cabinets in order to film everything the church has. The video must include both inside and outside. If you have items of value, make sure the camera pauses over each item and doesn’t just do a pan shot; for instance, when filming a stained glass window, stop on each window for a couple of seconds which is long enough to capture a good still from the video. Shoot the video as many times as necessary to get a good take of the entire building. Modern editing allows the video to be sewn together if several videos were shot over several days or even months.

Once all the videos are done and compiled, then several copies are made. One copy is left at the church in a secure place, others are placed in members’ home, and one copy is given to the church’s insurance company.

Updated video inventories can be done every 5 years or so in order to capture any changes to the church buildings, grounds, furnishings, equipment, and other possessions.

If the church has a fire or theft, the video can be used to help the insurance company identify what was lost and come up with a fair value for a payment. Insurance companies like videos – they are much better because they document the actual item and it’s easier to see the item to get a value.

Finally, this is a project made for a couple of volunteers. Explain to a few people what you need and why and then watch them take over. Encourage them to edit it and get it ready for the insurance company. This is a great way to involve volunteers in a way that directly helps their church.

 

Lead On!

Steve

Filed Under: buildings, facilities Tagged: ,

Was Isaac Mentally Challenged?

Posted on August 25, 2015 Written by

In his book How Good Do We Have to Be? Harold Kushner writes (pages 73-74): “I confess that I have never liked or understood the story in chapter 22 of the Book of Genesis, where God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, born to him after many years of childlessness, and then intervenes to stop it at the last moment. I never like the way it portrayed God, making such an outrageous demand, or the way it portrayed Abraham, so ready to obey it. But some years ago, I read an article by a physician suggesting that Isaac may have been a retarded child. He shares many of the traits of the retarded. He was born to older parents. He periodically gets into trouble by not understanding the consequences of his actions. He is the only man in all the Bible whose parents worry about his getting married, and ends up marrying a woman whose outstanding quality is her kindness. If that theory is correct, the doctor wrote, maybe that is why Abraham thought he heard the voice of God telling him to slay his son, as many societies in the ancient world did to imperfect children. And God’s intervening would then represent His proclaiming to Abraham that even such a child is fashioned in God’s image, that even such a life is holy.”

This potential interpretation of the story of the Sacrifice of Isaac helps me understand the story better. This would explain why

  • Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac in the first place (surely God would give Abraham a much better heir the second time)
  • Isaac allowed himself to be tied up (12-year-old boys can be very strong, especially when struggling against a 112 year old man)
  • Isaac never harbored ill-will against his dad after that event (Hey, Dad, remember when you tried to kill me and the angel intervened?)
  • Abraham sent a servant to get Isaac’s wife (the first time Rebekah saw Isaac was after she was committed to marry him and traveled a long way from her home)
  • Isaac couldn’t tell the difference between his sons’ voices when Jacob deceived him and how Rebekah could fool her own husband for her favorite son
  • Of the three patriarchs, Isaac did the least, virtually nothing, except being the grandfather of the 12 tribes

It also helps me understand the mantra “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”

  • I am the God of Abraham: a rich and powerful man yet who was willing to pimp his own wife in Egypt
  • I am the God of Isaac: a man with mentally challenged who accomplished nothing in life except be the father of twin boys
  • I am the God of Jacob: a man who struggled with God’s angel all night and was also a thief, cheater, liar, and deceiver

God is the God of everyone – even the infirm – and he welcomes and accepts as His own all of us, regardless of our frailties. We will never know whether Isaac was mentally challenged or not, but if he was, then that tells me that God is not bound by my human condition and can use me (and you!) for whatever God chooses.

 

Lead On!

Steve

Filed Under: faith Tagged:

Staff Members’ Meeting on the Church’s Nickel

Posted on August 18, 2015 Written by

I received the following question: “Our church budgets $100 per month for meals for ministers. Is it allowable for our pastor and worship director go out to lunch each week for a planning session and have the church pay for both meals every week?”

My reply:
There are two components to this question

  1. Legal
    1. The IRS does not permit an excessive benefit to the staff in a non-profit. A lunch every week is not an excessive benefit if the meal is typical $8-$15 meal.
    2. The IRS does encourage an accountable reimbursement plan. That means that for every expense, there must be a receipt and documentation about who was there and how it related to the church. It can be as simple as “Prospective member lunch with the Smiths” – there is NO need to write a paragraph. If you don’t have the proper receipts, then reimbursements might be considered income for IRS purposes. Documentation is not only good but absolutely necessary.
  2. Church Policy
    1. The church SHOULD care if staff are good stewards or not. My professional opinion is that staff members work alongside each other all day and can meet with each other at any point during the work day and work week. If they want to go out to lunch, then that is NOT a professional expense because they could have had that meeting any other time during that day.

To me this is not a financial matter, it is a personnel matter. I suggest that the personnel manual (and finance manual if you have one) make a statement that “meetings between staff members which have expenses (meal, coffee, etc.) are not reimbursable expenses because staff could have met at the church without incurring an expense” or words to that effect.

I do not know the relationship you have with the pastor

  1. If your relationship is strong and he isn’t threatened, then you can approach him and help him understand that if all staff were to do this it would cost the church tens of thousands a year which could be used for other things.
  2. If the pastor might be threatened by you and this subject, then you have to be willing to leave. You can either approach the pastor with this matter OR you can talk with the personnel and/or financechairleader and ask him/her to address this and to keep your name confidential. If the personnel or finance committeechairleader doesn’t think it is a problem, then drop it. That just means you have higher standards than they do.What they are doing is not illegal or immoral but it does stray into the ethical gray area for churches. And one of my sayings is, “Stay Out of the Gray!”

Lead On!

Steve

Filed Under: church finances, church staff, wisdom Tagged: , ,

Life-Changing Benevolence

Posted on August 11, 2015 Written by

Traditional Benevolence: the church is a collection point for charitable items such as food, clothing, household items, and money to help with other items such as rent and medical expenses. Church members should be encouraged to be generous with their gifts and not just give their leftovers or items they want to discard. I encourage churches to have a regular collection time; this can be monthly, every Communion Sunday, every 5th Sunday, etc. – just pick and stick with something.

I feel there is a much better and more biblically based form of benevolence but it is much harder and far less common in churches. I encourage you to seriously consider this form and decide if your church is doing benevolence to make its members feel good or to have a serious impact on the lives of others. This direction is much harder and requires the church to being a lot more intentional about what it wants to accomplish.

Benevolence That Changes Lives: The church should not be a distribution point for benevolence. Instead, churches should partner with local non-profits who are doing this type of work with excellence (key word).

  • The church can approach these local orgs and offer supplies (food, clothing, etc.), money (for benevolence and even for operations), and volunteers (church members who want to help others). Every non-profit you approach will jump at the chance to get more of these resources.
  • An understanding can be reached between the church and the org regarding overt/covert evangelism (you’re not asking my opinion but I suggest that church volunteers ONLY raise that subject if they are asked why they are doing that – the door is then open for a positive reply without shoving Jesus down someone’s throat).
  • This method allows recipients to go to places in an area of town they are more comfortable with than having to walk into a church (which is intimidating to non-church folk). This makes church members get out of their comfort zone (their church) and into the area of town where they aren’t comfortable but where the hurting and needy are located – church members need to suck it up and get over their fears. After all, Jesus went out to the highways and byways and didn’t wait for people to come to him (though many did).
  • This method allows a church to partner with an org that is far more skilled at distributing resources and determining who are the scammers and who are the truly needy. The partner org most likely has a database where they keep track of who has been helped, for what purpose, and how often.
  • This allows the church admin assistants (the first point of contact for many recipients) to focus on their work instead of answering the phones. And frankly, some of the needy can be scary (though almost never dangerous) and that can affect the work product of the church’s admin(s).
  • If more and more churches would partner with local orgs, the chronic needy would know where to turn for regular help (instead of going from church to church) and those orgs might be able to offer additional services such as job training and placement (to address long-term needs, not weekly needs).

I will say up front that moving your benevolence offsite gives less “glory” to your church and your members might complain about that. However, this is not about meeting the church’s needs but about helping others. God gets the glory (period). It’s not about us – it’s about us being servants to help others.

 

Lead On!

Steve

Filed Under: generosity, strategy Tagged: ,

How to Use a Cab – for the Ride of Your Life (part 3 of 3)

Posted on August 4, 2015 Written by

 

Be nice to the cab driver

Wherever you find yourself, always, always, always look for ways to help people. No one will ever condemn you for being nice (and if they do, it says more about them than about you).

Speak kind words – thank you, please, yes ma’am, and yes sir. People appreciate politeness and it often deflates someone’s anger before they wail on you.

Often how you treat people becomes the way you are treated by the person with whom you’re dealing.

Respect the cabbie, anyone else in the cab with you, and anyone else whose waiting alongside you. Respect people.

If you give the cab driver the wrong address, don’t blame the drive

Everyone makes mistakes in life; everyone makes LOTS of mistakes. Learn how to handle them:

  • Don’t blame others for what YOU did or didn’t do
  • Analyze what went wrong and what you need to do next time
  • Handle the error with grace and aplomb – people will observe you how you deal with pressure and messy situations, especially ones that you created

Enjoy the ride and watch the scenery but watch the meter and other details

Take in the big picture of life as you travel. It can be as grand and glorious as you want it to be (if you take a few chances along the way). But also learn to observe the details that can make the experience of life that much more full of color. A field of flowers is beautiful; but each flower is amazing in itself.

Change cabs if your current cab can’t take you all the way

Be willing to adapt to the current situation and you absolutely must be willing to change as life changes. Flow is the best answer to flux. So, FLOW.

You’ll need to fight upstream a few times when injustice requires it. Thump bullies on the nose – they deserve it and it will teach them a lesson, but only do it if the cause is noble.

Other times you’ll need to jump and you’ll get some bruises and even broken bones. Leaping from the safety of your current ride is really scary but sometimes necessary.

Be ready for your destination

Look ahead to see what’s coming. Always be prepared. Know when the end of the current ride is drawing near and gather your stuff you’ve accumulated on that ride so you can leave properly. You can glance back to see where you came from but don’t linger – you need to be already looking for your next ride.

Get out when you arrive and don’t be pushed out the door

Sometimes the cab is ready for you to leave when you aren’t. Be intuitive enough to know that this period is over and you need to leave. Leave graciously – it speaks to your character. You’ll probably never take that same cab again, but word of who you are will travel quickly and affect what taxi you catch next.

 

And remember, have fun on the ride of your life!

 

Lead On!

Steve

Filed Under: strategy, wisdom, young adults Tagged: , ,
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