Church Business Meetings (part 3 of 3)

Posted on October 14, 2014 Written by

This the third part on church business meetings. In the first section I talked about how to make the membership reports more engaging; the second post was about church programs and reporting how they use their resources, both financial and people, to carry out the church’s vision. This post will be on church decision-making and voting.

Decisions: most decisions should be made at committee levels, since they have more time and information to get into the nuts and bolts of why a decision is necessary. For instance, financial decisions are the realm of the Finance Committee, decisions affecting the church’s staff are the responsibility of the Personnel Committee, etc. It is the duty of each committee to bring to the church a report (see part 2 in this blog series) detailing the actions and reasons. The committee can be asked questions, but the responsibility lies with the committee. If the church body at large disagrees with the committee, then the church body can vote to either replace the committee and/or overturn the committee’s action.

Decisions which affect the entire church body are the ones that should be intentionally brought before the entire church. This requires a lot of education of church members ahead of time. It usually means that information is shared at one meeting, time is built in for members to think about the decision and gain more knowledge, and then everyone comes back to a subsequent meeting for a vote. Asking members to show up at a meeting, get up to speed in 15 to 20 minutes and then vote is not reasonable. If a decision is important enough to be brought before the congregation, then it should be a deliberate decision and not a hasty one. Give people time and you’ll see the “wisdom of the crowds.”

Implementing all or parts of these recommendations will make church business meetings flow more smoothly, be more enjoyable, and lead to better actions by the church. Try to do one of these at a time and incorporate these ideas over a period of months, if not years, and then gauge the attitude toward business meetings.

 

Lead On!

Steve

 

 

Filed Under: church administration, future, leadership, planning, strategy Tagged: , , , ,

Church Business Meetings (part 2 of 3)

Posted on October 7, 2014 Written by

This the second part on church business meetings and how they should change. The reason for the change is so the members and guests see the church as dynamic, not as static and boring. I believe that business must be engaging and not merely a recitation of fact and figures. Business meetings should consist of stories of people and how the church is helping them. My first post focused on the membership report. This post will focus on the programming reports.

Reports: the church is about the business of helping people see how much God loves them. The most common way churches do this is through their programming and activities. But if you’re not involved in one of those areas, you probably don’t know what is going on. Why not use the church business meeting to share with the entire church all of the successes (and failures) of the past and the exciting things that are planned for the future?

When the church’s financial report is given, the treasurer interviews ministry leaders saying, “The church has given you X dollars; can you tell us how you’ve used that money?” Then, the ministry leader talks about what they did with the money using pictures, music, children and youth, other adults, and any resource he or she has. The treasurer presents financial information about each ministry area and uses that a lead-in to ask what is going on with that money.

By the end of the business meeting, attendees have seen and heard what their church is doing, who is involved, how much money has been spent and for what, and what is going to happen in the next few weeks and months. Everyone leaves the meetings having been informed about events outside their areas of interest.

At every meeting, the reports from the main ministry areas are a must: missions, age-level programming (adults, young adults, youth, and children), pastoral care, administration, fellowship, and worship (the five purposes of the church). Then, reports can be given by other ministry areas as there is need and time.

One caveat: all reports must be engaging and the treasurer/interviewer must be energetic in asking questions and encouraging the presenter to be enthusiastic. Reading dry reports should not be permitted; the church must be an exciting place to be and the reports must reflect that.

Next post: decision-making!

 

Lead On!

Steve

Filed Under: budget, church administration, church finances, church financial statements, leadership, strategy Tagged: , , , , ,

Church Business Meetings (part 1 of 3)

Posted on September 30, 2014 Written by

Most church business meetings are boring – at least the ones I’ve attended. They typically consist of three distinct areas:

  • Numbers: someone presents financial numbers (without giving too much detail lest the audience doze off) and someone else reads a list of people who have joined or left the church
  • Reports: occasionally there is a report about some area of the church and usually these reports are read aloud from the information which is in the packet handed out to all attendees
  • Decisions: sometimes there is an item or two on which church members will vote based on a two-minute presentation

Then the meeting ends, and members leave with very little new information about what is going on in their church. I propose a new format which contains much of the same information, but the presentation is completely different.

Numbers: Every business meeting should have the “nickels and noses” reports (how many people and how much money we’ve got). Financial information, which can be very dry, must be presented to the church in a more dynamic way – more on that in the reports blog (part 2).

  • Membership data should be treated with sensitivity. Most people never know what a church does until they actually experience it, good and bad. What if we told members ahead of time how they can expect to be treated? I can also imagine how members might share that knowledge with other people who have a negative impression of the church in general and sometimes your church specifically. Here are ways to change the membership report:

o   For those who leave the church due to death, the business meeting should pause so that the minister or volunteers talk about the ways the church ministers to the dying and their families. This helps those who are hearing the informatlon to know how their church helps families at some of the worst and hardest times.

o   For those who leave the church to go to another church, someone should talk about how the church reached out to these people to ask them why they left and then explain the reasons, even if the reasons are painful and personal.

o   For those who join the church, there should be a celebration and telling of their stories. New members who are willing could be interviewed at the business meeting so that everyone can get to know something about them. A standard set of “get-to-know-you” questions can be created and given to them ahead of time. Caution: new members must not be forced into doing this – it should be optional, not mandatory.

o   Finally, each new member should be paired with a same-gender long-time member for a year in order to guide the new person through the idiosyncrasies of the church. This pairing will help the new member be integrated to the church and help retain them.

 

Lead On!

Steve

Filed Under: accounting, church administration, church finances, church financial statements Tagged: , , ,

Top 10 Ways to Help the Finance Office (part 1 of 3)

Posted on September 2, 2014 Written by

A colleague asked me how staff and lay members can help the church’s Finance Office. Here is my top ten list; yours may be different, so please let me know what I left out.      

1. Pay all bills on time

  • The church doesn’t want to be seen as a deadbeat, so get your bills/invoices to the Finance Office in a timely way so they can be paid on time.
  • The church has a Christian witness every time it pays its bills
  • If a payment is late, vendors will not want to work with the church and even tell others how poorly the church pays its bills
  • If a payment is on time or even earlier than expected, it generates good will and that is a good thing.
  1. ALWAYS attach receipts to EVERY bill to be paid. NO EXCEPTIONS.
  2. The Finance Office needs TWO weeks to process payments. This allows for sick or vacation time off in the Finance Office and for other crises that arise.
  3. The Finance Office can make emergency payments the same day, but that should be for benevolent or charity needs: medicine, housing, food, and gas for traveling to work.
  4. Fill out the payment request forms for all expenses. Make sure the following are on it:
  • Payee
  • Instructions for delivery (such as “give check to …” otherwise it will be mailed)
  • Budget account number
  • A BRIEF explanation of the expense
  • Dollar amount
  • Signature of authorizing minister

2. Using a credit card is convenient, but it has requirements

  • Every credit card expenses MUST have a receipt which is given to the Finance Office. NO exceptions.
  • Every credit card charge is posted into the financial database so that you can look back at your expenses to see what you spent money on.
  • For EVERY credit card expense, write in the budget line to which that expense should be charged.
  • Turn in all receipts as soon as you get the credit card statement.

3. Paying staff for work is a payroll expense

  • Unless you’re reimbursing staff for a work expense, all payments to staff must go through payroll. This even includes gift cards given to staff.
  • This is an IRS requirement. Don’t blame the Finance Office for this.

 

Lead On!

Steve

 

Filed Under: accounting, church administration, church finances Tagged: , , ,

Creativity Within Boundaries

Posted on March 25, 2014 Written by

In beginning: God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Genesis 1:1

As a church administrator there is a certain order to this story of creation that warms my heart. There is a goal of conquering the chaos, there is organization to what must be done, there are daily tasks to be accomplished, there is a time of sitting back and admiring what’s been done (crossing it off the list, if you will), and then getting ready for the next day. There is good administration and organization to this job and I like that (I tease my colleagues that Genesis 1 proves that God loves church administrators the most because the first thing God did was get organized – they don’t laugh much).

But look at this story from another perspective: each day had specific things to be done but within those boundaries, there was a fantastic amount of creativity. This shows God’s balance between being right-brained (creative, artsy, subjective) and being left-brained (logical, analytical, objective), the creative and the logical. God established boundaries (left-brain) but within those boundaries, God was massively creative (right-brain). Humans tend to be either right- or left-brain oriented. Very, very few people are both (think Da Vinci as a rare crossover: artist and engineer).

Churches need to use:

  • volunteers who are creative and who are analytical
  • staff who think outside the box and those who are the guardians of tradition
  • people who bring new ideas to the table and those who retain institutional memory

As children learn to use crayons and markers, parents and teachers encourage them to stay within the lines but use whatever colors they want. Staying inside the lines helps with fine motor skills which children must develop but using a variety of colors helps add spice and variety to what is being done. Just as God worked within specific lines, churches must do the same – establish the boundaries and then be creative within those borders.

Churches must establish their boundaries: finances, space, leadership, location, and anything else that will be a constraint to them. No two churches have the same restrictions, but all churches have some limitations. Once a church has defined the lines within which it will work, then it must unleash all forms of creativity. “Blue sky” thinking should rule the day and when ideas bump up against the reality of the borders, then those ideas should come back to reality.

I don’t know how all of this is carried out. I do know that it is possible because I’ve seen some churches do this – they dreamed big, knew what they could and couldn’t do, and then accomplished some incredible feats for the Kingdom. So, be creative but always within the proper boundaries – just like God did.

Lead On!

Steve

Filed Under: church administration, leadership, wisdom Tagged: , ,

Church Budgets: Top 10 List (part 1 of 2)

Posted on February 18, 2014 Written by

This week I am posting #1-#5 of the Top 10 considerations regarding church budgets. Stay tuned for the remainder of the list next week.

 

1. Why do you need a budget?

A budget is a tool – nothing more.

  • It is a yardstick to measure your progress toward planned goals.
  • The planned goals are the most important aspect of the budget, not the financial numbers.
  • The financial numbers are ONE indicator of how well the church is doing toward achieving these goals, but it is not the ONLY measurement.

Budgets must be developed holistically

What do we want to accomplish in our youth ministry, worship area, building maintenance, staffing needs, etc.?

How are we going to reach these goals using our resources?

  • People: staff, volunteers, and paid vendors
  • Money: from all sources, not just budget
  • Time: when do we plan to achieve these goals

Ideally, budgets look forward over several years, not just the next few months. The Budget Committee should always be looking at how the church’s finances need to be structured over the next several years.

 

2. What is the timeline for developing a church budget?

There are several elements to the process and each one has its own timeline. Some churches use all these elements and some use only a few. Determine what works best in your specific church’s culture.

Theme development

  • Churches that use a theme typically have a team working on this 7-8 months before the beginning of the new fiscal year.
  • Some churches have themes centered on the core aspects of church (worship, fellowship, missions, member care, and education) and promote each one every five years. This helps guide theme development.
  • The committee usually selects a verse, logo, tag line, and music which will help focus the church during the budget emphasis. Churches with a fiscal calendar year often use October as the budget emphasis time, and theme development is in April and May.

Committee budget work

  • Committees need 2-3 months to find times to meet and come up with goals (numeric and intangible) for their ministry areas for the few years.
  • Committees should have a leader (staff or lay member) who can make a presentation, if necessary, to the Budget Team.
  • Committee work is done 4-6 months before the new fiscal year.

Budget Committee coordination

  • It is up to the Budget Committee (sometimes a subset of the Finance Committee) to gather the info from the various working committees and compile it into a comprehensive budget.
  • Some Budget Committees want representatives from the various teams to make presentations to the Budget Committee so that they’ll more fully understand the why behind each of the numbers. These presentations can help this Budget Committee to be the most fully informed group of lay leaders about the wide variety of work being done by the church.
  • Budget Committee work is done 3-4 months before the new fiscal year.

Church-wide presentations and vote

  • Some churches have a month-long budget or stewardship emphasis to help people understand what makes up all these figures and why each person in the church is important to make all of it happen. Many churches will use every form of communication possible to inform members and get them involved.
  • If the church is on the fiscal calendar year, then these presentations are in October with a vote by mid-November (before Thanksgiving) so as not  to encroach on Advent.
  • Typically, this work is done 2-3 months before the new fiscal year.

Follow up

This is a continuous process during the fiscal year. People need to be reminded of how their money is being used and the good that it is doing. Take advantage of Sunday morning offering times to tell the stories of how lives are being changed due to the generosity of church donors.

 

3. Who needs to be involved in the process?

Early stages

  • In the early development of a budget, you need the informed leadership working on the budget. This usually means the informed leadership in each budget area meets to plan their goals and determine the resources they need to achieve those plans.
  • The Budget Committee (or designated sub-committee of the Finance Committee) does not have jurisdiction over the goals in the various ministry areas because they are not as fully informed about those areas as the respective committees are.

Middle stages

  • At some point in the development process, the many ministry committees should invite feedback from the people invested in each area.
  • For example, the Missions Committee should tell people interested in missions what the plans are and then ask them for their ideas about what is needed on future endeavors. Committees must never create budgets in a vacuum – seek input first from the leadership and then from the followship. The “wisdom of the crowds” is valid and insightful.

Later stages

Finally, the different components of the budget will become public and that is when as many people as possible should be aware of the budget (at a minimum) and invested in it. The more people that are “buying into” the budget and what it wants to do, the more successful all the areas of the budget will be.

 

4. Should you use pledge cards?

Some churches have used pledge cards for decades and will continue to use them. Some churches stopped using them; some of those members regret that decision and others do not.

Pledge cards have several purposes:

  • As a tool in setting the budget
  • As a way to challenge people to give more
  • To track how much people have given

Increasingly, younger generations do not want to commit to a figure they’ll give. They will give – and give generously – but they just don’t want to state how much they’ll give. There are so many variables in life (debts for school, home, car, credit card; kids; trips; business and home; etc.) that are hard to plan for.

If you use pledge cards, then have a clear, concise, consistent reason WHY you are using them.

  • Pledge cards should never be used as a tool to bully people into committing or giving – too often that is what pledge cards devolve to.
  • Like ALL aspects of church finances, pledge cards must be used in a positive way, such as encouraging people to be more generous (with their prayers, their time given to church activities, and their finances).

 

5. How do you estimate your annual income?

This is one of the hardest numbers to determine in financial budgeting.

Fiscal prudence suggests one or a combination of the following. A church should be able to do better in the future than it has in the past.

  • Use the past 12 months’ rolling figure of actual receipts
  • Use 90% of the past 12 months’ rolling figure of actual receipts
  • Use a spreadsheet formula to forecast the next 12 months’ income

These formulas are intentionally conservative. The church can use any “excess” for capital needs, additional staffing or programming needs, and/or to establish and replenish reserves.
Be financially conservative in your projections. You won’t regret it.

 

Filed Under: budget, church administration, church finances, church financial statements, leadership, wisdom Tagged: , , , , ,

Olive Trees

Posted on December 10, 2013 Written by

Olive trees are rather amazing. I’ve never worked in an olive grove, but I did grow up in Spain, which has about 40 million olive trees. I couldn’t help but learn about olive trees as I drove across the country and saw olive trees from one horizon to the other.

There is a saying that when a farmer plants an olive seedling, he is planting it for his children. Olive trees mature slowly; an olive tree is 25 years old before it bears fruit. Not many farmers today can wait 25 years for a crop to come in.

But the olive tree is also amazing for its longevity. An olive tree will live about 1, 000 years, and some are even 2, 000 years old. So once an olive tree is 25 years old and begins to produce olives, it will continue to do so for the next 1,000 years if it is cared for properly.

Olives are harvested in a rather harsh fashion. Cloths are spread out under the tree and the branches are beaten with long poles. A hail of olives falls on the cloths. The cloths are gathered, and the olives are poured into buckets. These olives are used for food, pressed to make olive oil, or planted for another generation’s benefit. The olive tree doesn’t grow tall; it is smallish. Its trunk is not straight, so its wood is not good for construction. The olive tree is a humble tree that in maturity gives results for centuries to come.

It may be a stretch, but I’d like to compare church buildings to the olive tree. Typically they are not grandiose architectural masterpieces but are functional. They take many years to plan and build, but they will be with us for generations to come. Every generation or so, churches add a structure—knowing the primary beneficiaries will be their children and grandchildren. And, at some point in the unknown future, a decision will be made to tear down the building that the current generation labored so hard to construct.

Church buildings should be seen as investments:

  • First is the money that is raised to pay for the land and the building itself. It usually takes years to raise the money and pay off the principal and interest on the construction debt. If the generation doesn’t pay off the debt, then we saddle the next generation with debt plus the expense of maintaining the facility.
  • The second and greatest investment we make in our new building is people, especially our children. The building is a tool, not the goal; the measuring stick is how many lives the building affects for the Kingdom. We must ensure that the classrooms have the best teachers and leaders and they have all the training and resources they need to do the volunteer job they’ve been asked to do. The result will be people who leave the structures each day to go into the world knowing and sharing the love of God with each and every person they meet.

As we invest our money and our lives in church buildings, only God knows the fruit it will bear over the next several generations, because we planted a seed.

Lead On!

Steve

Filed Under: church administration, church finances, future, strategy Tagged: , , ,

Urgent vs. Important

Posted on September 3, 2013 Written by

There’s already been a lot written about “urgent versus important” as a management tool. I’m sure I’ll repeat some things, but they bear repeating. Some consultants advise using a JoHari Window to help manage the important and urgent.

Important

Not Important

Urgent

Not Urgent

 

  1. Immediately deal with important and urgent items.
    1. These are items that cannot wait and if not dealt with efficiently and effectively, there could be a significant downside impact.
    2. Often these will require using substantial amounts of resources so that the outcome is the best possible for everyone.
    3. Next, deal with urgent things quickly but do not invest lots of resources in them.
      1. They are wildfires that need to be put out. Don’t let them get out of control or there could be unfortunately consequences.
      2. Urgent things consume resources – time, money, and energy – and are often not productive.
      3. Third, focus on the important things.
        1. That’s where you need to invest your resources.
        2. Taking time to set expectations and standards will, in due course, mean that people will know what is important to you. They will realize that urgent things are usually insignificant and that you want to spend time on important stuff.
        3. Lastly, things that are not important and not urgent shouldn’t be dealt with at all. Not even by subordinates. They are a waste of time.

By the way, if you’ve not used JoHari Windows, I strongly encourage their use. You can put almost anything on the sides and once you fill in the squares, you’ll quickly see where you need to focus your resources. The Johari Window was created by two guys (Joseph and Harrington) in the 1950s as a tool to help interpersonal relationships, but management consultants saw where this can be used in a variety of business scenarios.

Lead On!

Steve

 

Filed Under: church administration, leadership, strategy Tagged: , ,
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