This is my personal opinion - hoarding money in accounts does not help the church. The church gets so busy stocking it away, that it drops all ministry programs. Ministry and Outreach is what the church is about.

First off, a quick rundown on my reaction to your options:

1. If you have savings or endowments whose terms allow it, using them can help. However, they are a band-aid at best and should be used to buy time to develop a long-term solution, not relied upon as a solution.

2. Doing some basic review of expenses and cutting costs where it makes sense to do so should be undertaken. Again, though, unless there's a lot of fat in your operations (and, IME, there isn't in a lot of churches) it will be a band-aid to buy you some time.

3. This is a valid longterm solution that we have considered. The question to look at is whether it is the building and its needs that is killing you in both congregational energy and expenses. If it is and you can find a rental or shared space option that will alleviate it, then it is a viable longterm solution. Most importantly, if removing the burden of maintaining a property from you allows you to focus more on your congregational mission, then it may be the best longterm solution. But, since it does involve a major upheaval in the congregations life (losing a building), it needs careful consideration.

4. If you eliminate full-time ministry personnel, who is going to help you in living your congregational mission? Who is going to guide you through the tough times and tough decisions? Who is going to provide spiritual focus and leadership? Given a choice between a building and a minister, I'd say the building is really the less important of the two. Lay leadership, with or without the support of some kind of part-time ministry, can work if you have the leaders and internal resources to do it but it is not a given.

5. It is a way to cut costs but consider whether you have people who can do the job, who are willing to do it for free, and who can be counted on to stick to the job even though they aren't being paid. Being paid to do a job is a big incentive for many people and leaving critical work to volunteers can result in the work not happening or happening more slowly. Will a volunteer stick with the job if a paid opportunity elsewhere comes along?

Mendalla

For most UCC 's selling the building isn't an option, we don't generally own our buildings. I think officially presbytery does.

If you are not meeting your budget by 1-5 % or so, then I would keep doing what I am doing. Continue with the ministry, reach out, do what works and work on building your congregation.

I would not be tapping into funds that you have, which most likely have specific rules at any rate. An auditor will tell you that if you use funds to meet operating costs you are not really meeting your budget and eventually it will fall apart. Eventually the furnace or roof goes and there is no money........

But if I am 25% short? Something is seriously wrong. To me that calls for a meeting, with presbytery likely about what the next step is. It might be amalgamation, new personnel , half time ministry staff, renting space, shared ministry, closing of the church...... Obviously the church has a major issue to solve that hasn't arrived in one budgetary cycle

Hi Beloved,

We never pass anything but a balanced budget.  At any given point in the year we may be ahead or behind.  Generally we can expect that to happen at certain points in the year so we do not sweat it when it happens.  We communicate what is going on and if we need folk to dig a little deeper we ask them to.

This is a poor strategy.  Anything borrowed from the reserve to cover a short-fall should be replaced.  Treating reserves as magical money pots is poor stewardship.

Church budgets are among the leanest organizational budgets I have ever seen.  If one has fat that can be cut then one should cut it.  Of course one thing we fail to recognize is that a healthy body has a certain amount of fat (also known as stored energy) once the fat is gone there is no energy in reserve and the only energy one has is the energy one can get their hands on immediately.

This too is a poor strategy.

This can be a very smart move depending on a number of factors.  It can buy time but it cannot fix certain problems.  If the problems are not addressed in this move it is similar to cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.

This presumes that meeting the salary is the problem and not just a symptom.  It is probably the most common solution congregations reach for.  If it was an actual solution Churches would experience a resurgence rather than seeking to cut more hours a few years later.

Once upon a time this could be done because folk actually did have hours in the day to give to the church.  Time is more precious now and if folk give us an hour or so on Sunday morning that is likely all that they are willing to give.

This may also be an example where the fat we cut is not actually excess fat but energy that we will need shortly and once it is gone it is gone.

Rather than cutting expenditures which is slitting one's own throat.  The other option is to increase revenues.  My experience with stewardship in the United Church of Canada is that typically it sucks.  Congregations, if they had their wishes granted would have more and more services to offer for less and less monies given via the offering plate.

Reality doesn't work that way.  If you want more you have to pay for more.  It is tough work, or so we believe, getting a congregation to increase their givings.  Part of that is because we need them to be excited about the same old same old and that doesn't work.

Narrative budgetting allows congregations to see the actual bang they get for their donated buck and if they are convinced that the bang is worthwhile, they will contribute more so that the bang gets louder.

At some point Church budgets need to be more about the ministry provided than the bills paid.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Financial crisis in a church can occur quite quickly when the demographics in the church change suddenly, rapidly, and substantially.

If a church loses within a two year period about 10 (out of 100+) of their most committed congregants, both in finances and serving, they can face a financial situation rather quickly.  When the 10 are in all likelihood 10 of the top financially contributing members you have a financial problem.  Even if newcomers came , newcomers are not going to replace the revenues lost.  So, sometimes it is not a case of being able to increase revenue, it is a case of trying to get by with a huge loss of revenue, until you can no longer get by.

It can be a case of how do we best down-size to be able to realistically fit into to who we have now become.

Tapping into funds can possibly the only means to being able to pay once's expenses (including ministry personnel) until the best way is found to be able to live within a balanced budget.

I agree, the options are "band-aids" and not solving the problem - that is, if solving the problem is maintaining the status quo, both in revenue and expenses.  But I think "maintaining or growing the revenue" ship has sailed.

Hi Beloved.

Been there.  Done that.

Well that presumes that you start from behind the eight-ball.  Congregations only start there because they aren't paying attention to what is going on.  The greatest reality for most United Churches is not that funds are limited (even where they are the limit is actually far higher than most suspect) it is that they do not know how to ask for them.  People will not give if they do not know there is a need.  Also people will not give if all they are giving to is the save the status quo fund.

Our congregation with very little ask increased its annual contributions 18% last year.  Financially it was, so I hear, the most that this congregation has ever raised without contirbution to a specific fund.  And in turn it allowed us to be one of the leading contributors in our Presbytery to the Mission and Service fund on top of our regular mission work with the community.

It can be.  I think most churches would be surprised how far they are from the proverbial last ditch they truly are when they start to panic.

Grace and peace to you.

John

It was always my assumption that if a particular UCCanada congregation lacked adequate funds for its operations, it could ask HQ for assistance. Not so?

My personal opinion is that it is totally foolish to live like the proverbial ostrich and bury your head in the sand.  Congregations and denominations have been finding their followers to be aging, getting sick, dying, moving away, quitting etc for decades.  Waiting until there is an emergency before dealing with it doesn't sound like good, responsible stewardship to me.  Though actual solutions can be difficult to determine and put in place.

When I was going to church I asked several people about the budget.  They replied that they didn't know anything about it,  it was set by a committee.  So I fine tuned my question - 'how much is needed to maintain this building and how much is needed to serve the wider world?  Is there enough income to cover these items?'  Apparently if I wanted to know that (they certainly didn't) I should get on a committee or the board.  

This seemed strange to me.  Another group I was connected to listed the proposed budget, the previous year's financial report and the income and expenditure to date at every meeting. These figures were posted openly in the common area of the building. It really simplified decision making as the 'facts' were right there. If money had been allowed in the budget for a particular item or activity that wasn't going to happen after all, we could see that dollar amount and choose to apply it elsewhere. If for some reason a budgetted item was more money than expected to could see that and start preparing to address the problem.  

Not so Jae - congregations are meant to be financially self-sufficient.

So the congregations are required to send money to HQ, but HQ is under no obligation whatsoever to help support needy congregations?

I think the greater church helps with some grants and supports some churches that qualify under Mission and Service. We also had a small loan when we were building our building. But overall churches are to be self supporting.

We did okay last year as far as meeting out budget, but this year we are not going to come even close with the losses we are going to experience in the next few months and the losses we experienced at the end of this past year (of congregants).

Hi Dcn. Jae,

Congregations can ask for a block funding grant.  There is no guarantee that they will get one as the monies for that kind of assistance are severely limited.

They come out of the Mission and Service Fund and represent a portion of all the expenses that the Mission and Service Fund is responsible to cover.

What happens is that Gereal Council (HQ) determines how much each of the 13 Conferences of the United Church of Canada will get from the Mission and Service Fund.  Conferences then apportions that money among all the requests within the bounds of the Conference.  Some requests will be denied and others will be entertained.  Most will not get all that they ask for.

Congregations who get a block grant will typically recieve a grant for several years running (unless they refuse to reapply because they no longer need it) and each year the amount of the grant will be reduced.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Hi Dcn. Jae,

HQ is not a bank holding congregational money in reserve.

Each congregation sends monies to General Council via contributions to the Mission and Service Fund.  None of this money is obligatory (which is part of the problem with this fund being as underserviced as it is.

Congregations are obligated to pay assessments to their Conference.  These assesments pay for the work of Conference to happen it is not gravy.

The Church will provide assitance to congregations.  That assistance will not necessarily be financial in terms of actual dollars and cents.  It may be resource officers that can help the congregation get a better handle on its own financial situation.

Grace and peace to you.

John

What's the situation in the Baptist church structure jae, on such matters? 

Thank you Beloved and revjohn for the information. Interesting to hear how others operate.

That would depend, carolla, on what kind of Baptists we're talking about.

My own church is part of the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches in Canada. However, certainly not all Baptist churches are in the Fellowship.

We operate with congregational church governments. Individual churches are not required to send funds to headquarters or conferences. Individual churches can apply to HQ for church loans which requests may or may not be granted.