Pastor Austin Gardner and VBM Director Jeff Bush discuss the importance of establishing a budget for churches on the mission field and how exactly that can be done.
Notes on Establishing a Church Budget
- Intro
- Center for World Evangelism
- Currently looking for property right now
- All the training that we do to prepare missionaries to the field will be in one place
- This is the dream we’ve had for all these years
- Currently there are 60 missionaries with the board
- 40 missionaries are missionaries sent out of Vision Baptist Church
- We want to see the Training Center have over 100 students
- We want to see the number of missionaries sent out of our board and others increase astronomically
- We are in the process of raising $2,000,000
- There is $277,680 in the bank that has already come in
- We are asking God to provide all this money without our having to go into debt
- Would pray with us that God would do big things?
- Jesus is coming soon, time is running short, and we must be about the Fathers’ business!
- You can find more info on worldevangelismcenter.org
- $2,000,000 seems like a lot, but if you think about 400 churches giving $5,000, it really is completely possible
- Should we help our churches establish a budget, and how can we when the offerings fluctuate so much on the mission field?
- They fluctuate a lot in the states, too
- You must teach your people to give
- Often we are embarrassed to ask God’s people to give, yet, if we don’t, we can’t do the work that God has called us to do
- Giving has been a fundamental part of God’s work since the beginning
- Cain and Abel learned to give from their parents
- From the very beginning we have had giving
- We need to learn to be a giver and a teacher on giving
- Many missionaries and pastors aren’t givers
- No one is exempt from giving
- Even the Levites gave a tithe of the tithes
- Do everything you can to train your people to give
- You are the spiritual leader and people are watching you
- We end up hurting our people by making excuses for why they cannot give
- God is not trying to get your money, because He is in need
- He is the Creator and owner of everything
- It doesn’t matter how much money someone has, they need to learn to honor God by being a giver
- This is a foreign concept to them
- “I’ll give you the minimal amount to get you off my back.” Somehow we’ve allowed this kind of thinking into the church
- We need to get rid of that attitude
- Giving is not just for the work of the ministry, it’s for the giver!
- God doesn’t need our money, but He does want us to stretch our faith to give
- When we teach the people that they should give, the ministry will grow, their faith will grow, and good things will happen!
- What are some practical steps to teach people to give?
- Set up a systematic way of giving
- In Peru, we used a system of envelopes
- This was a way for the treasurer to keep track of what was being given where
- It was also a way to encourage the people to continue to give
- You want to do offering devotions that are three minutes long and are very straight forward on giving
- We would even use verses on giving as memory verses
- It should be a part of your discipleship material
- It should be right there with soul-winning, praying, Bible reading and so on
- There should be no embarrassment over teaching people to be givers
- We used to take the entire month of January to talk about stewardship
- The people needed to be taught that God owns their stuff!
- There has been times where people would not want to take off of work to come to church and to give. They felt like they couldn’t afford it.
- But after being challenged, they would finally take that day off to go to church and start giving.
- They were amazed to find that they actually had more money than they did before!
- Having people share their testimonies of God blessing their giving is a great way to encourage others
- How do you establish a budget for the church?
- You need to have a men’s meeting
- Show them how much money came in, how much went out, and what it went to.
- Keep them involved and up-to-date with the needs of the church
- The men need to feel responsible
- If the church will ever be indigenous, they have to know how to manage money
- Set up the budget based on percentages from the very beginning
- It’s not easy to make a budget when you don’t know what will be coming in
- We’ve set it up to have our pastor’s get 50% of the offerings of the church
- This encourages the pastors to see that if they work hard and win more souls and help the church grow, their personal income will increase
- You can’t overpay a pastor. At least not in our circumstances
- Without the pastor, you can’t have a church
- Take good care of the pastor.
- The missions budget comes from faith promise
- There is nothing wrong with taking missions out of the general budget, but we don’t want to teach our people to tithe
- We call tithing “teething”
- It’s something that you do when you get started
- We hope that they would give much more than that
- We are unashamedly encouraging our people to be major givers
- You can take care of the building if they will take care of the rest
- You can buy them a building or pay the rent on it, and they can take care of the pastor, utilities, and all that sort of things
- So 50% goes to the pastor, 10% goes to the building fund, and another 10% goes to new works
- They had their building given to them, and they can help another church get their building
- The rest of the budget will pay for utilities, bulletins, cleaning supplies, etc.
- From the beginning the people need to be taught to be extremely generous with their pastor
- Teach the people to be very clear with the money in the church
- For example, $1,200 came in, and here is where all that money went
- People appreciate the transparency of handling finances
- People will be willing to give, because they knew where the money went
- How can you teach someone to take care of the money?
- When the offering comes in, you should have two-three people that you trust to count the money
- Those people will sign on a paper showing how much money came in
- They should count it in the open where people can see
- They then give that money to a treasure who signs the book showing that the money was deposited
- There should always be two people who are watching what is going on
- We know that all men are sinners, so theft can happen anywhere. It happens here in the US
- We need to establish all the checks and balances that we can to fight that
- You could even have classes in the men’s meeting teaching the men what it will take to help them become independent
- Teach them what it will take to pay utilities, to pay a pastor, to keep up the church, and so on
- It is our responsibility as missionaries to start the church in a way that will allow it to continue after we are gone
- God has a way of taking care of His own people, and we need to trust Him to do it
- Don’t fall for the idea that people cannot afford to give
- If they can bring in ten eggs, they can give an egg
- They are living off of something
- You can teach them how to give
- Our Generation Conference
- We would like to invite you
- This is a rebranding of the Summit that we have hosted for many years
- January 2-4, 2020 Thursday afternoon, Friday, and Saturday morning
- More info on visionmissions.com
- It’s located at Lake Lanier
- We are working to make this the most exciting conference we’ve had yet
- We have new plans and goals to get people involved
- Center for World Evangelism
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