Pastor, Your Church Budget Is a Discipleship Tool

Some parts of church leadership are exciting, deeply spiritual, and clearly worthwhile. Others, well, not so much.

This, of course, varies from person to person. Around five years ago when I was serving at a Californian church, the task of putting together the annual budget fell to me. Amid weekly preaching, worship leading, and shepherding responsibilities, preparing the budget definitely felt like drudgery.

I now serve as an executive pastor in Wisconsin, and I’m still in charge of drafting the budget each year. But I no longer view it as drudgery. Instead, I see it as an opportunity for discipleship. What changed? I began to understand the annual budget as a tool for leaders to model biblical priorities and faithful generosity for the sake of gospel. But like any tool, it’s only helpful if wielded properly.

Model Wisdom and Priorities

You’ve heard it said that “money talks”—that how you spend your money communicates your priorities. Your home budget shows what your family values, which can be encouraging or, at times, convicting. Similarly, a local church’s budget communicates her priorities. It broadcasts what’s important to the church (especially her leadership) and, therefore, what should be important to individual members. It models values, goals, and habits of spending that others can follow in their personal or business finances. This modeling is basic discipleship.

The church budget models values, goals, and habits of spending that others can follow in their personal or business finances.

What percentage is allocated for community outreach, international missions, staff, children, and facilities? These are important questions for leaders to work through, because our priorities matter. At the risk of sounding obvious, wisdom is required. For example, the amount of money we invest into maintaining or updating our facility versus the amount we give toward international missions says something to everyone watching.

Leaders need to guide their congregations through these decisions so members understand the reasoning behind the budgetary choices. This, too, is discipleship, as it equips people to employ similar wisdom in their lives. They’ll learn to apply biblical principles and consider how to meet various needs with limited resources.

Model Trust and Generosity

Often, our planning and praying over the budget doesn’t go beyond answering the questions “How much here?” and “How much there?” But we can take it a step further. Our budget line items, giving percentages, and spending allocations can disciple our people at a deeper “heart” level. This comes through our general attitude toward the church’s funds and ultimately in the faith we demonstrate with our resources.

For a local church to survive, she relies on, among other things, the Lord’s faithful financial provision through the giving of believers who call that church home. The church depends on others’ generosity. This is biblical and right. However, in my experience, churches can struggle to show that same kind of generosity. Instead, they can operate with a self-protective instinct and a scarcity mentality.

This stinginess and selfishness can take various forms. Churches might maintain a large, untouchable savings account for a “rainy day.” Or they may fill their facilities with unnecessary upgrades and high-end accoutrements. Even more subtly, they can keep a needlessly large staff who do what otherwise could be done by volunteers utilizing their spiritual gifts.

Sometimes churches appear generous by giving to a lot of different ministries—but they do so in relatively small amounts. For example, it’s common to support multiple missionaries with minuscule amounts. Or to hire mostly part-time staff then expect full-time work. Whatever the particulars, this lack of generosity in a budget contributes to poor discipleship and stifles the church’s mission.

Generous for Mission

When churches aren’t generous with their resources, the congregation is inevitably discouraged from generosity.

This is a common problem that contributes to individuals giving less to the church budget and instead giving directly to missionaries and other causes. When members direct their giving away from the church, it can also result in situations where pastors are unable to pay their bills, and to rising bivocationalism among those in ministry.

Unfortunately, this individualized giving can sometimes create that scarcity mentality when budgeting for the church. Church leaders may make decisions out of fear rather than trust, which starts a vicious and stagnating cycle. Furthermore, this self-protection goes beyond money. Often, it leads to declining partnerships with other churches and declining community engagement, all in the name of survival. Ironically, the scarcity mentality that’s adopted to keep the church alive can lead to its death.

By contrast, modeling generosity with our budgets sends a message to both our congregants and the community. When we’re reasonably generous with our staff salaries, missionary support, community outreach events, and local mercy ministries, it creates a culture of generosity among our people and among like-minded churches.

Lead in Faith

Generosity shows a deep faith in the Lord’s provision that our people can, and should, imitate. In a time when the church at large is losing money, I understand it can be scary to be generous with the resources we’ve received. But generosity with wisdom is good stewardship.

Generosity shows a deep faith in the Lord’s provision.

If our congregation isn’t generous, we could blame them or the culture. We could assume they need to change. That may be true, in part. But discipleship always starts from the top and trickles down. As leaders, we need to look at ourselves first—at our faith in God’s provision and at our budget practices. Do we trust that the Lord owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Ps. 50:10)? And does that truth inform both our individual faith and how we use our church finances?

Let’s not waste the opportunity created in our annual budget to model generosity and facilitate discipleship. By God’s grace and power, let’s reverse the vicious cycle created by our scarcity mentality and foster a culture of generosity among our churches.

​