Page 54 - The Church and Education Pro combined

Ecclesiastes 11:2 Invest in seven ventures, yes, in eight; you do not know what disaster may come upon
the land.

Finally, the church needs determine the best way to spend the money to advance Christ’s kingdom on
earth, not the church’s own kingdom. The church needs to first review the biblical purpose for the
church, and ask some important questions:

Remember, the purpose of the church was to….
1. …proclaim the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ to a lost world.
2. …be involved in Discipleship of those coming to Christ.
3. …be a place of fellowship for the saints
4. …be a place where believers can observe the Lord’s Supper, remembering Christ’s
5. … a place of prayer.
6. …be meeting needs.

So the questions to ask are:

1. How does investing in this building advance the purpose of the church?
2. How fancy of building do we need to accomplish God’s purpose for the church?
3. Does this program advance one of the purposes of the church, or it is merely for entertainment or to
attract people to the church?
4. Is this program essential?
5. Do we need to hire professionals in every area of ministry, or can our lay ministries meet our needs?
6. Our number one calling is to spread the Gospel to the nations. How much of our spending is going
toward that?

After reviewing the activities of the church and how money has been spent in the past, perhaps you may
want to make some revisions. But to complete the budget, you need to take the available projected
resources and divide them among your necessary or planned expenses. This may be done on a spread
sheet via computer.

Once the budget is completed the final step in preparing a budget is to present it to the leadership or
congregation who must agree to this binding document to control spending. Once the accounting year
has begun, appointed officers from the church should record every donation received and have a receipt
for every expense documented. Again, this can be accomplished on a spreadsheet or a computerized
accounting system or by keeping a financial log manually. Monthly a report should be created to
validate that the church income and expenses are within the approved budget, and if not, adjustments
to spending must be made. Normally this report would summarize all sources of income and expenses
in various categories with totals listed within the income and expense sections.

Depending on your country laws, you may have to give a statement to each contributor to the church of
the total contributions made in a calendar year. You must be meticulous in keeping exact records for
each donor known contribution to be able to produce this statement.

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