FINANCES IN POST PANDEMIC CHURCH #1

          I know this isn’t a surprise to you, but there has been (and continues to be) a pandemic. And while the pandemic has affected most, if not all, areas of our lives, it has affected churches as well.  Many church buildings had to close down, many services couldn’t be held in person, although we got really good at services outside and virtual ones. Finances of the church were affected as well. For some churches, there wasn’t an immediate effect, because of PPP loans and/or the generosity of many. For others, the financial effect was immediate and harsh.  A speaker at a workshop that I took during the pandemic said “some churches have suffered because of the pandemic and some have not---yet.”

          Because of this effect, whether it’s immediate or future, whether it’s short-term or long-term, there are some financial lessons that we should remember. I subscribe to a blog called “Leading Ideas” offered through churchleadership.com, and one of their recent blogs had eight financial lessons we should learn. I think some of them are common-sense and are important, pandemic or not. I am citing that blog, but am paraphrasing much of what I learned. This week’s blog will include four of those “lessons”.

1.   Know your folks. Not everyone was affected the same way. Some people lost jobs, some people were declared essential, some actually had reduced expenses. You can’t assume everyone suffered financially during the pandemic in the same way.

 

2.   Keep asking people to give. Some churches have stopped asking because it was a challenging time. If you stop asking, some people stop giving, and the financial issues of the church become worse. Think of it this way: no matter when, there are always going to be people in the church who are “on hard times”. There are illnesses, job losses and other challenges. If people stop giving because they are unable to give, they are still valued. This is why knowing your folks helps in determining what is going on in their lives. Not because finances are their lives, but finances are usually a symptom of a change. A reason why knowing what folks give is an important pastoral concern.

3.   Adjust generosity efforts beyond the “norm”. Our traditions of asking for and receiving money have stopped working. And it has nothing to do with the pandemic. They had stopped working before, but we could ignore the issue until the pandemic forced us to face it head on. Fewer people attend regularly, so if you consider the church a pond, there are fewer fish to fish for. The good thing about the pandemic is that electronic giving became necessary. But simply spending a minute during a virtual service inviting people to click their phone on the QR code on the screen or send a check isn’t going to do it. Be creative about soliciting those electronic gifts!

4.   Develop other streams of income. It is becoming obvious that it’s not possible to support the ministry of the church solely through the offering plates (or electronic giving). If your only stream of income are those offerings, you will only see scarcity, not abundance. God has provided an abundance. We simply have to open our eyes. Look at our assets. Those assets include: money, physical buildings, land, space, partners, people, and others. I encourage you to consider looking at what your assets are—all of them. A book that I found fascinating and very informative on this very topic is The Coming Revolution in Church Economics: Why Tithes and Offerings Are No Longer Enough, and What You Can Do About It by Mark Deymaz with Harry Li (Baker Books, 2019). The author says the purpose of the book was “to share the why, how, and what of funding local churches beyond tithes and offerings. Ultimately, our purpose is to help your church improve its bottom line in consideration of resources, mission advance, and long-term gospel impact.”[1]

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[1] Deymaz, Mark and Harry Li, The Coming Revolution in Church Economics: Why Tithes and Offerings Are No Longer Enough, and What You Can Do About It (Baker Books, 2019).