Business of Church: Finance

Two of the most dreaded words to put together for a congregation are Church Finance. No one wants to talk about it other than complaining that the Finance Committee isn't doing their job or if they aren't getting the right kind of funding for a project. I'm not saying this happens at every church, but from my personal experience and the experience of my friends as pastors, this is a common theme.

If you remember in the first week of the series I made a chart or relating business positions to the church. This graph depicts that the counterpart of a CFO in the church is a Finance Committee. So in basic terms to say, the entire Finance Department is supposed to come together and create a budget. The pastor of a church and a select others look for people to be on this committee who seem to fit the positions, whether they may actually have finance experience or not (if you are at a large enough church than you are more so likely to have professionals who work in finance in some capacity. If not, you just need to find capable volunteers.).

Even before getting into budgeting, the church encounters a potential issue of having people who may not have necessary experience. This may not be too bad if you have a smaller church that is not doing a wide assortment of ministries; it can be detrimental if you have a larger budget.

This leads to the actual budget. What exactly does a church need to budget for?
There is actually a lot!
For example (This list is subject to change for different churches. Size, denomination, area, etc determines whether a budget would include this, but overall these are items that would be considered during committee meetings):

1. Youth Ministry
1. Trips
2. Curriculum
3. Purchasing Bibles
4. Supplies (Markers, papers, pens, etc.)
5. Camp Scholarships
2. Children's Ministry
1. Trips
2. Curriculum
3. Vacation Bible School
4.  Supplies (Markers, papers, pens, etc.)
5. Camp Scholarships
3. Hospitality Ministry
1. Meals at church
1.  Food Supplies
2. Cleaning Supplies
4. Utilities
5. Salary of Staff
1.  Lead Pastor
2. Youth Pastor
3. Office Administrator/Secretary
4. Minister of Hospitality
5. Children's Coordinator
6. Music Minister
6.  Basic Up-Keep
7. Mission Activities 
1. Soup Kitchens
2. Missionaries
3. Mission Trips
4. Reach Out Centers
8. Music Ministry
9. Preschool
10. Denominational Dues
1. Paying some amount to the general denomination to sponsor larger denomination programs

This list is honestly the items that pop up at the top of my head of what I have seen on different churches financial statements. Like I said before, there are a lot of items that need to be budgeted for in churches. Now this list as I mentioned above is all relative, because there are a lot of factors that play into whether all of this is needed budgeted. BUT, a major player is if what you are budgeting for goes along with your mission and vision (it all fits together or at least is should fit together).

I understand that this all seems basic and easy to understand. Where the real difficulty comes in is the clear fact that a churches main moneymaker is donation based. If your congregation goes down, your donations go down, but that doesn't mean that your budget does down. And if the pastor or the finance committee tries to cut some ministries of budgets of ministries, people start complaining since the congregation has a voice.

So the major two difficulties is church finance are that you may not have an experienced committee and that donations are all determined on what people show up and how many show up. These aren't the only two issues, because you could include that people may be selfish and seeking too much money or everything starts focusing on money and not the true purpose of the church, but those are not necessarily connected with the finance committee and has to do with the image of the church.


Church finance as a whole is vital and the area that can most relate to a for-profit business. The difference is the donation-based income and also the fact that the finance committee is a volunteer based committee. But if these volunteers do not understand the complexities of what makes up a church, then this can lead to larger problems just like it would in business.

What to Expect:

    Week 4: Church Marketing

    Week 5: Church Strategic Planning

    Week 6: Church Force- Volunteers

    Week 7: Personal Experience/ Wrap Up