Budgets, Churches, and Faith

While attending the business session of the South Carolina Baptist Convention yesterday I was a little bit discouraged as we voted on the 2010 budget, which has been cut from last year. All the "right" reasons were given--the economy, less Cooperative Program giving, churches are hurting, etc., etc., etc. And I wondered, where is faith?

Churches have two ways to put a budget together and a preacher yesterday put it well--either a fact based budget or a faith based budget (preachers love alliteration!). Most of the time here is what we do: we place the previous year's budget alongside this year's requests, determine what the giving patterns will likely be, and then put a budget together.

That may be fine for a business that runs on business rules, but I've always been uncomfortable with a church doing that. Why? It is because a church runs in a different sphere than a business. A church's "boss" is the Lord Jesus Christ. There is nothing He can't do or can't provide for His church.

So how should a church put a budget together? It should do so on its knees. A church should seek the Lord Christ, petition Him for an unveiling of His will, then obey His will no matter how much it "costs" in budget bottom line. When a church does this the Lord will make sure that a church does not have the resources which the people can see how it will all get done. Instead He will call upon His people to walk with Him by faith, believing He can do through them what they cannot do. In other words, He will ensure that He gets the glory and not the church. When those resources come, then the people of God grow in their walk with Him, learn even more how to walk by faith, and will take even bigger faith steps in the future.

Does this mean that the church should not be responsibile stewards of resources? Absolutely not! However, a church's budget like everything else should be a statement of faith--"We believe God to do what we cannot do!" When the people of God employ a "faith" budget, then God moves in power. However, when we put together a "fact" budget God allows us to do what we can see and nothing supernatural happens. It is just business as usual.