Church Budgets…interesting times…

Boy oh boy…these sure are interesting times in our economy and trying to put a church budget together in the midst of so much economic uncertainty can really be interesting. Our staff, here at North Side, have been working through the details of our budget for several weeks. In fact, several weeks ago, we had a “budget work day”… fun stuff for me…not necessarily for the rest of the staff. It was interesting though and I might add…very productive!

As we looked towards next year at North Side, we realized that we had to look at the budget through several “lens”. We have:

• Obligations – Things we are obligated to do.
• Needs – Things we need to do.
• Wants – Things we want to do.

We have a very large obligation here at North Side with the new Worship Center…which, by the way, is now three years old. We are moving to build our loan payment into our budget year by year as we end our current capital campaign. In 2012, we will fully fund our loan payments through our operating budget…much like a home mortgage payment.

We also have needs…things that we need to do for the ministries of North Side. It encompasses everything form office supplies… to ministry tools…to supporting local and international missions.

Finally, we also have wants…the things that would be nice to have…things that would be nice to do…all that, no doubt, are valid wants to enhance the ministries of North Side.

Well, I am pleased to say…we are almost there. What at one time looked like an insurmountable task is coming together rather nicely.

We will be proposing a budget that remains the same as last year and the prior year. After much prayer and discussion, it just doesn’t seem to make sense to increase the budget next year…more on that in an upcoming blog post.

We use a zero based budgeting approach here at North Side, so each person responsible for a portion of the budget starts at zero. The budget is built on obligations and needs. Wants are handled separately. Each line item is reviewed by the ministry leader and the department head and a budget request is submitted. When we all get in the room for our budget work day, we work through the entire budget…in essence, we all get on the same page. We add and we subtract. We give and we take. The result…a unified budget that the entire staff understands and supports.

You might ask how we handle the wants…we create a unified “wishlist” of those items. The we prioritize them as a staff. If funds become available, we then address the wishlist.

This stuff isn’t rocket science. It is God at work in His church. Several months ago, as we were heading into the budgeting process, I was a bit apprehensive…next year the same as this year and the same as last year? As I told Jeff a few minutes ago, sometimes, we need to just get out of the way…His way.

My $10 Bicycle…here it is…yup, I bought a bicycle for $10. The idea was to spend the least amount of money to get the most amount of exercise (besides the obvious free method of jogging or walking).

The bike had a few deficiencies…no chain, no chain guard, nor fenders…but it looked solid, rolled straight, had reasonable tires that were inflated…and a new paint job. So, I bought it…took it home and proceeded to look for a chain. Ever try to find a used bicycle chain? Almost impossible. I ended up buying a new chain…cost me $12.95…now I more than doubled the cost of the bicycle. But, I easily rationalized that it was OK because the chain is obviously the most important part of the bike and spending a little more on the chain was OK. Made sense to me. Well, now I have it installed and everything is working fine on my $23.95 bicycle.

Only now as I think about it….

• I can only ride it during warm months wearing shorts…long pants would get caught in the rain.
• I can only ride in daylight hours…no reflectors or lights…can’t spare the additional cost for these accessories.
• I can only ride on dry days…no fenders to reflect any surface water.
• I can only ride it in my neighborhood…I don’t really have the confidence in it to take it on the highway.

As I look at my bicycle now, I think maybe that $88.00 bicycle on special at Wal-Mart wasn’t such an extravagant purchase as initially thought.

It’s a silly story, but isn’t this so true of life? We look at something, see it and want it without weighing the total cost…we rationalize our purchase or commitment…then before you know it…you are committed and invested way over our head…can’t turn back now. This not only applies to out monetary purchases but also our time commitments as well.

Oh well, I hope that you got  a kick out of this little story about me and my $23.95 bicycle. Hopefully, it provided  just a little food for thought for you.