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Pastor Austin Gardner and VBM Director Jeff Bush discuss the importance of establishing a budget for churches on the mission field and how exactly that can be done.

Notes on Establishing a Church Budget 

• Intro
  • Center for World Evangelism
    • Currently looking for property right now 
    • All the training that we do to prepare missionaries to the field will be in one place 
    • This is the dream we’ve had for all these years 
    • Currently there are 60 missionaries with the board 
    • 40 missionaries are missionaries sent out of Vision Baptist Church
    • We want to see the Training Center have over 100 students 
    • We want to see the number of missionaries sent out of our board and others increase astronomically 
    • We are in the process of raising $2,000,000
    • There is $277,680 in the bank that has already come in 
    • We are asking God to provide all this money without our having to go into debt
    • Would pray with us that God would do big things?
    • Jesus is coming soon, time is running short, and we must be about the Fathers’ business! 
    • You can find more info on worldevangelismcenter.org 
    • $2,000,000 seems like a lot, but if you think about 400 churches giving $5,000, it really is completely possible
  • Should we help our churches establish a budget, and how can we when the offerings fluctuate so much on the mission field?
    • They fluctuate a lot in the states, too
    • You must teach your people to give 
    • Often we are embarrassed to ask God’s people to give, yet, if we don’t, we can’t do the work that God has called us to do 
    • Giving has been a fundamental part of God’s work since the beginning 
    • Cain and Abel learned to give from their parents 
    • From the very beginning we have had giving 
    • We need to learn to be a giver and a teacher on giving 
    • Many missionaries and pastors aren’t givers 
    • No one is exempt from giving 
    • Even the Levites gave a tithe of the tithes 
    • Do everything you can to train your people to give 
    • You are the spiritual leader and people are watching you
    • We end up hurting our people by making excuses for why they cannot give 
    • God is not trying to get your money, because He is in need 
    • He is the Creator and owner of everything 
    • It doesn’t matter how much money someone has, they need to learn to honor God by being a giver 
    • This is a foreign concept to them 
    • “I’ll give you the minimal amount to get you off my back.” Somehow we’ve allowed this kind of thinking into the church
    • We need to get rid of that attitude 
    • Giving is not just for the work of the ministry, it’s for the giver! 
    • God doesn’t need our money, but He does want us to stretch our faith to give 
    • When we teach the people that they should give, the ministry will grow, their faith will grow, and good things will happen! 
  • What are some practical steps to teach people to give?
    • Set up a systematic way of giving 
    • In Peru, we used a system of envelopes 
    • This was a way for the treasurer to keep track of what was being given where 
    • It was also a way to encourage the people to continue to give 
    • You want to do offering devotions that are three minutes long and are very straight forward on giving 
    • We would even use verses on giving as memory verses 
    • It should be a part of your discipleship material 
    • It should be right there with soul-winning, praying, Bible reading and so on 
    • There should be no embarrassment over teaching people to be givers 
    • We used to take the entire month of January to talk about stewardship 
    • The people needed to be taught that God owns their stuff! 
    • There has been times where people would not want to take off of work to come to church and to give. They felt like they couldn’t afford it. 
    • But after being challenged, they would finally take that day off to go to church and start giving.
    • They were amazed to find that they actually had more money than they did before! 
    • Having people share their testimonies of God blessing their giving is a great way to encourage others 
  • How do you establish a budget for the church? 
    • You need to have a men’s meeting 
    • Show them how much money came in, how much went out, and what it went to.
    • Keep them involved and up-to-date with the needs of the church 
    • The men need to feel responsible 
    • If the church will ever be indigenous, they have to know how to manage money 
    • Set up the budget based on percentages from the very beginning 
    • It’s not easy to make a budget when you don’t know what will be coming in 
    • We’ve set it up to have our pastor’s get 50% of the offerings of the church
    • This encourages the pastors to see that if they work hard and win more souls and help the church grow, their personal income will increase 
    • You can’t overpay a pastor. At least not in our circumstances 
    • Without the pastor, you can’t have a church
    • Take good care of the pastor.
    • The missions budget comes from faith promise 
    • There is nothing wrong with taking missions out of the general budget, but we don’t want to teach our people to tithe 
    • We call tithing “teething” 
    • It’s something that you do when you get started 
    • We hope that they would give much more than that 
    • We are unashamedly encouraging our people to be major givers 
    • You can take care of the building if they will take care of the rest 
    • You can buy them a building or pay the rent on it, and they can take care of the pastor, utilities, and all that sort of things 
    • So 50% goes to the pastor, 10% goes to the building fund, and another 10% goes to new works 
    • They had their building given to them, and they can help another church get their building 
    • The rest of the budget will pay for utilities, bulletins, cleaning supplies, etc. 
    • From the beginning the people need to be taught to be extremely generous with their pastor 
    • Teach the people to be very clear with the money in the church 
    • For example, $1,200 came in, and here is where all that money went 
    • People appreciate the transparency of handling finances 
    • People will be willing to give, because they knew where the money went 
  • How can you teach someone to take care of the money?
    • When the offering comes in, you should have two-three people that you trust to count the money 
    • Those people will sign on a paper showing how much money came in 
    • They should count it in the open where people can see 
    • They then give that money to a treasure who signs the book showing that the money was deposited 
    • There should always be two people who are watching what is going on 
    • We know that all men are sinners, so theft can happen anywhere. It happens here in the US
    • We need to establish all the checks and balances that we can to fight that 
    • You could even have classes in the men’s meeting teaching the men what it will take to help them become independent 
    • Teach them what it will take to pay utilities, to pay a pastor, to keep up the church, and so on 
    • It is our responsibility as missionaries to start the church in a way that will allow it to continue after we are gone 
    • God has a way of taking care of His own people, and we need to trust Him to do it 
    • Don’t fall for the idea that people cannot afford to give 
    • If they can bring in ten eggs, they can give an egg 
    • They are living off of something 
    • You can teach them how to give 
  • Our Generation Conference
    • We would like to invite you 
    • This is a rebranding of the Summit that we have hosted for many years
    • January 2-4, 2020 Thursday afternoon, Friday, and Saturday morning 
    • More info on visionmissions.com 
    • It’s located at Lake Lanier
    • We are working to make this the most exciting conference we’ve had yet
    • We have new plans and goals to get people involved