Leadership with Vision Podcast

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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