Session One
Turning Your Church Budget Process into Vision Season
If I asked your favorite ministry season of the year, what got you so excited you couldn’t sleep the night before, or what energized your study time like nothing else, what would you say?
Many pastors might immediately think of Easter Sunday while others might be really thrilled by special services like family dedication, baptisms, or mission trips, but I cannot think of a pastor who would say “church budget season!”
I get it. People are your thing and studying scripture motivates you like nothing else. Maybe spreadsheets were never a part of your ministry training. However, what about vision? What if every year you took advantage of church budgeting season to launch a visionary initiative that turned spreadsheets into spiritual momentum?
I am not a detail guy, but I am a vision guy. Every pastor has vision. However, it can be a real struggle to turn vision into action because there are so many obstacles. A helpful leadership principle we can embrace is to turn a routine ministry season into a vision season.
Here is the backdrop. Every pastor has vision he dreams about. However, sometimes it can appear that you need to manufacture a moment to insert your agenda into a meeting, or you have to wait for a crisis to open the door of conversation for change, neither of which is enjoyable.
However, if every year you insert vision planning as a part of your normal budget preparation work, you will have a moment every year where your leadership is awaiting the conversation. Now you can begin to consistently move the church forward in more enjoyable, incremental steps.
Here are some tips on how to turn the church budgeting process into a visionary process. In future blogs I will share practical ideas on how to lead the budget meetings, how to rally your team, and how to raise resources as your congregation approves the annual budget.
1. Create a clear long-term vision. To be clear, I am not suggesting a twenty-page document that took three committees five years to assemble and is now outdated. Think simple.
In five years, what kind of church would you enjoy leading? Here are some sample 5-year vision statements that may serve as inspiration for you.
A monthly baptism service will be considered normal.
We will enjoy two Sunday morning worship services with 10% of our attendance being guests.
Fifty percent of our families will engage in daily quiet times, a week of mission service, and a month of fasting every year.
2. Focus your team around a one-year goal that is one significant step toward your five-year vision. Let’s use the sample vision statement in bullet #2, “We will enjoy two Sunday morning worship services with 10% of our attendance being guests.”
With this kind of focus there is a lot to do! Here are some ministry areas that may need addressing. Since you will not be able to solve all your challenges in one year, you can take it on in bite-sized chunks. Here are five, sample one-year goals you could consider.
2022 | Invest resources in our facility and ministries that will make a great first impression on our guests as well as raise the level of excitement in our people. Areas of focus could be signage, parking lot, grounds, welcome areas, children’s ministry, and worship.
2023 | Locate three to five opportunities in our community where we can invest both dollars and people. Get our church into the community, planting seeds in brand new relationships.
2024 | Expand our team. This will involve an investment in both growing lay leadership, volunteer teams, and possibly adding staff. Multiple services will require a deeper bench. Growing leaders takes time.
2025 | Consider re-branding our church, website, signage, and social media. Create a fresh, new look and message that engages the community.
2026 | Launch a second service, optimize guest services, and maximize our new member process.
3. Review current year attendance, giving, and expense numbers to learn all you can. It is important that you function as the expert in the room in terms of your key metrics and trends. This will also give you an opportunity to formulate which expenses might need to be re-directed in future years to help achieve each yearly goal.
It is impossible to achieve your goals without aligning your resources. Aligning dollars is difficult when there is no predetermined goal around which leaders may rally. The unity around clarity enables the next conversation of alignment. Forcing vision and alignment without intentional and incremental steps can lead to hurt feelings while demotivating your team. Begin with vision, move to goals, then align your resources.
Did you check out the video I created to help you with this blog?
Be on the lookout for my next blog on “How to Rally Your Team Around Vision and the Budget.”
Todd McMichen serves as Chief Development Officer for Alabama Baptist Children’s Homes & Family Ministries (ABCH). Prior to joining ABCH, Todd served local churches in a variety of leadership positions for over 30 years. His experience ranges from small rural churches to suburban mega-churches with several church plants in between. Additionally, he has years invested in bivocational ministry. Most recently, he served as the Director of Generosity and Digital Giving at Lifeway Christian Resources. Todd believes in living generously and inspiring others to live joyously in generosity as well.