Free the Finances

I have pulled out some quotes from a great blog entitled How Churches Really Spend Their Money, the intersection between faith and finance by Dan Foster.

The average U.S. church spends the largest portion of its finances on personnel. Wages accounted for around 49% of the collective U.S. church’s spending in 2018. The second greatest expense was building and maintaining buildings — 23% of the budget.

With around three quarters of the church’s finances dedicated to wages and buildings, the remaining funds are distributed between missions (spreading the message of the church), programs (doing the work of ministry) and dues with 11%, 10% and 6% respectively.

As interesting as the raw data is, I can’t resist making some personal comments about the picture that the data paints. Author James W. Frick once said, “Don’t tell me where your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money and I’ll tell you what your priorities are.”

If you asked the church what it’s primary interests are, you might expect them to say things like spreading the Gospel, developing mature followers of Christ, helping the poor and needy, maybe even fighting against injustice. If this were actually true, you would expect church’s spending actually reflect these priorities. So, do they? The answer must be a resounding, “No!”

Churches spend much more money acquiring real estate and developing property than they do on helping the poor and needy. For every dollar spent doing the actual work of helping the poor and needy, the church spends at least five dollars paying wages to its pastors and leaders. This represents a profound cognitive dissonance between the church’s stated values and its actual values. It all reeks of a system that is determined to preserve itself at all costs. The very idea must make Jesus turn over in his grave — if he were still in it.

To maintain the traditional model of church, where people turn up each Sunday, sit in a pew and hear a sermon from a paid ‘expert,’ is an expensive exercise with — one could argue — limited benefits in terms of real transformation and growth in an individual. In fact, according to Francis Chan, in his book, Letters to the Church, it costs a church $1000 — $3000 per year for each person who attends a church in the traditional model. Let me explain. If you divide a church’s annual budget (say $100,000) by the number of members (say 100), it comes to $1000 per person. Depending on location, the number can be much higher (up to $3000).

What would it look like if Churches did away with their two greatest expenses — paid clergy and buildings? What would it look like if they redirected this money toward the actual work of the Christian faith?

The church that I attend meets in the humble home of one of our members. We gather each week around their table and share a simple meal together where we intentionally remember Jesus. We catch up. We share our joys and struggles. We encourage each other and keep each other accountable. We pray and give. We do all of this without paying a person to lead it. When our church takes up offerings, 100% of the money it given back to bless and help needy and hurting people.

This model of church is reproducible, relocatable, virtually free to run and, to be honest, much more enjoyable and life-giving than anything I’ve ever experienced in the institutionalized church. We all feel like we are growing as people — emotionally, relationally and spiritually.

Critics of this model — usually those who stand to lose the most from it — argue that such a model would proliferate false teaching and heresy because there may not be anyone in the room with the theological training to correct all the misguided others. Ironically though, small group meetings in individual homes was the traditional model of the early church in the Book of Acts and, so far as I know, none of Christ’s apostles had any kind of theological training. notwithstanding the fact that they knew Jesus personally. That wouldn’t be possible now though, would it? The sad reality is, the institutionalized church is just as capable of producing its own kind of false teaching and heresy, with the added possibility of thrusting it onto a much bigger crowd.

In 2017 U.S. churches received $124.52 billion in donations and spent around $90 billion of it paying staff wages, buying more land and building more buildings. But, what could the church achieve with that $90 billion if it were suddenly freed up? Well, it turns out, the global impact would be massive.

Consider this. According to an article in Relevant Magazine:

• $25 billion could relieve global hunger, starvation and deaths from preventable diseases within five years.
• $12 billion could eliminate illiteracy globally within five years.
• $15 billion could solve the world’s water and sanitation issues, specifically at places in the world where 1 billion people live on less than $1 per day.
• $1 billion could fully fund all overseas mission work

That would only leave the church a paltry $37 billion dollars for additional ministry expansion at a local level. How ever would the church cope on such small change?

It’s time for the church to put its money where its mouth is — literally. The Church talks so much about changing the world, and transforming peoples’ lives. Well, it turns out, it has the financial means to actually carry out this mission. However, it’s not going to happen until the institutionalized church surrenders its desire to build its own kingdom at the expense of God’s Kingdom. As for me, you can bet your bottom dollar that I am not going to be part of maintaining the status quo.