Today, we continue to keep a vigilant watch over
creeping legalism in our churches, as it’s easy for the symbol to replace the
substance.
Our churches have gotten bigger!
As our churches have gotten bigger, we’ve added some new
roles including the roles of the executive and administrative pastors.
Men and women who in addition to a calling to ministry also had extensive
business training and experience filled these roles. They were instrumental in
adding processes, systems and procedures that helped the church grow larger.
Glass ceiling lids were broken as many churches grew beyond 500 and 1,000 to
over 5,000 in attendance.
These new processes, systems and procedures came often
from business and industry where multimillion-dollar budgets are common and
where government and public scrutiny require exactness, full disclosure and a
good paper trail.
A little bit of control goes a long way!
For years I’ve championed financial accountability,
transparency and good governance for both nonprofits as well as churches.
At the same time, I’ve cautioned both nonprofits and churches to be careful to
have only enough controls in place to provide proper management reporting and
appropriate governance without being overburdened with time-consuming and expensive
financial, system and procedural controls.
A little bit of control and procedure goes a long
way. Churches with a few million dollars or less in contributions and 40
to 50 employees should be cautious about embracing systems and controls
designed for multimillion-dollar and multinational corporations. Often
there are compensating and more appropriate controls for these churches that
don’t require the extensive and expensive systems. Even smaller churches
can still be managed very successfully with a little separation of duty and a
simple spreadsheet.
The sayings of Jesus are ever appropriate, even in this
situation. The Church was not made for financial controls and systems,
but financial controls and systems were made for the Church.
Reprinted from ChurchExecutive Magazine. July 2012 http://churchexecutive.com/archives/but-the-sabbath-was-made-for-man
