At our church, we have a finance committee made up of some of the deacons and pastors who work together to make up the budget and to make financial decisions and the congregation is not involved in that. We then have a budget meeting once the new budget is written up and anyone can come to that to hear the budget presented, ask questions and such. Then finally, we have our annual dinner with the budget vote and while the dinner is a huge long potluck dinner with games, skits, fun and such, the vote only takes about a minute or so and in all the years I've been at this church, the budget passed quickly.
Now what surprised me the first time I went to the budget meeting was just how anticlimactic it was! It would take about 20 minutes to present the budget and then MAYBE there was a question or two but the whole meeting would last maybe 30 minutes. I was surprised that there were no arguments, no harsh words or anything like that.
So last night was our budget meeting. Only 4 people came who were outside of the staff/deacons and the only question was "So we're working at a deficit?" because we've been taking in less money per week than what we need to do the budget. But the answer to that was "According to the budget we are but because we don't do anything if we don't have the money, we've been cutting costs so that we're not getting to the budget limits so we're within the practical budget and below the actual budget."
Are we the only church that has budget meetings like this? I know that we have an administrative pastor who's in charge of all of the finances and he makes sure that we're audited every year and the books are quite transparent. He's SO tight financially and is really careful with money so we know that money isn't just being tossed around willy-nilly so I think that helps but still! Our old church would argue over the toilet paper brand and here's a budget of over $2 million that had just one question??? LOL I mean the meeting was at 7:30 and I was still able to make it to Friendly's before 8 to get in on the fund raiser for Downs Syndrome. :thumbs:
Now what surprised me the first time I went to the budget meeting was just how anticlimactic it was! It would take about 20 minutes to present the budget and then MAYBE there was a question or two but the whole meeting would last maybe 30 minutes. I was surprised that there were no arguments, no harsh words or anything like that.
So last night was our budget meeting. Only 4 people came who were outside of the staff/deacons and the only question was "So we're working at a deficit?" because we've been taking in less money per week than what we need to do the budget. But the answer to that was "According to the budget we are but because we don't do anything if we don't have the money, we've been cutting costs so that we're not getting to the budget limits so we're within the practical budget and below the actual budget."
Are we the only church that has budget meetings like this? I know that we have an administrative pastor who's in charge of all of the finances and he makes sure that we're audited every year and the books are quite transparent. He's SO tight financially and is really careful with money so we know that money isn't just being tossed around willy-nilly so I think that helps but still! Our old church would argue over the toilet paper brand and here's a budget of over $2 million that had just one question??? LOL I mean the meeting was at 7:30 and I was still able to make it to Friendly's before 8 to get in on the fund raiser for Downs Syndrome. :thumbs:
