Freeing the church from . . . The Beg, Borrow and Steal Syndrome

Ray Bowman with Eddy Hall

Sure enough, the congregational singing, the prayer time and the special music invited us to worship.

But then something happened that I won't soon forget. The pastor stepped to the pulpit and announced that by the following Sunday the church had to raise over $100,000 for its end-of-the-year mortgage payment. He went on to make a long appeal for funds.

Though his appeal was as gracious as anyone could have made it, by the time it was over, our focus was no longer on the Christ Child; it was on paying the bills. The pastor went on to preach an excellent sermon, but I couldn't enjoy it. The long interruption for fundraising had destroyed the spirit of worship. Nor did the members welcome the appeal any more than we visitors. They had long since grown tired of almost every Sunday sitting through yet another request to pay debt.

Of all the people there, the one who most abhorred what happened that morning was the pastor. He had been forced to take on the thankless task of every week begging people to pay a debt far more massive than the church could reasonably bear. He later told me, "The burden of debt is so heavy, sometimes I don't think I'll survive."

This church, though certainly not by design, had fallen into a pattern of begging, borrowing and "stealing". The pastor was forced to beg because of the church's extensive borrowing, and, in order to make debt payments, the church was having to "steal" funds needed for ministry.

And I was partly to blame.

The difference a hat makes

This church had bought wholesale into the borrow-and-build thinking I had so enthusiastically advocated. They had borrowed for various projects, each time expecting the projects to bring growth, but they had been repeatedly disappointed. Now paying the debt had to come first, even when that meant using funds urgently needed for ministry.

For most of my life, I had considered all of this normal. I had seen pastors beg for money so often that I had thought nothing of it. I was so used to churches putting debt payments ahead of ministry that I had accepted it as the way things had to be. And, of course, I had not only seen church borrowing as normal; I had enthusiastically promoted it.

Then I changed jobs. I became a consultant helping churches coordinate planning of facilities, finances and ministries. No longer was my focus on building church buildings; it was on building churches.

Through working with scores of churches on their finances--~some thriving, others fighting for their financial lives--I learned that the beg, borrow and steal syndrome is widespread, but that it is also curable. Pastors don't have to beg, congregations don't have to borrow, and churches don't have to steal funds from ministry to pay for institutional maintenance. Though the process is neither quick nor easy, a financially burdened church can replace indebtedness with provision, institutionalism with purpose, and insufficiency with plenty.

From indebtedness to provision

Next, I realized that most of the churches asking me for building advice didn't need to build at all; they had better alternatives. I began helping churches devise creative ways to get more out of their facilities. While each situation was unique, some solutions proved useful in many churches:

* Move Sunday school classes to the right-sized rooms. Moving large classes to large rooms and small classes to small rooms gave larger classes room to keep growing.

* Replace pews with chairs. Good church chairs are not cheap, but they cost far less than building. By replacing pews with chairs, some churches made their largest single space, the worship area, useful for a variety of ministries seven days a week.

* Build a storage shed. When rooms were used as storage closets, they could be freed up by building a low-cost storage building.

* Add a fellowship foyer. For a growing church to get out of debt and stay out of debt, it must hold multiple worship services. To make this practical, some churches added a fellowship foyer big enough that those leaving one service had room to visit with those arriving for the next.

Using these and other innovations, some congregations have been able to grow to two or three times the size for which their buildings were originally designed without needing a major building program. Then, when they have built, they have built intensive multiple-use facilities, thereby cutting the number of square feet needed by half or more.

By avoiding interest and by building multiple-use buildings, some churches have saved 50 to 75 percent of their construction costs--money they could then use for the real work of the church: meeting people's needs in the name of Christ.

From institutionalism to purpose

One way to gauge your church's true priorities is to go through your church budget line by line, assigning each dollar of spending to one of six categories. Three of these categories--~facilities, staff and operations--pay for maintaining church structures and ministry programs. The other three are for sharing--money the church gives away to meet the needs of people outside the community, the needs of people in the community and the needs of people within the church.

Maintenance and Ministries

Staff

Operations

Sharing

People in the community

People within the church

How does your church's spending on maintenance and ministries (facility, staff and operations) compare with its spending on sharing? A church that spends freely on itself while giving far less to others may be driven more by institutionalism than by a sense of mission.

Further, is spending among the three sharing categories balanced? Giving to world missions is important, but it is no substitute for personal involvement in ministry to people in need right on your doorstep. For every dollar they give to world missions, I urge churches to also earmark a dollar to meet needs within their own communities and, even more important, a dollar for financial needs of people within the church. If we neglect the needs of our own spiritual family, the Bible says we don't have God's love in us (I John 3:17).

When a church is reducing the proportion of its budget spent on facilities and staff, when it is increasing spending for sharing and outreach, when it is moving toward the goal of devoting one-third of all staff time, facility use and operations spending to ministries of intentional outreach, that church is on its way from institutionalism to purpose. It is learning to put its money where its mission statement is.

From insufficiency to plenty

Why? Because it takes money to operate ministries of intentional outreach. It takes money to add staff. It takes money to adapt or build facilities. It takes money to sustain growth.

How can people be inspired to give at this level? A generation ago, institutional loyalty motivated much church giving. Today Baby Boomers and Baby Busters are far less likely to give out of institutional loyalty than their parents and grandparents were. The secret to inspiring people to give generously, even sacrificially, in today's church is to invite them to give not to an institution, but to a vision.

One pastor explains his church's approach this way: "We don't say, `We need this amount of money.' We say, `This is the ministry God is calling us to do, and, by the way, this is what it will cost.' The vision for ministry comes first; finances are secondary." He has discovered that when people have a vision worth giving to, they love to give.

Set free to fly

By itself, no amount of financial expertise can make ministry happen. But if a passion for ministering to people inspires your church to do whatever it takes to get out of debt, reorder budget priorities and multiply giving, your church can enjoy a greater freedom for ministry than ever before. No longer overloaded, no longer off course, no longer underfueled, your church can be set free to fly.

Adapted from When Not To Borrow: Unconventional Financial Wisdom to Set Your Church Free by Ray Bowman with Eddy Hall (Baker, 1996). Bowman and Hall are consultants working with churches to coordinate planning of facilities, finances and ministries. Bowman lives in Larkspur, Colo. and Hall in Goessel, Kan. They are also authors of When Not To Build: An Architect's Unconventional Wisdom for the Growing Church (Baker 1992).