Reflecting on faith over a glass of sweet tea.
Last week, my church cut its budget by 16%. As the finance committee went through the budget, they realized that in order to make that kind of cut, they would have to cut staff. That was something no one wanted to do. In fact, it grieved them deeply. It became a loss to them, and they began working through the stages of grief.
Here are the stages that I observed and how the various stages manifested themselves:
I misunderstood a finance report to the extent that I thought we had spent $10,000 more than we actually spent. For our church, a $10k hole in the budget is cause for concern. When I started adding numbers together, though, the numbers weren’t coming out that bad, so I knew something had to be up with the report. The bottom line: The report wasn’t user friendly…
Budgets are tight, and churches everywhere are having to make tough cuts. There are some important things to think about, though, to make sure that you make cuts in the right places.
