"The next overhead shows a narrative spending plan, which is the story of what your congregation expects to do in the giving year. In my example you can see how this church used its mission statement to tell the story of what it will do:
- Proclaim the reign of God in worship.
- Proclaim the reign of God through ministry.
- Proclaim the reign of God through community life.
"In writing their narrative spending plan, their story for the upcoming year, they estimate the costs of accomplishing their goals, and spend money to make it happen.
"Please note the advantages of a narrative spending plan. It focuses on doing rather than maintaining. It connects people to the mission. It asks the staff to demonstrate the importance of each of their tasks to the congregation."
Murielle leaned forward. "Will a church still need a line item budget? No. Certainly you will want to maintain a chart of accounts, but the narrative spending plan communicates far more effectively and with greater integrity. A line item budget only tells the congregation the amount of money appropriated to various committees and programs of the church. A narrative spending plan tells the congregation what will actually be done with it.
"You may have figured out your next activity by now. You'll have the next hour to put together your own narrative budget. Use your mission statements, calculators, and current budgets. Then share your narrative spending plan with one other congregation. Don't worry about being precise. The important thing is to experience putting one together." |
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One Congregation's Narrative Spending Plan:
Our mission is to proclaim the reign of God in our worship, in our engagement in mission, and in our community life. We will strengthen our discipleship to this task this next year by:
- Proclaiming the reign of God in our worship through planning and hosting as many as 65 worship events. We will use $75,000 in doing so. This includes some of the expenses to maintain a gathering place for worship, supplies, compensation for time spent to develop messages from scripture for our spiritual growth, administration, and miscellaneous expenses when we host a wedding or a funeral.
- Proclaiming the reign of God by engaging in mission through nine ministry organizations. People from our church are connected to these ministries and we choose to invest in their efforts. These ministries include:
- church planting in Gary, Indiana (Harry and Betty Smith have relocated to assist in this effort)
- our connections to district and denominational resources (Rhonda Becker serves on the conference Christian-education committee)
- prison ministry (Thom Dean and Jack Granger are volunteers)
- economic development and relief (Arliss and Patty Patterson work at the Ten Thousand Villages store)
- our support of the Kranke family as missionaries in Chile
- the food pantry (directed by Sara Fernandez)
- community church services (Laura Matthews sits on the board)
- rescue mission (John Perringer gives one Saturday a month as a volunteer)
- church-related schools (We have six students at the local Christian high school, five students at three of our denominational colleges, and one seminary student.)
Our mission committee is the resource for this work. Our donations to the above-listed organizations and the costs for mission education means we will use $77,000 of collected money for this end. This $77,000 represents our corporate firstfruits giving to extend God's kingdom around the world. It is 38.5 percent of each dollar you have estimated you will give next year, and that percentage will be set aside from every dollar collected during our worship services.
- Proclaiming the reign of God through our community life. This includes the pastoral care we provide for members and friends of our community, Christian education, our fellowship dinners, a significant portion of our pastor's ministry and administrative time, the work of the trustees, fellowship committee, Sunday school superintendents, and a share of maintaining the building in which we meet. We expect to use $48,000 for these things.
We actually hope to collect more than the $200,000 we collectively estimated to give in worship this next year. When and if this happens, we look forward to extending even more generosity than we dreamed.
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