On Money

DON’T TOUCH IT.

As pastor in your congregation, it is a good idea never to touch money—the congregation’s cash that is.

Money is one of the three great temptations. Many a pastor has lost his ministry and damaged his congregation because he took money that was not his.

Normally small things start this. You have a petty cash fund that you dip into to stretch things out until payday. You will pay it back! But soon the $20 has become $200, and things get out of control. Or maybe you are collecting cash from the youth for a camping trip. You and your wife could use a new tent, so you purchase one out of the youth money, since they will use it too, but it ends up in your garage. A toy purchased with the congregation’s money for a children’s sermon finds its way into your own child’s toy box. Pretty soon you find more and more ways of using the congregation’s money for your own purposes.

Don’t touch it. Don’t have a petty cash folder for your use; a charge card with stringent reporting systems will accomplish much the same purpose. Do not be the one who collects money for trips. Do not be involved in counting the weekly offering. (In another place I have suggested that you ought to know, at least from time to time, how much people give. But you should never be involved in the actual counting.)  If someone says, “Pastor, I forgot to put this money into the offering plate, will you put it in for me?” Don’t do it. Find an usher or elder to take care of it.

Let this be an inviolable rule: don’t touch the congregation’s money. Build this boundary. Let it be clear to you and your leaders. There will be other temptations to misuse (which is a euphemism for stealing) money in addition to the temptation that cash presents. Having this boundary will be a good start to keep you above reproach.

MAKE SURE TWO TOUCH IT.

Even as you must protect yourself from temptation and sloppy practices, so as pastor you must protect others in the congregation from the same.

The key practice for protecting people from the temptation to take money, cash or checks or other funds that are not theirs is to always have at least two people, not from the same household, responsible for dealing with money. There are three applications of this:

• Counting the Weekly Offering: Always have teams of at least two people handling the money. Have a pair of people, the elder and head usher perhaps, secure the offering in a counters’ bag after service. Have the entire counting team stay together until the counting is completed.

• Managing the Money: You may have one person, a church administrator perhaps, who actually manages the congregation’s finances, but he should base his reports on totals that can be substantiated by bank records and counters’ reports that a second person, normally the treasurer, regularly reviews. The administrator should not be doing any of the offering counting, and if he manages expenses, his own expenditures should be reviewed by another person.

• Annual Financial Review: Have an annual internal financial review by a team of at least two people not involved in the congregation’s finances on a regular basis. On a less frequent basis you should have a review, compilation or audit by an outside auditor. (Seek the advice of an accountant on this. There are different levels of review. They vary in both complexity and expense.)

MAKE SURE TO TOUCH IT OFTEN.

Make sure that you preach and teach often about money. Jesus did.

When you preach and teach about money, let your focus be on breaking people’s trust in money and building their trust in God. Jesus said (and he meant it!), “No one can serve two masters.  Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.  You cannot serve both God and Money.” (Matthew 6:24) As pastor you must deal with the subject well and regularly. Money, and the things it can buy, is the chief competitor to Jesus for your people’s hearts.

People complain about “always hearing about money” in church for two reasons:

• They have an unhealthy love of money, and they do not like their idolatry attacked.

• The pastor has an unhealthy love of money, and he is too focused on what the money can do for him or for the institutional church.

Don’t ever apologize for the first of these. Work, pray and tithe like mad to avoid the second of these.

Your mismanaging of money will destroy your ministry’s significance in a flash. Properly dealing with money will move it toward significance.