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Why are churches always under budget?
What makes it worse is that a lot of this churches preach "Being financially responsible"
but I don't remember ever going to a church that wasn't under budget.
Umm, if they're under budget with their proposed spending that sort of means they're financially responsible in not spending what's been projected. So, by definition, they don't have a spending problem.
You probably mean over budget, as having spent more (over) their budgeted amount.
Several thoughts come to mind. Declining church attendance could equate to declining revenues. Financial mismanagement of course.aybe you only remember the churches that say they are over budget, and don't pay attention to the ones that have balanced budgets.
The cynical part of me thinks that they aren't really over budget, they simply cry wolf to shake the money out of parishioners pockets.
I have been to churches that live within their means. It's not rocket science.
I visited a local church for a concert recently and noted that they're flush enough to have a 100-rank pipe organ in a town with 30,000 permanent residents. I'm talkin' endowments, baby! All you need is 3 or 4 wealthy families and you're good to go.
It really depends ... small town churches that come into existence more because someone had doctrinal disagreements with the other 3 churches competing for the same 800 residents, tend to always be "up against it". Churches that actually have a sufficiently sized "market" to support it will do better.
Why are churches always under budget?
What makes it worse is that a lot of this churches preach "Being financially responsible"
but I don't remember ever going to a church that wasn't under budget.
Do churches have a overspending problem?
You mean under funded. It's because "God" actually doesn't feed the birds of the air nor cloth lilies of the field.
It's because the organizers (Pastor and family, etc) most of the time think it's their "job" and they should be payed for it, not by the independent grace of God, but by the congregation (sometimes they think the congregation IS the body of the God they "wage-work" for). Some might be knowingly corrupt, others are accidentally corrupt because of their money-centered tendencies, and others aren't corrupt at all but use all the money legitimately. I think that last group should be helped to weed out the shame that comes from the first two.
Yet in every Church I've been to, they always need money from the congregation. The Catholic Church "happened" to need money to fix the air-conditioning in the "left side of the Church." A Protestant Evangelical Church needed funding for "local missions (gas money etc)" and "rent for the elementary school's cafeteria" and "seed investment"... Another Protestant Evangelical Church needed money for "Seed investment" "commanded tithes" "Church expenses" but that one's tax-free property was owned by a local rich man that owned half the town.
Saddam Hussein was given the "key to the city" of Detroit because he donated a vast sum of money to a local Christian denomination representing christian immigrants from Iraq.
We are always in a deficit at my church. Easy to figure out. Expenses exceed income. It's a small parish and most of the members are not wealthy. We pay our part-time priest a housing stipend only.
In addition, we willingly take a hit on some things for the sake of helping others. Example: five days a week, 12-step programs like A A and N A meet in our basement parish hall. Electricity for lights and air-conditioning, oil for heating, toilet paper, water, etc. use by the groups costs about $15k a year. They pass their baskets but addicts generally don't have a lot of money either so the total we get from them annually is around $3k. We'll eat that because we want them to have a place to meet to aid in their recovery.
We try to be creative. A landscaping firm bought the property next door and set up shop. They don't have enough parking space for their employees so we just cut a deal with them that they can park in the church lot during the week in exchange for doing our snow removal and putting the stones down on the lot in the spring. Snow removal last year was $3,600. This is a good savings.
Because members don't tithe. If they did that would never be a problem.
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