BillLaMorey.com

Pastors, get your Mojo!

I'm honored to have been asked to be a contributor at PastorMojo and here is my first post there.

WHAT, you never heard of PastorMojo??? It is the latest brainchild of Tony McCollum of Tonymccollum.com and pastorgear.com fame.

If you're a pastor, click here to get your mojo!

Casting the Vision to your church's accounting department

(This post is an excerpt from "The Top 3 Accounting Mistakes Churches Make." Pastors and church leaders who work with the finances can get the full report for FREE here.)

I know this may seem weird. We tend to think of casting the vision as something we need to do to raise money, not to help those who manage the money we already have! But pastors, you must understand the heart and mind of your accountants here. They have been wired and trained to manage the resources they are entrusted with as efficiently as possible This means they have an eye to sniff out waste and trim the fat that they perceive in an organization. You want that!

My wife Rebecca has been called a pit-­‐bull with lipstick for her tenacity in areas like this! However, sometimes they will see things they have identified as wasteful and it creates a burden for them. Then when they do the right thing and share that with their pastor or manager, they find their concerns are simply dismissed. Often frustration is then amplified instead of buy­‐in being generated because a pastor or leader didn’t take the opportunity to cast vision.

For example let’s say money is tight and the accountant is upset because the church spent a substantial amount of money on muffins, bagels and coffee last year. A wise pastor would then point out how those hospitality items created opportunities for first-­time guests to stay and get connected and for regular attenders to stick around and experience fellowship opportunities with other believers after service, which resulted in numeric and relational growth in the church. Accountants need to bring you into their world, but you need to bring them into your world too.

(Get the rest of this report here.)

Don't be a pushover!

I am currently involved in a small group at our church right now that is going through Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. Last night was the discussion on negotiating and getting the best deal. If you haven’t checked it out, you should!

While Dave was talking about searching for and negotiating over the best possible deal on a personal level, it got me thinking about searching for deals and negotiating for our churches. After all, what church doesn’t need more money. Too often we turn right to raising more money, but an important part of being a good steward is also cutting down the bottom line expenses wherever possible.

For example, not long ago I asked a staff member to source some prices on recurring supplies. He came back and told me their “best prices”, and I told him “that’s not good enough” (thanks, Ramsey!). I instructed him to go back and tell them we were also checking into their top competitor (which we mentioned by name) and that they should sharpen their pencil and get back to us with their best prices before we make a final decision. Amazingly, their best prices became way better!

A lot of time people think churches (and even Christians for that matter) are easy targets. We shouldn’t be if we want to be good stewards. I’m not saying you should be a bully, I’m just saying don’t be a pushover! Ask for the best deal and  get the best price for whatever you buy. Sometimes all you have to do is ask.

Speaking of best prices, between now and August 8^th, Sharp Churches is offering 20% off our “Turnkey Accounting Kit.” This will help your church save money and manage your money better at the same time! Just click here and then use coupon code Turnkey20 to save 20% until August 8th! Not good enough? Why not try practicing your negotiation skills on me?

Have some class in your church accounting

Many churches unintentionally create unnecessary accounting confusion by overcomplicating the process of tracking special funds. For example, let's say you collect an offering for a benevolence fund or have checks coming in designated for a short-term missions' trip. By law that money must be used for the stated purpose it was collected for. So how can you be sure that every penny is accounted for -especially when the fund carries over multiple years? Some people use spreadsheets or other external tools, but there is a much simpler and more effective way.
 
If you use QuickBooks (which I always recommend for church accounting) you can utilize a very helpful tool called class tracking. You can visit Intuit's support page for how to set up and use this very helpful feature.
 
Of course class tracking is most effective when it is utilized as part of an organized, integrated accounting system that is properly maintained. You can create one yourself or you can get one that has been specifically designed for churches, that is ready to go, and that includes personalized support to coach you through issues like class tracking or whatever else you need. If that sounds helpful to you, then you should take a look at SharpChurch's "Turnkey Accounting System."

Don't let your church get ripped off

 A big mistake many churches make is not having enough checks and balances.

“Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” (Matthew 10:16, NKJV)

Church accounting isn’t just about checks and balance sheets, it must also include a plan of checks and balances to make sure there is accountability in the financial process. By nature those of us that are part of the inner workings of a church generally want to trust people. Especially other people who are also working inside the church. And we should trust people, but that does not mean that we should be foolish or negligent in providing a plan for accountability. A good shepherd uses accountability and a plan of checks and balances to provide protection not only for the church finances, but also for the people assigned to oversee the church’s financial matters.

My wife Rebecca served as an accountant for a very large church for several years that occasionally dispatched her to other smaller churches that needed help, and for several CPA firms that specialized in church accounting.  In that time, she witnessed first hand what can happen when proper checks and balances are not in place. She saw a church where it was eventually discovered that the lead pastor had several secret bank accounts, and he basically treated the church’s money as his own; as evidenced by the excessive improvements made to the parsonage! She saw another church where the treasurer for many years had been embezzling money that reached close to one million dollars!

In the report "The Top 3 Accounting Mistakes Churches Make" we discuss several checks and balances you need to put in place to safeguard your church, and 2 other big mistakes churches make (and solutions). If you are a pastor or you deal with finances in your church, click here to get the FREE report now!

Debt = Bad

I know the title of this post is simple, but that's kind of the point. We all know personal debt is bad, and if you don't, read this article. (In fact I wish the U.S. government would read this article and apply the principles to our national debt.)

The frustrating part of all of this is as simple as this is, we have so many in our government who think and act like we can spend our way out of economic difficulty. And then we have those in the press like Paul Krugman saying that debt isn't all that concerning.

Really?!? On what planet?

This article reveals that "The federal debt will represent 62% of the nation's economy by the end of this year, the highest percentage since just after World War II." Does that even seem real???

And have you seen the U.S. National Debt Clock lately? I dare you to watch it for 30 seconds. It's tragic and heartbreaking because it's like watching our future slipping away in real time.

What can we do? 1. Maintain a personal commitment to get out of debt and stay that way. 2. Keep pressure on our elected representatives to put aside their skillful debate tactics and high-wire economics to embrace what we all know to be true (DEBT = BAD), and to govern accordingly.

After all, if you pay taxes, it's YOUR MONEY!

"People turning to church for financial advice"

Being in a series about biblical stewardship, I found this ABC video interesting.

It was cool to see Crown and Good Sense (via Willowcreek) being covered. It was funny though how the slant made it seem that people turning to the church for financial counsel was some sort of new phenomenon triggered by intense pressures by the current "recession."

The Windows of Heaven

I'm teaching about faith this weekend, so it was pretty naive of me to think that I would not face a personal faith-challenge this week.

Since going full-time with our church and raising outside support to do so, we've really had the opportunity to stretch our faith. One of the things we had agreed to do while I was still working an outside job, was to increase our percentage of giving. When I quit my job, we determined that we would continue to do that no matter how lean things might get.

Well, things got pretty lean this week. My wife told me yesterday that in order to continue our health insurance we had to send in 3-months worth of payment. They would not accept a credit card payment, and it had to be post-marked today. This was not an option for us! We knew that things looked to be shaping up for us in the weeks ahead, but that didn't help us in that moment. We were stuck...

And then the windows of Heaven (Malachi 3) opened up for us. We prayed and shortly after that someone in the community who does not even attend our church called and said they had a donation they wanted to come over and bring us. They SHOWERED us with gifts! Grocery gift cards, toys, a gift card to a restaurant so we can  go on date (with money for a babysitter) and...enough money to help us pay our insurance bill!!! I can't adequately describe how moved we were with their generosity and God's perfect timing.

We did not share this need with the family that met the need and there is no way they could have known how timely their gifts were. They sensed God directing them to do something and they responded. In so doing their faith and our faith was built up watching the hand of God at work!

I hesitate to write this because motives can easily be questioned. Let me just say that mine is to proclaim that God is faithful even if He decided not to come through until the 11th hour. When all of our options have been exhausted, God still has an infinite supply of resources and conduits through which He can provide. That is why circumstances are so often a poor gage of what God might choose to do. We so often think that seeing is believing, but so often with matters of faith and God it's backwards...believing is seeing!

"For we walk by faith, not by sight." (2 Corinthians 5:7, NKJV)

I hope this an encouragement for someone else in or around the 11th hour!!!