Friday, November 06, 2009

Challenging Church: Where the Money Goes

Current Church Reality - According to a survey done by Your Church in 2009...
1,168 respondents-
• Median church operating budget is $295,300.
• One-fourth of the respondents’ church operating budget (excluding capital fundraising) is less than $200,000.
• 14% of respondents’ church operating budget is $1 million or more.

Church Challenge Question: According to this survey, inward spending (salaries, building, utilities, maintenance/cleaning, property/liability insurance, office/administration and equipment/supplies, denominational contributions/fee) currently makes up 82% of our church expenses. Outward giving (international and domestic mission support) makes up 10% of church expenses.
Question - Does this seem off kilter? I realize that paying staff can pay dividends outside the church and there are necessary costs of keeping a building up and going, but something still seems wrong here.
I'm not sure that I have an answer to this overloaded spending scale, but I sure would like to see churches start showing our priorities through our spending...well, maybe we already are.

2 comments:

Tuffy said...

Dangerous stuff to post, my friend. :)

T Just said...

yea, i guess so. but i've got to think that most people would feel at least some discomfort reading these statistics. if we don't then i guess we've lost touch with the gospel of Jesus.