When most pastors think of ministry, they are energized by helping people. They aren’t usually nearly as excited about the financial aspects. I’ve recently started Fully Funded, an organization to help church leaders lead well in the area of financial stewardship, with Michael Lukaszewski of Church Fuel.
We want to provide Pastors and Church Leaders with all the resources we possibly can to help make their church successful both spiritually and financially. Finances cause people an enormous amount of stress personally and it’s just magnified when we have to deal with more.
It doesn’t have to be that way though. Finances have ability to energize you and keep you on the mission the Lord has called you to! We have created 5 key financial documents every church needs to help create systems to building a strong financial foundation. You can download them here and read about them below.
Here are five key financial documents every church needs:
- Budget – Without a plan, the church will not be able to maximize every dollar for life change. Proverbs 21:5 speaks to this: “The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty.” An effective budget will provide clarity and will build trust with the congregation and community. Trust allows the vision to take place
- First-time Giver Letter – A church cannot survive without the faithful financial support of its congregation. And growth is challenging without gaining new givers. Your church should have a process to ensure that new givers are noticed and sent a first-time giver letter to thank them for their gift. First-time givers that are thanked are much more likely to give a second gift and move into becoming a consistent supporter of your ministry.
- Purchase Order – This document helps ensure that larger purchases are approved by the appropriate people within your church. It also creates clarity for the financial administrator as they maintain the budget.
- Reimbursement Request Form – Invariably, volunteers and staff of your church will need to purchase something with their own money. This document creates a clear review process to reimburse their out-of-pocket expenditure. It also creates a paper trail so we know what happened when.
- Finance Team Job Description – This document can become a “secret sauce” of successful financial management. It clearly outlines the requirements of this position and ensures that your ministry has the right type of leaders in place to lead you now – and into the future vision God is leading you to accomplish.
Remember, the main focus of these documents is to help create systems in your church that create a strong financial foundation so that you can focus on doing ministry not the next bill. That’s why we created Fully Funded. To help Pastors focus more on ministry.
We wanted to make sure you not only knew about these 5 financial documents we went ahead and created them and are giving them away for free here.
What are some other documents that are essential to management of your church’s finances?