Leading Your First Budget Retreat
By David Putman and Todd McMichen
We all desire to do a better job when it comes to our church’s budget. How many times have we had to move funds from one line item to another creating a lack of clarity, confusion, and frustrations among our board and staff? How many times have we over-funded the wrong program while under-funding the right opportunity? Imagine for a moment a way forward with your budgeting that is clear, concise, catalytic, compelling and most of all on point. Imagine leaving a budgeting meeting as a team energized about the next ministry season instead of weighed down by spreadsheets and numbers.
One way forward is a vision-based budgeting retreat. The following is a simple step-by-step process to consider.
Prep
Reconsider your language. Language creates culture. This is especially true when it comes to your church’s budget. Does your language indicate scarcity or provision? A church with a generous culture chooses its language carefully. A budget becomes a spending plan or investment plan that funds your vision. Your budget retreat becomes more about how you “finance the mission” and less about how you divide up the “money pie.” Regardless of what language you use, connect it to your vision.
Turn a “have to” into a “get to.” Long before your budget is due, plan an offsite meeting for the purpose of resourcing next year’s vision. Nothing frustrates a team more when it comes to budget than to be excluded or have budget planning sprung on them at the last minute. Budgeting can be stressful enough without creating unwanted urgency with last minute planning. People are down on, what they are not up on. This includes your staff.
Do some spiritual prep. Before the offsite, consider spending some team time working through a book or some devotions on generosity. Encourage your team to begin a journal noting how God is speaking to them related to their specific area of ministry and better collaboration as a whole. You may consider using a tool like Leading A Generous Church by Todd McMichen.
Work on your vision. The question we need to answer prior to any attempt at budgeting is, “Where is God leading us?” This is the question that underpins all of your stewardship. Remember, budgeting is about resourcing your vision. An excellent resource for working on vision is God Dreams, a book written by Auxano founder Will Mancini and Warren Bird. In God Dreams the authors look at vision through four horizons. They are:
- Beyond the Horizon (10 plus years) – This horizon is actually what it sounds like. If you are looking into the future it is what’s beyond your horizon. It’s that one big idea that compels you as a church. For planning sake, it's the big idea that drives your sense of mission accomplished. It’s your ultimate destiny.
- Background Horizon (3-5 years) – Your background horizon represents the strategic objectives you must accomplish over the next few years if you are going to ultimately accomplish your beyond the horizon vision.
- Midground Horizon (1 year) - In your budgeting process, the midground horizon is critical. This is the one thing that you can do or even must do in the next year if you are to advance your vision. It’s that one thing you as a team must pool your resources toward in order to achieve.
- Foreground Horizon (90 days) – These are the four initiatives that must be started within the next 90 days and result in your accomplishing your one big thing or your midground vision.
A potential action point is to have a God Dreams Retreat six months prior to your budget retreat.
During
Start with your vision. If you worked on vision prior to the retreat, spend some time updating the team on the previous vision work. Let the team give you feedback. You can do this around four questions: 1) What’s right? 2) What’s wrong? 3) What’s missing? 4) What’s unclear? Collect the team’s responses on a whiteboard or flipchart. You can refer back to it at another time. Don’t allow the team to get bogged down. Remember this is simply about getting vision in front of the team. If they were part of your earlier vision work, this should move fast and create synergy. If you’ve failed to do any vision work prior to your retreat, you’re not ready to work on your budget. Remind the team that the budget is about funding the vision.
Evaluate last year’s ministry effectiveness. An additional grid for resourcing the vision is evaluating your ministry effectiveness. There are three types of results that you need to evaluate as you consider how you are going to invest next year’s resources - they are input, output, and impact results.
- Input results – These are those things commonly measured in most churches. Things like attendance, baptisms, new members, small group attendance, volunteerism, and giving. These are an important matrix that provide a unique snapshot into your effectiveness in ministry. At the same time your evaluation needs to go further.
- Output results – These are more difficult to measure, but at the same time can be measured. They tend to be more qualitative than quantitative. They describe the qualitative life of the average disciple in your church. Things like: they are experiencing intimacy with God and others, they are living from a place of meaning and purpose, they are engaging in mission, and they are growing in generosity. It’s one thing to attend, and another to experience life change. Output results focus on life change.
- Impact results – Impact goals are even harder to measure, but an important aspect of your overall ministry effectiveness. Are you ultimately having an impact on your community and world? One of the most effective means of measuring your impact results is collecting the stories in your church and community of changed lives and greater community impact. These stories should ultimately align with your Beyond the Horizon Vision.
Input results by far are the easiest to assess. Numbers don’t lie. Output and impact results can be more difficult to measure. Have your team share stories related to output and impact results. For example, an output result would include a story of life change, while an impact story may include a story of community impact. Make sure you pause long enough to celebrate your effectiveness.
Pay attention to your financial details. Wow! Up until this point this hasn’t felt or been like any other budgeting meeting, but you must drill in and pay attention to the details. This involves paying attention to your finances at the macro and micro levels. There are a number of things to consider at the macro level in order to learn more about how people give and how you might disciple them.
They include:
- Did you meet budget?
- Are you living under your means or over your means?
- How many people contributed to your budget this previous year?
- How does giving grow as an individual’s engagement in ministry grows?
- What was the average gift?
- How did giving break down by amounts?
- How many people use some form of electronic giving? What were they?
- Did you have unbudgeted expenses?
- Do you have large capital needs on the horizon?
- What are your cash surplus levels?
- How is your debt to budget ratio?
Once you have a handle on the big picture, it is time to dig deeper and pay attention to your budget at the micro level or ministry level.
This includes:
- Were there areas that were over budgeted?
- Were there areas that were under budgeted?
- What ministries are in growth, plateau, or decline?
- What ministries did you see the highest and lowest return on invested dollars?
- What ministry line items could be reduced or eliminated?
- What ministry line items need to be increased or added?
- What new investments do you need to make to support your one-year horizon and measurable results?
Be willing to give “up in” order to “go up.” Give your team some time to make adjustments based on all that has taken place up to this point in the retreat. Let them work in subgroups. You will be surprised how this collaborative process will open up the willingness for team members to make sacrifices. When you include them in the process, they are more than likely willing to lead the way and the charge. Ask every team to give up something for the common good. Create a spirit of sacrifice by leading the way.
Conclude the retreat with a season of celebration and prayer. Model the way by affirming the contribution of the entire team. Celebrate the specific contribution of team members by highlighting how they have lived out the values of your church. Call the team to a season of fasting and prayer for next year's vision.
Post
Scrub the results before presenting the final budget. This next step requires time. Let the team know that the executive and finance team will pray and look at everything over the next few weeks before presenting the final budget to the entire team. Make sure you don’t over promise and under deliver. It is better to under promise and over deliver. Have a defined time when you will bring closure to the budgeting process. Informally include the entire team in the scrubbing process by soliciting feedback when needed.
We are recommending a process that is more vision based than most. Why? It keeps the process fresh and every year people know you rally around the vision. This will help diminish silos, personal entitlements, relational fears, and prevent you from just doing the same thing every year. Vision based financial leadership will also create the necessary clarity that when enacted properly will produce generosity, confidence, and surplus.
> If you haven't already, be sure to download the "Vision-based Budget Retreat Tool" for additional helps in developing a budget retreat.