Managing Church Finances: A Responsibility Every Pastor Must Know (1)

By James Quansah, Pastor

A NUMBER of Christian churches embark on developmental projects in their communities or their nations. Actually, churches heavily invest in the education and health sectors of the economies in which they operate. Besides, churches pay utility bills, salaries and support the needy. This makes churches a development partner in all societies.

In order to do these things, churches require funds. This places a responsibility on Pastors or church leaders to teach and encourage their members to give money often through offerings and special donations. In both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, we read about instances where God commanded His servants to raise funds or the believers themselves willingly gave their resources to undertake God’s projects.

Israel’s leader and shepherd, Moses, comes to mind as one who sometimes asked the people to give. In Exodus chapter 25, God told Moses to tell the congregation of Israel to give offerings for His projects. Then, in Luke chapter 8, we read about some women making donations towards the ministry of Christ Jesus.

Now, it is pointed out that organisations fail or succeed often based on the strengths and weaknesses of their finances. Since no organisation is set up with the objective of achieving failure in the short, medium or long term, but its success, the management of every organisation’s finances is very crucial.

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines finance as “money or other liquid resource of a government, business, group or individual.”

Thus, C.R.K. Ahortor states that the concept of management presupposes that the item to manage, in this case funds, can deteriorate, devalue, become useless or depreciate.  He also writes that the main aim of financial management at the organisational level is to achieve the various goals that an organisation sets for itself for a given time period.

Therefore, the lead Pastor having the oversight responsibility of the church must see to the proper mobilisation of financial resources and their utilisation to achieve the church’s mission, vision and objectives underpinning its establishment.

Akotia thus stresses that “there is the need to account for the use of funds to the funding sources.”  Accounting for the use of the funds is important to disclose whether the funds were appropriately utilised or inappropriately expended.

In John 12: 6, we read about one of Jesus’ 12 disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was said to be having charge of the moneybag and stealing part of the money given to him to keep. In other words, Judas Iscariot was a corrupt accounts officer or financial manager as he misappropriated church funds.

If Judas Iscariot who physically walked with Jesus Christ and heard Him teach with authority did not fear, but could be corrupt and mismanage church funds and eventually be implicated in a deadly financial scandal, then there is every reason to believe that financial mismanagement and stealing abound in today’s churches.

The church has been described as the light of the world, salt of the world and glorified with other similar favourable attributes, yet it has often been plunged into financial scandals. In November 2008, a Pastor of the Heavens Gate Ministry in Ghana allegedly stole GHȼ7000, being the amount realised from a fundraising event organised by the church, and buried it in his compound.

Also, sometime in 2014, in the Bantama locality, an usher of a protestant church was caught stealing money from the offertory box when he was taking it to the account office for counting and recording. These confirm the prevalence of stealing of funds that occurs in churches, which sometimes end up being reported in the media throughout the world, thereby impugning the integrity of the church and ministers of the gospel.

To be continued…

James Quansah is the Executive Director of Christ-Conscious Leadership Centre (CLC) and lead Pastor of End-Time Christ’s Commissioners (ECC), Kumasi, Ghana. James is also a journalist by profession. He is married with four children.