When giving is down

Lee Stephenson: Everyone, welcome to Unfiltered podcast. I’m Lee Stephenson with Converge and Converge church planting and my co-host here.

Danny Parmelee: I’m Danny Parmelee. And I oversee church planting for Converge MidAmerica.

Lee Stephenson: And we’re just keeping it real. So I know a lot of our pastors, our listeners out there, totally new rhythm of life, trying to experience like, the highs, the lows of church planting of church leadership. My guess is with COVID, in the pandemic, a lot of guys have wrestled through budget issues. And I don’t know about for you and what you’ve seen, but I know a lot of the guys I’ve talked to, it’s like, we’ll have a really, really good month. And then also, we follow it with a really, really bad month, and I don’t think it helped us with that the pandemic also hit during the summer slump. But it just got me thinking that when it comes to the conversation on this, Danny, I think it’d be helpful for us to just talk a little bit about how do you navigate those tough budget moments in the life of a church, whether or not it’s pandemic-driven, or it’s just the season in the culture of wherever you’re at. What do you do when you realize like, I have more month at the end of my bills than I have money in the bank? You know, what do you do? How do you how do you first process that? Because it just, that’s normal. And that’s just part of church leadership in general is learning to navigate these. So like, what would you think is the very first step for guys to think through when they realizing man, we’ve got to make some cuts?

Danny Parmelee: Yeah, well, I think the first going back to the thing that you said, where the giving is inconsistent, so it might also be a very high month and a very low month, um, speaks to how we need to be careful of not overreacting. So for a church planter, who all sudden has a low month, don’t fire your worship leader, or your kids director like, Hey, sorry, we just we don’t have the money. You’re fired. Um, we just, we can’t afford a worship leader anymore. So we’re just gonna, you know, kind of go on and try to find a volunteer. So instead, what I would say is not making any super drastic long-term decisions, but of trying to figure out, OK, is there a way that maybe there are some minor cuts or some adjustments or to have some of those difficult conversations with everybody, if you do have staff at this point, or even stipend at this point, even if it’s like, Hey, you know, normally we’re paying the children’s director, whatever, 200 bucks a month or something to say, we don’t have it right now. So instead of saying, we need to let you go, is there a way that every person on the team says we’re going to take a little bit less, or maybe it’s even, we’re going to take less now. And if God meets our need in the next month, we can, you know, kind of backfill that type of thing. So that’s, that’s all, that’s what I would say the biggest thing is, is not overreacting, and doing very permanent, long-term things, even if it feels like the ship is going down quickly, because you never know what happens the next month.

Lee Stephenson: So no, I think that’s a great, great advice. And I would say even adding into that, like, work with your accountant or whoever’s handling your books to begin to put together some projections, like, if we play out the same giving habits over the next X amount of weeks, when does the money truly disappear to the point we can’t make payroll or we can’t make rent and so that way you, you’re proactive and thinking through, OK, at this point, I will have to make a drastic decision. But this buys me X amount of weeks in order to either recast the vision, you know, have a conversation with some people in the church that have the potential to even prop us up in this season financially. How do you also lead your church in those moments, you know, any, Like, it’s going to happen, where you’re gonna go through a financial season that’s not ideal. And you’re gonna, you may have to put a hold on the budget and the expenditures and say, you know, we’re just freezing everything. Nobody’s spending extra, including yourself, but how do you engage the church and conversation and give vision and mission to the point that people go, You know I want to give and keep this going?

Danny Parmelee: Yeah. Well, you said it, the key word is vision. I think that vision always works better than desperation. Desperation will work short term, but you have only a few times that you can use that. So what I mean by that is if you get up on stage, it’s like, Oh, my goodness, we haven’t been able to meet budget, we’re gonna get kicked out of our rental facility. We need to take a special offering and raise $5,000 this weekend or, you know, we’re homeless type of thing. If you really need to do that, you could do that. You can do that one time, but you can’t do every single month, and I think that COVID, even if there’s a vaccine, even if there’s all this, there’s still just so much uncertainty, there’s still so much up and down. So instead exactly what you said. It’s casting it from a vision perspective. And I do think that honesty is important. You can tell the church where you’re at, but you’re sharing it in a way to say, Hey, we have had ups and downs, we know that giving is inconsistent because people are losing their jobs, or they don’t, they’re getting question marks from their employer saying, Well, maybe you’re furloughed, maybe you’re fired, maybe it’s a temporary, so they’re giving us you know, all out of whack, just sharing honestly, where you’re at, and then asking them to be honest as well to their there may be key givers that they stopped giving, but they’re only stopping giving for a little bit of time. So I just think honesty and then vision. So I mean, obviously, you’re in it right now, I would be curious to know, um, where the inconsistency is are coming from and if people are feeling comfortable enough to come to you, as the pastor or to staff to say, here’s the situation, you know, because there’s a lot of times there’s shame or embarrassment of losing a job, even in the midst of COVID. Are they communicating? Or are you just being surprised, as the monthly totals are handed to you on your desk? And you’re like, Oh, my goodness.

Lee Stephenson: Yeah. I think, what my advice would be and what we’ve seen, I think, over the history of just church leadership, and even now in our church plant is don’t ever be afraid of talking about money. Just make it a normal part of the conversation of what it means to be a disciple. You don’t want to do it heavy handedly, you know, you do it out of grace. You do it out of love. You help them understand you want something for them, you’re not trying to take something from them, when you build that trust. And it just you stay consistent in that it opens up the door for you to have a deeper harder conversation about money when it’s necessary. And so you’re building equity, for those moments, versus like, if you never talked about it, and then all of a sudden, when you’re in a moment of need you, you now talk about it, people are going to have a little bit of whiplash, they’re gonna be taken back, and they’re probably not gonna engage with that conversation as much, because they’re going to interpret it the way that they want to interpret it. And so I think you start there. I think the second thing is being proactive, knowing ahead of time, like, this has the potential to be a hard season, engage them prior to that actually becoming a reality. And then just make a personal ask, you know, for instance, I, every May, as we approach the summer, we know summer giving’s gonna drop, it just, I mean, 99% of churches in America, it’s going to drop during the summer, because people are going on vacation, they forget about it, they rack up credit card debt, and they’re not going to start giving back to the church until that credit card debt’s gone.

And so I just really encourage guys, like in May have a conversation, tell people, Hey, we’re approaching summer, I know you’re going to take a vacation. I’m going to take a vacation. It’s going to be great. But as you go and do those things, and you have fun with family, you go to that reunion, would you just please don’t forget about the church, because during the summer as a church, this is our planting season, this is when we’re going to really focus in and we want to launch really strong in the fall, and we have some great plans. But if you forget about us financially, it’s going to hinder us being able to carry out the mission that God has called us to do come the fall.

Danny Parmelee: That’s great. One of my other little soap boxes, and I can’t remember if we discussed this already in one of the previous segments, but it’s a great opportunity to just kind of throw it in there right now, too is I’m a big advocate of the lead pastor knowing the giving of their people, even to a very, very individual basis. And the reason why is exactly what you said is that giving is a discipleship issue. And what I said before is, is there may be things that are uncovered during these seasons of stress that you as a pastor would not know about if you didn’t know their giving. So if all sudden you have a family that’s consistently giving, and they’re giving all sudden just almost bottoms out, if you don’t know that you don’t have an opportunity to reach out to them. Whereas if you do reach out to them, and all sudden you find out, there’s a job loss, and there’s some pain. And that may mean that that is now the opportunity for the church to say, Well, we’re the church, we’re here for you, can we get you groceries? Can I help you network to find a job and it’s a pastoral moment, in that it could be a pastoral moment on the spiritual side where someone is operating out of fear, they didn’t lose their job, but they’re so scared that they’re just like, Well, I can’t give there in this time. And so you can disciple in that type of thing. So, again, without going on a whole tangent on it. I just think it’s really important to know people’s giving. Yes, I know that there can be pitfalls and how you treat people. Well, deal with that. That’s between you and God. Confess your sin if you’re treating people differently based on how much they give, but knowing giving is a spiritual and discipleship issue, and your people and during this time, it is going to be a barometer of what’s going on in people’s lives.

doesn’t push you, give: 1000

Danny Parmelee: Yeah, I think too, one of the upsides of this season of even the church having to make financial decisions is it’s actually an opportunity to model for people individually. And so that the church or the planter, the pastor can say, “Well, this is what we’re doing as a church, we’ve had to cut back on this, we’re being really careful. Normally, we have this large, you know, Easter egg outreach, and just knowing where things are going, we’re gonna scale that back.” And you’re really almost subconsciously discipling and training people like, Oh, so I need to kind of manage my own money, and that sort of way. And at the same time, you get to say, you know what, this is a tough season COVID. There’s a lot of unknowns. But we’ve been committed to our missions partnership in Guatemala. So we’re going to continue to give generously as a church. And we can only do that because you guys are generous there. So again, it comes back to vision that you’re able to speak about it, you’re able to share it as a discipleship issue. Lee question for you. So before you talked about a spending freeze, and you said freeze everything, which I don’t think is realistic, so you can’t really like freeze your rent? How do you in the budgeting process if you do have staff, or even volunteer staff or other people that have access to a credit card, how do you help them to determine: Yes, you can still spend this. No, you can’t. I mean, do you just say, here’s your budget? Are you? Are you training them? Do you have kind of like a red light, green light, yellow light type of, you know, spending budget during that time? How do you kind of walk through, whether it’s your plant or other plants that you’ve, you know, coached.

Lee Stephenson: I think it a little bit depends on the severity of the situation. And so you have to interpret it. OK, what is reality? Where are we really at? And if we’re really pinched, and we’re really up against the creek, and I can remember, like our first church plant, having one of those moments, like, if nothing changes pretty drastically within months, or I mean, within weeks, we’re not gonna have money to pay the payroll. Like it’s, we’re at that point. I just told people like, outside of normal every day have to get this done ministry, no spending, you know, so sometimes there’s a season, and I made like, I’m a big believer, like, don’t give everybody in your staff a credit card. Yeah, make them do reimbursements. Because for some reason, using their own credit card and having to turn in the receipts actually helps minimize their expenses. Because it for some reason, it has a little more personal feel to it. But when they use the church credit card, they charge things. It’s like, You didn’t need that, like what are you doing? And then I do agree like you may have to just go, Hey, we’re cutting everybody’s budget across the board. 15%. Or you get X amount of dollars of the budget to spend in the next month and then we’ll reevaluate it for the following month. I do think it’s important to think ahead of what is your strategy, and you know, so whether or not you have a board whether or not it’s your key leaders, what is our philosophy going to be around budget and when we go through tough times, what are trigger marks? In other words, when we get to X amount of money in the bank is that 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, we’re going to, we’re going to pull this trigger. That way, you don’t want it to be so surprised all sudden, in a week, it buries your church, and I’ve seen that happen. My guess is you have too, where they make a financial goof and haven’t been paying attention to it and literally in a week, they can’t pay rent or can’t pay payroll in the church. That’s a disaster, and you have the fiduciary responsibility to make sure that you do everything above reproach, when it comes to how you handle the books or the finances.

Danny Parmelee: OK, so let me dig in a little bit, this could get a little personal, um, with having to make cuts, it’s sometimes easier to make a cut to a program or to an outreach or to scale it back. When you’re talking about payroll. That’s a whole different ballgame. So do you, speak to that a little bit. And then also, should church planters ever decrease their pay? Or is it automatic? In other words, like, Hey, if you’re gonna cut other staff, then you should lead in that and be the first person. So if everyone’s getting a 10% pay cut, you need to lead in that or is it like no, always protect that Because if you start chipping away at that, then … So yeah, speak to that.

Lee Stephenson: No, that’s great. I’m thankful at this point, I’ve never had to actually cut anybody’s payroll. And I think that’s you do the due diligence ahead of time. And hopefully, you never have to get to that point. I’ve never had to let somebody go because of a payroll situation, either. But my, we did have a game plan from day one. And I’ve done this in both of our church plants, when we were all fundraising, we put that money into one pot. Versus you have this, you have this, you have this. And if you don’t have your money, sorry, you’re not getting paid. We just said, “You know what, we’re in this together, we will thrive together, we will die together. And so if the money’s not there, it’s across the board. We’re all going to feel the pinch.” And so and so I had no, no fear of leading the way in that I would rather take the 10% hit right off the bat versus everybody else. And, but I think I think those are, those are conversations you almost need to have on the forefront versus reactionary. That way people understand like, yeah, we are all into this together. And so I’m never gonna ask them to do something I’m not willing to do myself in that. So I don’t know if that fully [answers your question].

Danny Parmelee: Yeah, totally. That’s exactly what I was kind of getting at. And it may be different from person to person, but just how you’ve handled [it]. Um, last thing I was kind of just thinking of here is, do you have any sacred cows or untouchables like you just don’t touch this, from, you know, from the budget, this always needs to kind of remain?

Lee Stephenson: Yeah, I would say a couple things. One, you know, I, we work really hard on the staff, I want to, I won’t overstaff, but I want to pay the staff I have well, and so I work really hard at trying to make sure of that. So I instead for instance, we, for instance, with this, Danny, I would say it comes down to the heartbeat of our pastors, I want to be generous with them, and with my staff, but I’m not going to require them. So for instance, if I can only pay a pastor half time, I’m not going to demand full time work, I’m going to pay him what they’re worth. And I think that’s a biblical principle that, honestly, we should not forfeit. And here’s where I’m going to be meddling. Like I say that the Bible never says you have to have a youth pastor. You know, but the Bible does say if you have a youth pastor, you have to pay him what they’re worth. And I think it’s a sin not too. The second kind of non-negotiable sacred cow is 10%. Like, we as a church, we’re always going to give 10% and we’re going to set the precedent of what it means to walk by faith. And so we just set aside from day one, 10 percent of the budget to go towards local, regional and international missions opportunities, you know, we call it missions outreach is kind of where we budget that. And I think that’s non-negotiable.

Danny Parmelee: Yeah, that’s so great. And again, this goes back to the whole modeling thing. That’s what you expect from your people. So it’s like, yes, you lost your job, or you got a paycut at your job or you’re furloughed or you’re on unemployment and to say, but to still give generously and sacrificially to be able to do that.

Lee Stephenson: Perfect, perfect. Well, fun conversation. Hopefully, nobody ever has to deal with this. But we thought we’ll have the conversation anyways. I want to thank everybody for tuning in to the Unfiltered podcast. Keep it real. Until next time.