Accounting and Money for Ministerial Leadership. Nimi Wariboko
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and pastors talk about money or business.
This book aims to reach a space of discourse and practical guidance that transcends the dual issue of parallax and paradox in order to engage the pastor in a comparative, creative sociolinguistic process of translation. In this regard, its purpose is to show how pastors can appropriate accounting and monetary language on the basis of their own theological ideas. In this way, the power of accounting and economic terms and ideas to derail and possibly control pastors’ leadership ethos is limited.
Accounting is Integral to Ministerial Leadership
In order to lead a church effectively, today’s pastor needs some training in basic accounting to equip her with the basic understanding required to appreciate church accounting. She needs to also know how to understand her ministry as an ongoing financial activity. The pastor is not only saddled with the spiritual needs of the congregation, but she must also oversee the legal and financial administrations of the church.1 The buck stops at her desk!
Now this does not mean that she must become a specialist in accounting and law; it means she must be conversant enough with the basics of this field to become an effective leader of her church or ministry. Such knowledge is required to increase her chances of making decisions that will strengthen the financial health of the organization, and improve her overall stewardship of the resources committed and entrusted to her hands.
Besides, she needs to understand accounting, which is the language of business, to communicate with a key constituency of her leadership world: the treasurers, accounting officers, bankers, tax experts, and investment officials who either work for the church or do business with it. Indeed, an understanding of the basic concepts and tools of accounting is essential to function as a competent pastor, who is the chief executive officer of the church.
As a leader the pastor can approach her existence as a “managerial-financial executive” at three levels of movements: acceptance, defense, and transformation.2 The first movement is the pastor to accept her situatedness into the world of finance and accounting as a leader of an organization that receives and disburses money; and she is required to be a good steward of the resources of the church. She needs basic orientation and language to become accepted as a respected leader in the world of accountants, treasurers, and board meetings and for finding her bearing in their tradition. Being respected does not mean being a competent finance manager, but as someone who has preliminary understanding of what the specialists are reporting and recognizing the possibilities of the church accounting function. It means she has made herself a member of the church accounting community, which is part of her purview, and she is in the process of learning. Like a child learning to be accepted in a community, her mistakes are forgiven in the expectation of rectification. Acceptance is the basis for the other movements. At this stage the financial executive-pastor is passive, merely accepting the activity of others. The understanding of the financial situation of the church comes not from the “I” but from the “You” of the experts. The pastor accepts the situation as it is and learns to get around in this environment. Every one of her learning and interactions with the specialists is subordinated to one referent or goal, the survival of the church.
The movement of acceptance as we have stated is only a preparation for later movements, phases of growth in ministerial leadership. The second movement is that of defense or work and struggle. The referent here is for the pastor to gain clarity of the church’s situation. The pastor concerns herself with the financial situation of the church, its interconnectedness to the mission and goals of the church, and what it reveals about what the church really is.
The next movement is opposed to these two church-bound movements. She attempts to break the dominance of mere survival or flourishing of the church for the possibility of relating the generation and use of the resources of the church to the whole earth and human existence. The referent here is the “whole ecology of the church” and the need to transform it. Her financial management is no longer focused on the mere flourishing of the church, but the earth, the whole of the human world as foundation for decision. It aims to change the world in which the church and the life of its members and constituents strive. The finances of the church or ministry, its sources and patterns of expenditures are not just accepted, but they are also questioned in order to know if they are really right and good. When this happens she is in the movement of transformation. She has transcended from the supervision of the “private household finances” to action, to an engagement in the public realm. Money, accounting, and finances are seen as part of the overall social relations of her world and what her church does with them, she believes, affect the social fabric of society. Not that the financial statements her accountant prepares will change, but she begins to interpret them differently in ways that condition her participation in the public realm. To understand the financial oversight or responsibility as a third movement is to integrate it concretely not only into the ministerial leadership, but also into the inner fabric of care of the soul of one’s society (care for justice, for truth; quest for ultimate meaning, movement toward God; life guided by an ideal).
The Seven Elements of Church as an Organization
In order for the pastor to appreciate what it really takes to transform accounting into an act of care of the soul of society, she will need to conceptualize her managerial role in ways that can create and sustain resources, and build bridges with ways by which modern organizations are conceived, perceived, and experienced. I realize that the church is a unique organization, but for the sake of learning and acquiring a new set of competence for effective management, I want us to put aside for a moment the idea that church as an organization (not necessarily as a spiritual entity) is unique and has special problems. I want to take you to the place of the common elements of all businesses or organizations. (Business is used here not in the sense of a profit-making organization, but any entity that receives and gives resources in order to realize its set goals in an effective way.) Every business has seven elements. To change the business or its management style is to change the way we view these elements (severally or jointly) and configure and reconfigure them. The seven elements of church are:
Franchise Recognition
Brand name recognition in the society is the usual form of franchise recognition. Qualitative words such as integrity, holiness, justice, quality, knowledge, history, and strength are important. This recognition creates economic goodwill, which enables a church to better withstand competition and, perhaps, also earn above-average payback on invested efforts. Coca-Cola is noted for its Coke brand, consumers associate Macdonald’s with hamburgers and Sony with electronics. For all these companies, there is a high name-recognition of their brands (service brands as Macdonald’s will say) in the market.
Relationship Strengths
Relationship strengths comprise the membership (client/customer) base that knows the church (and its products and services) as well as the senior people running the church. This strength also refers to the relationships with suppliers and customers.
Personnel
Personnel is the labor force of the church, including the pastor, staff, and volunteers. They represent the human skills and energies of the organization. These people create the relationship base and provide the service (product) skills. A skillful, trained, and well-mannered staff force is a pillar of membership’s loyalty program.
Service (Product) Strength
This is the skill-set that creates competitive niches. The strength of a product depends on technology, quality, pricing (dues and pledges), product range (sacraments, prayers, counseling, liberal or conservative theologies, daycare, short mission trips, environmental actions, deliverance, etc), research and development, and marketing (membership drive and recruitment, reputation management, social justice image).
Capital
Here we reference working capital, equity capital (net assets) and borrowing facilities necessary to run the church.
Organization
The organization includes management, management structure, and infrastructure systems