Handling Difficult Financial Conversations With A Congregation – Transcript

Jim Latimer: Welcome to Coaching for Interims. We are about empowerment for interim ministers:Best practices and quick help from interims for interims – wisdom from the field. My name is Jim Latimer, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Reverend Dr. Laura Barnes. Laura is a well experienced interim both in the United Church of Christ, as well as the Presbyterian Church USA. Laura what best practice, would you like to share with our listeners?

Laura Barnes (She/Her): Well, first of all, Jim, thank you for inviting me into this conversation. I think that is a time in our world where the churches are really going to need more interim work than ever before. We’re coming out of a time of lockdown, pandemic, grief, racial disconnection, and how are we going to come together as a country. I think the Church is going to be a place that people are going to be seeking for this return to health, and that includes financial health. I think we’ve all been affected personally, certainly churches have been impacted and our denominations, so financial health – while sometimes not a popular conversation – is one that we all need to have. And I think the Interim is uniquely positioned to ask the tougher questions because they’re not there for the long term.

So the first place I start is the balance sheet. Before I even take a position, I ask a church for their full financials, and it’s always interesting what I get. A lot of churches have annual reports I’ve already looked at, so sometimes they just send me that, and sometimes they actually send me their up to date numbers which I always ask for.

So on the balance sheet, you can look over the assets that have been entrusted to the church, and how are they being good stewards of those assets. The facilities are always their biggest asset – facilities and land. But, how is their building being utilized during the week? How are they sharing their property with the community? Are they really taking that Gospel call of loving their neighbor to heart, as far as their hard assets, as well as their soft assets? And then I always want to look at the endowment, because often times we’re dusting that off: what’s the endowment policy? What does it look like?
Some churches have them, and some don’t. If they don’t have one, this is a great time to start a conversation around that. But I really want them to focus on their investment policy: Is it a just investment policy? Is it Green? Is it oriented towards carbon fuels? those kinds of things. So you want to look that over, and you want to meet with the endowment committee, which may or may not have been ignored for a long time. These are people that are really giving time and energy and effort to a very important part of the church.

And then I move on to the P & L, the profit and loss statement, and my first question is always: What is the prudent reserve? Do they have enough operating expense, cash, for say six months? That’s usually my benchmark. One church I served only had 60 days, and that made me really nervous. It’s not just my paycheck, but it’s that ongoing ministry and commitment that the church has entrusted you to, that you want to be sure worship happens, and the lights are on. These are important things. And I always try to see when the last time was that the staff got a raise, because the biggest investment a church has is the staff, and it’s facilities. And if we’re investing all of our money in these things we need to really be sure that we’re being good stewards of them: How have we honored our staff? How have we recognized their hard work, especially in a transition?

Oftentimes the office administrator, who’s held the corporate memory for 10 years, gets overlooked. So when was the last time they got a raise? That also makes you very popular with the staff, which is important.

And then where does the church spend most of its money? Yes, on staff, yes, on facilities, but is it a tithing church? Are they giving 10%? Are they giving a 10th of their harvest back to the community? Back to global mission? I don’t count the denominational contribution in that, because I think that’s a little self serving, but I can talk about that more. How are they reinvesting what’s been given them back into the Community?

And then, finally, is the stewardship campaign. I think that this is something the interim can really TEE up nicely for the pastor that’s coming in.
What has been the trend? Who’s involved? Talk to your top 10 or 20 donors and see what inspires them to give. Start up a stewardship committee right away, and not with the finance people because they’re usually overwhelmed and all they can talk about is numbers, but a stewardship committee that has a vision and invitational way of reaching out and including all. Stewardship for me, is something that needs to focus on participation. Yes, dollars are nice, but we need everyone to be a part of the good stewardship of the church. So those are some of the financial things that I try to do right off the bat, that give me a good sense of who the church is, and oftentimes leads to deeper questions about theology and commitment. So those are just some of the thoughts that I had to share with you today.

Jim Latimer: Laura, that’s beautiful, and, as a former banker, you bring a financial skill set that not every pastor has. But, would you agree that there are ways that a pastor can, even though he or she doesn’t have financial training, understand a profit and loss statement, or some of these things? Is there any specific counsel you could give to someone that doesn’t really know how to do that yet?

Laura Barnes (She/Her): Absolutely! I do think that we overlook our church volunteers, sometimes, as a resource. You know, we don’t have to know everything. We are called to serve the congregation. So sit down with your treasurer and go through all of these reports with them, and and listen deeply to their concerns, to their passion, to their pride in what they’ve accomplished. Meet with your financial secretary. They know week to week who’s donating, what the trends are, what are the passions of the church – do they get more excited on Children’s Sunday than they do on global mission Sunday, or seminaries, or whatever? And then I always have one or two people, such as yourself, that have business backgrounds, that I can also run information by. So, who is in my circle of interim ministers that I can trust, that I can send information to and say what are you seeing what are some red flags?

One of my favorite people is a business manager at one of our larger churches, and she’ll look at something and pull two or three things out for me that I never even would have thought to look at. So I always like to surround myself with a couple of lawyers, a couple of financial people, human resource people, you know, it’s always good to have what I consider outside consultants.

Jim Latimer: That’s a great answer . It reminds us interim ministers that, we don’t have to have all the skills, but it’s important that we at least know where to look and what questions to ask, to get the right questions on the table. And then when the right question is there, we can figure out well who’s got the expertise to help us with that. That was a beautiful answer. Thank you very much Laura for your time with with us today. It’s all good.

Laura Barnes (She/Her): Thank you, Dr. latimer.

More Bits Of Wisdom from Rev. Dr. Laura Barnes
< < < Back to Rev. Dr. Laura Barnes’ Biography