Leading Ideas - Lewis Center for Church Leadership "Leading Ideas: The Importance of a Narrative Budget | Use Trial Periods for New Ideas" for Wednesday, 10 September 2014
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Quotable
Leadership:
Through the liberating message of Jesus, all
believers are transformed into the role of priests, united and commissioned
in ministry together on behalf of a hurting, broken world.(Sue Nilson Kibbey)
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The Importance of a Narrative Budget by
Dave Ponting
Narrative budgeting has a critical role to play in any comprehensive parish stewardship program. Basic philanthropic theory indicates that people want their money to have an impact. Narrative budgeting is the best tool I have found to demonstrate to donors how their money and time are filtering through the church to touch the lives of people in need.
The basic assumption behind narrative budgeting is that donors are reluctant to give money to operating budgets when they do not have a clear indication of how their donation is making an impact in people’s lives through the ministry of the parish. The traditional line-item budget is a good accounting and planning tool, but a terrible marketing tool to motivate donor investment in ministry.
Think of your own motivation to give. Are you inspired by the fact that your donation is funding the postage meter and photocopier? Do you get all tingly inside knowing your donation will help pay for heat and electricity? Most donors can’t get excited about giving to administration and fixed overhead expenses. Sure, they know these expenses are a necessary component of running a parish, but they certainly don’t want to think about them.
Getting started
Narrative budgeting looks first at the various ministries of the parish and then assigns all anticipated expenses to key areas of ministry. In most parishes it is relatively easy to designate several areas and then begin to allocate expenses against these areas — for example, worship, pastoral care, outreach, Christian education and formation, evangelism and hospitality, and fellowship and inreach. However, each parish is unique, and these categories may not be exactly appropriate for your parish. You may decide, for example, you need a separate category for youth and children’s ministry. But experience has shown that six categories make an ideal number to help people understand the ministry of their parish.
There should be no category titled administration. That would be counter to the very essence of narrative budgeting. We want to reframe the way people think. We want them to clearly understand their faith community and its mission from a faith perspective.
After the categories have been determined, a small group sits down and talks about allocating all the line items in the operating budget to each of the categories of ministry. Some items are easy to allocate. The choir director’s salary fits perfectly in the worship category as do the costs of candles, hymn books, communion wafers, Sunday bulletins, and miscellaneous altar guild expenses. But many areas of work are not clearly delineated. You will need to ask your paid staff to track their activities for a month to get a sense of how they allocate their time against the categories. If the pastor spends 20 percent of her time in pastoral care, allocate 20 percent of her salary and benefits against the pastoral care category. The allocation of time against these categories provides a blueprint for allocating other overhead expenses such as heat, electricity, phone, and parsonage expenses.
Don’t burden yourself with over-worry about accuracy. Be as correct as you can be, but understand that the narrative budget is a snapshot of parish activity and a marketing and educational tool. Its purpose is to help the donors appreciate and become more aware of how their money is ultimately affecting people’s lives and making an impact. It is not an accounting tool.
Telling the story
In your narrative you will need to explain the details of each of the ministry categories. You can outline each program and help people understand how it works. Often when we are heavily involved in the ministry of a parish, we make the mistake of assuming that others are as knowledgeable as we are about what the parish is doing in the community. A common response from parishioners is that they were unaware that the parish was doing so much in the individual categories of ministry.
After first telling the story of the specific ministry, you then proceed to make it much more personal. Tell the story of specific individuals touched by the ministry. For example, the story of an inmate in a local correctional institution touched by your prison ministry. Or the story of an elderly parishioner served by your pastoral care network. These sacred stories of the parish’s ministry to real people resonate at deep levels with what we are supposed to be about as faithful Christians.
It is very important to distribute the narrative budget in booklet form with the annual stewardship mailing. Through it, you will tell your sacred story and give people an opportunity to reflect on how they can intersect with that story and truly be partners in the parish’s ministry. Experience shows when people see that their money is impacting lives, they are very generous. Narrative budgeting creates teachable moments about the church’s call in the world and deepens the faith journey of donors.
David Ponting is an Anglican priest who formerly served as Director of Stewardship and Financial Development for the Anglican Diocese of Niagara in Canada. This article is excerpted from his book From Scarcity to Abundance. Copyright 2005 Anglican Book Centre, ABC Publishing, Toronto. Used with permission. The book is available at Amazon and Cokesbury.
by Lovett H. Weems, Jr.
It is much easier for people to “live their way into a new way thinking” than to “think their way into a new way of living.” Yet church leaders almost invariably ask people to think their way into something new. Instead of asking people to do something new or to change a certain practice, consider suggesting that “we try something for a while.” Instead of simply making a change and hoping no one complains, consider telling people “we are trying this for a time,” and invite their feedback.
Jasmine Smothers, a United Methodist pastor in Georgia, describes how a congregation she served used trial periods when trying new things. “Trial periods allowed everyone involved to be heard, and they fostered an atmosphere of collaborative decision-making.” Her church used 30-60-90- or 100-day trial periods to evaluate the impact of a new idea or ministry. She says it allowed for multiple and dissenting voices to be heard and provided a space in which new people and seasoned leaders engaged. Ideas that previously would have been voted down or created a fight were given an opportunity, with many of them becoming, as she puts it, “wildly successful ministries because we gave them a chance even though we were not sure that it was worth it.”
Molly Phinney Baskette, a United Church of Christ pastor in Massachusetts, reports that her church has many “big, crazy ideas.” One way they give the Holy Spirit a chance to inform their ministry is to “widely socialize” a new idea for a program or change. While socializing the idea and discerning God’s spirit in the matter, they try it for six weeks, six months, or a year, depending on what makes most sense for the ministry. After the trial period, everyone knows there will be an evaluation, necessary changes will be made, or they will stop the effort. “Just the simple act of articulating that every change, ultimately, is temporary,” she says, “does a lot to lower anxiety and grant permission.”
Sometimes a short-term trial can be a non-threatening way to try something before committing to it long term. Trying two worship services during Advent or Lent, for example, should add energy and also give clues as to how such a worship pattern might work all the time. If a different worship time seems attractive, trying it for a distinct season should tell a great deal about the pros and cons of the new time.
You need to be prepared for any experiment not to work, at least not at the present time and in your context. Not every idea, even yours, always works. But another advantage of “trial periods” is that they provide an easy way to move back from such missteps.
Lovett H. Weems, Jr., is director of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership. The citations come from recent books. Jasmine Smothers is co-author with F. Douglas Powe of Not Safe for Church: The Ten Commandments for Reaching New Generations, Abingdon, 2014. Available at Amazon and Cokesbury. Molly Phinney Baskette is author of Real Good Church: How Our Church Came Back from the Dead, and Yours Can, Too, Pilgrim Press, 2014. Available at Amazon and Cokesbury.
The Right Question
Leaders do not need answers.
Leaders must have the right questions.
Sometimes
when goals are not reached, the mood is disappointment. A better stance is to
see all results of our efforts as an opportunity to learn and improve, using
questions such as these.
What did we learn?
What actions have we taken on the basis of what we learned? What results have occurred from those actions?
Want more Right Questions? Check out “Right Questions for Church Leaders, Volumes 1–3.”
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Editors: Lovett H. Weems, Jr., and Ann A. Michel. Production: Carol Follett
Lewis Center for Church Leadership of Wesley Theological Seminary.
4500 Massachusetts Ave NW
Washington, DC 20016 United States
(202) 885-8757
lewiscenter@wesleyseminary.edu
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