Giving and Budgeting (with Jamie Dunlop)

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0:00:00 – (Jamie Dunlop): And that’s why God loves a cheerful giver. Right? Because God doesn’t need your money. His plans are not on hold until you cough up some cash. God loves a cheerful giver because your giving shows the worth of who he really is. And that’s delightful to him.

0:00:22 – (Matt Smethurst): Welcome everyone, to the Everyday Pastor, a podcast on the nuts and bolts of ministry from the Gospel Coalition. My name is Matt Smethurst.

0:00:30 – (Ligon Duncan): And I’m Luke Duncan.

0:00:32 – (Matt Smethurst): And we are joined today by our friend Jamie Dunlop. Jamie serves as an associate pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist church in Washington, D.C. where he oversees administration and adult education, as well as several nonprofits based in the church. Jamie’s also an author, and I never said this before on this podcast about any other author, so it’s not just a throwaway thing. I think that Jamie Dunlop is one of the most underrated authors in evangelicalism.

0:01:03 – (Matt Smethurst): If you’re a pastor listening, you may not be familiar with his name or with his books, but I would urge you to look up anything he’s written. Every single one of them have ministered to me and to my church members profoundly.

0:01:15 – (Ligon Duncan): Okay, now you’ve got me curious now, Matt, what are you referring to? I mean, you want to give us a couple of titles or.

0:01:21 – (Matt Smethurst): Well, yeah, I mean, I think it’s Jamie, you can tell me if I’m missing any, but the Compelling Community, which is top five most important Christian books I’ve ever read and a follow up book to that, Love the ones who drive you crazy. I think every pastor can relate to that or at least has church members that can, well relate to that. And then more along the lines of what we’re going to talk with him today in terms of giving and church budgeting. He has a little booklet called why Should I Give to My Church. It can be read in one sitting. It’s non intimidating. It could be something to hand out to church members.

0:02:00 – (Matt Smethurst): Why should I give to my church? And then also he has a longer book called Church Budgeting for a Healthy Church. Did I miss any? Well, I should say, first of all, welcome to the podcast, Jamie. Thanks for being with us.

0:02:13 – (Jamie Dunlop): Oh, it’s so good to be with you. Love you guys too. Thank you.

0:02:16 – (Matt Smethurst): Have I missed any of your books?

0:02:19 – (Jamie Dunlop): Nope. That’s what you’ve got. Thank you.

0:02:21 – (Matt Smethurst): Okay.

0:02:22 – (Jamie Dunlop): Thank you.

0:02:22 – (Matt Smethurst): Yeah. Well, it’s an honor to talk with you about this. And in terms of giving, how did you come to think and write about that topic?

0:02:30 – (Jamie Dunlop): You know, I think it’s because I’ve been surprised when I talk about giving with my own congregation. How refreshing very simple truths seem to be. Which reminds me of how often we abuse the topic in evangelicalism and how many bad ideas people come into my church with about giving, how much baggage they come into the church with about giving. And so just saying very simple things that come right out of scripture seems more revolutionary than it should be.

0:03:06 – (Jamie Dunlop): And so that’s. I think one of the reasons I’ve gotten more interested in the topic is just wanting to make sure the scripture speaks clearly, because what it gives us is a vision of giving as a delight and a joy and an opportunity.

0:03:22 – (Ligon Duncan): And let me Amen that. And I think pastors have to take on a little bit of the role that fathers would have taken on in my generation. I mean, you guys are of a generation different from mine. And my dad was the one that talked to me about giving to the church. And you just don’t have a lot of that in the younger generations that you are ministering to. I don’t know how it was when you were growing up, but I had elders, I remember who talked to their own children and to the children of the church about why it was important to give.

0:04:02 – (Ligon Duncan): And then it was like that dropped off the map like at the end of the 70s. And, and so I do think it’s important. And there’s such bad teaching out there on giving as well. And a lot of people are reacting to the bad teaching, so they need good Bible teaching on it.

0:04:22 – (Jamie Dunlop): Yeah. Not all of us have the privilege of being fathered by a sixth generation Presbyterian minister.

0:04:27 – (Ligon Duncan): What a blessing.

0:04:28 – (Jamie Dunlop): Yes.

0:04:31 – (Matt Smethurst): Let’s talk first a little more about giving. So, Jamie, you mentioned that you’ve found as you’ve addressed this topic, it’s been helpful for church members. It’s not just this guilt inducing subject. It’s something that can actually foster great joy and it can strengthen muscles of faith. So how. Broadly speaking, and we’ll get more into specifics in a moment. But broadly speaking, how can pastors teach about giving in a way that’s biblically faithful and pastorally wise? And maybe we just start by saying, what do you think are some of the biggest misunderstandings out there that you’ve encountered about giving to the church that a pastor has to be aware of as he seeks to model a more excellent way?

0:05:15 – (Jamie Dunlop): Yeah, well, I mean, we live in an era where so much of Christ, what passes for Christianity is really the prosperity gospel. And I think evangelicals, even conservative evangelicals, have imbibed that much more than they.

0:05:27 – (Matt Smethurst): Realize, even if they would deny it doctrinally. You’re saying that there’s a form of it.

0:05:33 – (Jamie Dunlop): Yeah, they would say, well, of course, but. And yet deep inside they think, okay, if I want God to bless me, I need to give. And so kind of a give to get mentality, I think is common. I think a legalistic approach to giving is also common. The kind of God’s going to get you if you don’t give your 10%, then something bad is going to happen. I encounter that frequently maybe because certainly as Americans, we view money as an extremely private affair.

0:06:06 – (Jamie Dunlop): People get very nervous when pastors talk about giving because they assume it’s going to be a guilt trip. And you know, as a pastor, you have all that working against you. You have misunderstandings about how the Bible tells us to give. You have bad experiences people have had, and you gotta wade through that as you’re trying to help people clarify the delightful truth that Scripture gives us.

0:06:29 – (Matt Smethurst): Yeah, yeah, that’s good. And you mentioned that guilt is rarely an effective motivation. But you point out in your booklet, why Should I Give to My Church? That actually in the New Testament, obligation and need don’t factor very prominently into the New Testament’s teaching about giving. Instead, we see things like opportunity and joy and God’s glory and reward. You point out that giving out of obligation shows how obedient we are.

0:07:03 – (Matt Smethurst): But giving with joy or with cheer, 2 Corinthians 9, 7 glorifies God. It makes it obvious that you’re doing something that only makes sense if you’re a Christian. If Jesus died and rose again. So how can pastors, who are often, let’s be honest, stressed about the financial situation of their church, they’re wanting people to give more. How can they practically motivate giving in a God honoring, biblically faithful way?

0:07:34 – (Jamie Dunlop): Well, I think our model is the Apostle Paul. So, you know, as you well know, he ends Philippians with this sort of a thank you note, though it’s such a strange thank you note, right? He begins by saying, I’m not speaking of being in need, for I have learned to be content in every situation. He makes it clear that he can do all things through him who strengthens him. That’s just so different from the thank you notes you get when you give to a ministry, right. That basically says, hey, thanks for your gift.

0:08:08 – (Jamie Dunlop): There’s so much need out there. If you could please give more, that would be. So he doesn’t do that at all. And I think that the kind of main thrust of what he has is Philippians 4:17. He says, not that I Seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit. And he ends. To our God and Father, be glory forever and ever. Amen. It’s such a joyful note. He’s clear that he’s thankful for what they did, and he loves the fact that they have, as he puts a fellowship with him in his ministry through giving.

0:08:42 – (Jamie Dunlop): But the reason he wants them to give is not because he’s concerned God’s not going to provide for him. It’s because he loves them and he knows that giving is good for them. And so, as a pastor, that is always in the back of my head whenever I think about giving, that I want to speak about giving because it’s good for my congregation. I want them to learn the joy of investing in the promises of Jesus rather than the promises of the world with their money.

0:09:12 – (Jamie Dunlop): I want them to experience the freedom that comes from disconnecting my heart from my money so that, as Jesus says, I can put my heart on heavenly things and the heavenly treasure that awaits me there. And so that’s really hard as a pastor, right? When you know that if they don’t cough up more money, you’re going to have to call a missionary home, or you’re going to have to lay off a staff person, or you’re not going to be able to do that ministry you’re hoping to.

0:09:46 – (Jamie Dunlop): And yet it’s so important that when you go before the congregation, you’re saying, look, I encourage you to give because it’s good for you. I trust that the Lord’s going to provide everything that’s good for us to have.

0:09:59 – (Ligon Duncan): Let me amen that. And then add just a practical word in, because you’ve experienced this maybe more, Jamie, at Capitol Hill than a lot of churches do, because of the nature of the cyclical election cycle in D.C. and the uncertainty about what the situation of congregational life is gonna be. You know, employment, unemployment, et cetera. I do think it’s appropriate for pastors to care about being able to pay their staff and be able to give to missionaries.

0:10:30 – (Ligon Duncan): I do think Paul, elsewhere, while you’re right, he does talk about these things as a matter of joy and a matter of concern for them. He does feel the burden of the churches, and I think one of the burden of the churches that he feels is caring for those people back in Jerusalem who were under persecution. And that’s why he wants to take a gift back to them from the Macedonians and such. It’s okay for us to feel that burden.

0:10:56 – (Ligon Duncan): But what I also want to say Is when we come to the congregation, we do need to talk to them about the things that you’ve just been talking about, the things that you talk about in the book, the things that the New Testament talks about to them. Because their giving isn’t just God’s means to answering those sorts of needs that may be very real. Like a bunch of members of the congregation have lost their jobs.

0:11:23 – (Ligon Duncan): They’re not able to give the way they’re supposed to give. We don’t know how the church budget is gonna come out this year. That’s really not how we wanna talk to the congregation. Even when those situations arise and even though it’s appropriate for us to care about those kinds of things. Cause I. You know, as the guy that runs a seminary, I’m always thinking about taking care of my people. And I don’t have a membership like I used to have before.

0:11:48 – (Ligon Duncan): The membership actually gave me more confidence that I was gonna be able to take care of my people. So I think it’s good for pastors to care about that. And I think that’s the experience that pastors have. They come from never having had to think about that to having to think about that. And then they pivot to guilt because they’re appropriately burdened about that, but they’re responding to it in the wrong way. So the right way to do it is exactly what you and Matt have been talking about, which is, go to the principles of the New Testament and talk about that.

0:12:18 – (Ligon Duncan): Not about, gosh, we’re in a terrible situation now. We really need you to dig deep. You’re wanting to train them in the right reasons to give. And I think. But, you know, part of it is giving sets us free. It helps sets us. It helps set us free from the love of money, from caring too much about things. It reminds us of who everything that we have comes from. It’s all a gift, and we’re stewards of it. It really ultimately doesn’t belong to us. It belongs to God, and it teaches us dependence upon him.

0:12:59 – (Ligon Duncan): Think of how that worked in the Old Testament with tithing of the fruits of what had been brought in through the harvest. That taught people, hey, depend upon God to provide for you. Even the Old Testament Sabbath law taught people in an agrarian society, you need to rest one day a week and trust God to provide for you. So that there are a lot of important spiritual lessons that the New Testament teaches that we need to learn out of our giving. And that’s how the pastor wants to come to the congregation.

0:13:35 – (Ligon Duncan): Not kind of in A panic and trying to twist arms in order to get the budget paid, get the staff paid, get the missionaries supported. But we feel those things, don’t we? I mean, we can see people’s faces, you know, and it tempts us to put pressure that has a negative result in the way that people think about their giving.

0:14:04 – (Jamie Dunlop): Yeah. I try at least once a year at one of our members meetings to remind the congregation that one of the most precious commodities I trade into the pastor is their trust. That when I encourage them to give, it’s because I love them, not because I need them. And I tell them there’s a few things we do as a church to try to make that trust easier to give. You know, because if they know my back is up against the wall and I’m going to have to lay off after they don’t give.

0:14:35 – (Ligon Duncan): Yeah.

0:14:35 – (Jamie Dunlop): It’s only so credible when I say, please give because I love you. And so we have a reserve fund, we save some expenses to the end of the budget year when we know that we’re in a good place. Those are all financial tools. So that I can with good conscience tell them, give because I love you. And I’ve promised my congregation if we are ever in a financial place of difficulty, I’ll be honest with you.

0:15:05 – (Jamie Dunlop): So I will let you know. Okay. This is the year that I’m asking you to give because if you don’t, we will have to.

0:15:13 – (Matt Smethurst): Yeah.

0:15:13 – (Jamie Dunlop): Make some unfortunate short term decisions with long term ramifications. And when that happens, and that’s the year when, you know, I encourage you to give instead of contributing to your Roth ira, or I’m encouraging you to give more sacrificially than usual. I’ll be honest with you. And my hope is I only have to do that no more than once every 10 years.

0:15:33 – (Ligon Duncan): Really good.

0:15:34 – (Jamie Dunlop): And we can try to manage things to make that statement. I love you. That’s why I ask you to give, to be credible.

0:15:40 – (Ligon Duncan): And let me just. Amen. I mean, the way that Jamie and Capitol Hill Baptist Church have done this is with such integrity and transparency in the budget process that it builds up congregational trust in what you’re giving to and how you’re stewarding the funds. And with so much institutional suspicion amongst young people today, that is absolutely crucial to be able to getting to the issues that the New Testament wants to talk to them about so that they don’t have things that are actually making them say. Well, I’m not sure I really trust the elders of the church with how that’s being done.

0:16:25 – (Ligon Duncan): And so those kinds of things are more important than ever with the kind of suspicion of institutions and with the hucksters out there that are scaring up fake crises to try and raise money for what are not crises and even for things that are not good causes, you know, your jet or whatever it is that you’re trying to twist people’s arm to give to. So I think the way you’re talking about really needs to get in the bloodstream of pastors so that we’re not.

0:17:00 – (Ligon Duncan): I mean, my congregation, there was a cycle of giving because of their socioeconomic situation. A lot of our giving came in in December. We were on a calendar year giving, which meant most of the year I was in the red, in the budget. And so I was always, you know, I was tempted to an ungodly worry because of the way that they give. A lot of my people got partnership shares at the end of the year, and they did not know what they were going to make until Decemberish.

0:17:38 – (Ligon Duncan): And so invariably, we were waiting until the midnight hour of December 31st to know how we had come out. And that tempted me in some bad directions. And so I had to really sort of say to myself in my head what you were just saying so that I didn’t come every year to the congregation with an unnecessary panic or urgency.

0:18:07 – (Jamie Dunlop): Or appeal, because then they tune you out, right? It’s like, oh, yeah, this is what happens every year. Yeah. And you having to wrestle through that is the same thing you’re asking them to wrestle through.

0:18:19 – (Ligon Duncan): Correct.

0:18:20 – (Jamie Dunlop): Because for them to be faithful givers, they’re going to have to encounter all the same temptations. And it is no accident, I think, that pastors, in their own special way, have to wrestle through the same things. And we can be models of faithfulness for the congregation and how we talk about the church’s finances.

0:18:35 – (Matt Smethurst): It reminds me, Jamie, of something you write in the budgeting book. You write. Special appeals for money are often worded as to assume that most people aren’t giving faithfully. For example, if each of you would skip one latte each week for the next year, we could close our budget gap. But embedded in that language you write, is the assumption that Christians in your church will normally use their finances in selfish ways and that faithfulness is abnormal.

0:19:07 – (Matt Smethurst): Even if you have doubts about your flock’s faithfulness, do not normalize faithful faithlessness. An appropriate appeal is not, I know you’re all spending money on stuff you don’t need. Please give it to the church instead. But rather, this is the year to give in ways that you likely won’t be able to repeat year after year. So communicate an expectation that healthy Christians will be faithful with their money. I think that’s a great word.

0:19:33 – (Matt Smethurst): And just to return to one thing you guys said earlier, it can be so easy as pastors to want to motivate giving through either appealing to people’s emotions or kind of trying to coerce their wills. But it’s striking to me. We’ve already referenced 2 Corinthians 9 how Paul, when he’s wanting to drum up support for the Macedonian Christians, he does not seek to motivate the Corinthians through emotions or their will, though that would have been really easy.

0:20:07 – (Matt Smethurst): So he doesn’t say just merely think about all those poor starving Christians in Macedonia kind of manipulating their emotions. Nor does he say, I’m an apostle, open your wallets. Rather, he says 2 Corinthians 8:9 for you know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, became poor so that you, through his poverty, might become rich. He appeals to God’s generosity in the gospel as the ultimate motivation for us to give in ways that will not make sense to the world.

0:20:39 – (Matt Smethurst): And Jamie, one of the things that I’ve heard you speak about that’s really, I think a helpful window into a well known text is Jesus words in Matthew 6, 20, 21 lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. And then he says, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. You talk about how that classic text functions both as a thermometer and a thermostat. Can you talk about what you mean.

0:21:09 – (Jamie Dunlop): If you find that you are mainly worried about things in this world, your financial situation. That’s Matthew 6 as a thermometer, that’s telling you that your heart is not where it needs to be. And that’s a warning sign. It’s telling you the temperature of your heart at the same time, Matthew 6, as you said, works as a thermostat. It can change the temperature of your heart. How do you change the temperature of your heart? Well, you begin to give.

0:21:34 – (Jamie Dunlop): You begin to give. And you will find that your heart follows your treasure. You know, if, if you are investing in Nike stock, well, at the time of this recording, Nike stock has plunged recently. And you’re probably paying extra attention to that because that’s where your treasure is. If you invest in the promises of Jesus by investing in the Great Commission, then that’s what your heart’s going to be. You’re going to be following where your Treasure is. And we want to put our treasure in heaven. So, yeah, you can see the attitude of your heart toward giving. It’s going to tell you the temperature of your heart and if it’s not hot like it should be, give things away. This world values to invest in things that Jesus values and you’re going to find that begins to inflect the temperature of your heart.

0:22:24 – (Matt Smethurst): Yeah. One of the things I love, Jamie, about the way you approach this topic and write about it is you’re not inducing guilt, but you are calling people to this high soaring vision because of how countercultural and even revolutionary it’s going to look like to spend money on things that don’t make sense to the world. You at one point say that if you’re a Christian, you should be living and by implication giving, so that if heaven turns out not to be real, your life will have been an utter failure, a calamity. Kind of along the lines of what Paul says in 1st Corinthians 15.

0:23:04 – (Matt Smethurst): So every time we give, we’re making a statement that God is better than anything that money could have bought.

0:23:12 – (Jamie Dunlop): And that’s why God loves a cheerful giver. Right? Because God doesn’t need your money. His plans are not on hold until you cough up some cash. God loves a cheerful giver because your giving shows the worth of who he really is. And that’s delightful to Him.

0:23:29 – (Matt Smethurst): Yeah. We say in our the tagline of this podcast, we say that on the nuts and bolts of ministry. So here’s a real nutsy and boltsy question regarding giving that comes up a lot. Should pastors be aware of what individuals in the church are giving?

0:23:45 – (Jamie Dunlop): Well, I think there’s two dangers you need to be aware of. The first is your own heart as a pastor, and I think that’s the first thing that pastors go to when they think about this question of can I obey James command to not be partial if I know who give the most to my congregation? And I think many pastors can. And you probably already know who the big givers likely are in the congregation just by virtue of what jobs people have and generally how enthusiastic people feel about your ministry.

0:24:21 – (Jamie Dunlop): I think there’s another concern, though, and that’s the heart of the member. I never want someone to give to impress me. I have had sometimes people who have emailed me to tell me I was giving this and now I’m giving this. And clearly the email’s designed to impress me. I promise you it does anything but that. It just, it feels yucky. I want you to give because you love your savior, not because you want to impress your pastor.

0:24:49 – (Jamie Dunlop): And so I generally counsel people to not know how much their members give and to tell their members that they don’t know to protect their members hearts, even if they themselves feel like they can avoid the risk of partiality. And yet I do think it’s useful for pastors to know who doesn’t give at all. Either because those are people who may be in special need of benevolence, or because those are people who are in special need of pastoring.

0:25:18 – (Jamie Dunlop): But you know, if someone doesn’t give at all, I think it’s unusual that the pastorally wise thing to do is to call them up and say, hey, see, don’t give because they’re going to give $10 next month to get off your shame list. Right. Very often I think giving is one of the last things that falls into place as people seek to be faithful to Christ. And so if someone is not giving, I just want to pastor them better.

0:25:45 – (Jamie Dunlop): I want to make sure that they’re building friends in the church. I want to make sure that I’m giving them special attention, praying with them in particular, praying not mainly they would give, but praying that they would be faithful with their whole lives. And I assume as someone is faithful with their whole life, giving is going to be a part of that. So I do think it’s useful to know who doesn’t give at all.

0:26:04 – (Jamie Dunlop): Not mainly because you want them to start giving, mainly because you want them to start living faithfully.

0:26:08 – (Matt Smethurst): As a Christian, when I was raising money initially with a view to planting River City Baptist here in Richmond, one of the things I would say is that if our church is successful in the early years, we’re going to struggle financially. And what I meant by that was if we’re really reaching lost people and not just, you know, helping rearrange sheep from congregation to congregation in the Richmond area, well, the last thing to be discipled in someone’s life is often in their wallet, as you just alluded to.

0:26:45 – (Matt Smethurst): So if we’re really reaching people who need Jesus, there’s going to be a lag time where their sacrificial giving has to catch up with their Christian maturity, which means that there’s going to be a level of financial struggle. And so I’m glad you mentioned that, Jamie. As we also think, and we’ve already kind of alluded to it, as we also think about church budgeting, you, I think so helpfully talk about the church budget not primarily as a financial document, but As a spiritual document.

0:27:18 – (Matt Smethurst): You write in your book Budgeting for a Healthy Church. To understand what really matters to a church, look past its vision statement, past its website, past its glossy brochures, and look at its budget. Follow the money. A church budget is more than spreadsheets and numbers. It’s a window into the heart of a church, illuminating the values and priorities of God’s people. If you care about your church, you will care about its budget, because a budget reveals, facilitates, and sometimes calcifies how a church does its work. And before I ask you to reflect on that, Jamie, I just want to point out this is the everyday pastor podcast. This is not the everyday church administrator podcast. It’s not the everyday administrative committee member podcast.

0:28:08 – (Matt Smethurst): In the quote I just read when it says, if you care about your church, you will care about your budget, I just want to say to pastors listening, you can’t just delegate this to someone else. You can delegate the practical details of it, the execution of it, but in terms of overseeing the process, caring about it, understanding that your budget is indicative of and reflective of your church’s spiritual priorities, it’s something that you need to care about, too. So, Jamie, talk a little bit about what you’re getting at when you frame a church budget as a pastoral tool and a spiritual document.

0:28:45 – (Jamie Dunlop): Yeah, well, just like a marriage, a budget is much more a communication tool than a financial tool. As you think about your church, I can’t think of a better articulation of your real spiritual values than your church budget. And one says, I don’t care what you say on your website. I don’t care what you say in your new members class, I want to look at your budget because that tells me what you really care about. You know, if your church says, we think that the church is fueled by the preached word of God and you keep your pastor on starvation wages.

0:29:17 – (Jamie Dunlop): Ah, now I see what you really care about. If you say that your church is passionate about the Great Commission and you give 2% to missions, okay, I see what you really care about. So it’s an articulation of spiritual values, but also the decisions that go into a budget are spiritual trade offs. You know, do we build a new playground or do we help that church planter over there? What is the line between generous pay and excessive pay?

0:29:49 – (Jamie Dunlop): When is it time to tell a missionary, you know, we don’t think the work you’re doing is worthwhile and it’s time to come home. Those are spiritually fraught decisions. Those are not financial decisions. Those are spiritual Decisions. And as a pastor, you are the spiritual leader of your congregation. And so I think you have a particular role to play with the elders around you to help the congregation make those very spiritual, often very difficult decisions.

0:30:23 – (Matt Smethurst): Jamie, at this point in your ministry, how many church budget cycles have you been. Been a part of as a pastor?

0:30:31 – (Jamie Dunlop): Let’s see, I guess three as a member of the session, as a non staff elder, and then I think I’m embarking on my 17th as one of the staff elders, as one of the pastors.

0:30:44 – (Matt Smethurst): That’s a ton of experience. And so, of course, people listening to this are going to be in churches with different polities, different approaches to exactly what congregational involvement looks like along the way. But a church budget is an annual thing that every pastor has to lead through. And so can you kind of just walk us through what the process looks like at Capitol Hill Baptist in terms of how the congregation is involved and even how the elders are setting the direction and giving the vision for what that church budget ought to reflect?

0:31:24 – (Jamie Dunlop): That’s a very dangerous question, Matt, because our process doesn’t come out of the scriptures. It’s very specific to this congregation, this place, our church size. You know, we’re a church of about 850 members in an urban context, mainly young. Um, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll answer your question. I, I just want to give, you know, caveats to begin with that, you know, it can and should look different for you all.

0:31:54 – (Jamie Dunlop): Our budget year begins August 1st. Probably the only church in the world to begin their budget year, August 1st. There’s reasons for that historically, I don’t need to go into that, but that means our budget process some years kicks off in January when it looks like there’s going to be some big decisions we need to make, like we have an open staff position or income has dropped precipitously or it’s increased precipitously.

0:32:22 – (Jamie Dunlop): I’ll try to kind of squint ahead the next 18 months and just give the elders a sense of, hey, I think we could probably go in direction A, B or C. Let’s have a conversation now before we get in the budget process for that direction. The budget process itself begins in March. We have a compensation committee that’s composed of elders and one deacon who think through the half of our budget that’s going to go to compensation and we pay per policy.

0:33:02 – (Jamie Dunlop): As a church, we’re not trying to evaluate performance and put a value on it financially. I think that that can get you into trouble as a church. We’re just paying people based on the policy we have. But we every year need to tweak that policy a bit. We have another committee of elders, the outreach committee, who put together a rough draft for the roughly 1/3 of the budget we’re going to give away to missions and church planting and pastor training.

0:33:27 – (Jamie Dunlop): And then our deacons submit all their budget requests. That’s about 5% of our budget. The deacons tend to focus on areas of ministry that are very human capital intensive, but as not very financially intensive. Our office manager pulls all that together into kind of the first draft of the budget, which is all the spending requests. I work with our deacon of Budget to put together our income estimate.

0:33:57 – (Jamie Dunlop): And then we have another subcommittee of elders, our budget committee, who do the first draft of how to balance the budget. If, as is typical, there’s more spending requests than expected income, the elders then meet and they pull all that together and put together a draft proposal for the congregation. It’s a balanced budget where expected income equals expected expenses. We present that at a members meeting. We give the congregation a pretty detailed readout, so about a 23 page document that details all the different line items that we anticipate in the budget.

0:34:34 – (Jamie Dunlop): We don’t give the congregation individual by individual compensation figures. We do tell them if they feel in their own conscience they need to see that in order to vote on the budget, they’re welcome to talk to our deacon of budget to get that information. And then we give the congregation two months to think. Pray. We have a special meeting on a Sunday afternoon when we answer questions from the congregation.

0:34:59 – (Jamie Dunlop): We often get suggestions from the congregation that the elders then incorporate into the budget. And then at our July members meeting, we vote on the budget. That’s an up or down vote. There’s no amendments allowed from the floor because a budget needs to be balanced. And it’s very challenging to have amendments that don’t unbalance the budget in some way. It’s a cohesive document. We also don’t allow conversation at that meeting, not because we don’t want feedback from the congregation, but we want it so much that we had a dedicated meeting a month earlier to collect all that feedback.

0:35:36 – (Jamie Dunlop): And there’s just not enough time for the congregation to make suggestions at that final meeting and the elders to act on them. Which is why by the time it gets to that last meeting, it’s just an up or down vote. We adopt the budget. And then a week after that July members meeting, it’s August 1st, we begin the budget year.

0:35:55 – (Ligon Duncan): Yeah.

0:35:55 – (Matt Smethurst): And you’ve even said that something a pastor can do, even a church member can do, is use the church budget as a prayer guide in their life, which is something I certainly had never thought about before. But, you know, maybe one day a week, pray through a different line item or category of the budget and ask God to accomplish the gospel ambitions that stand behind the money. Jamie, one other question along these lines is just how.

0:36:27 – (Matt Smethurst): What recommendation would you give to churches? Understanding churches are in very different contexts and scenarios. But what are some just basic guidelines for how to project giving that can feel really daunting, like you’re just trying to prognosticate. Sometimes maybe it can feel presumptuous, spiritually presumptuous. So what would you say to pastors about how to think through projecting a budget top line?

0:36:56 – (Jamie Dunlop): You should base your budget on what you think the congregation will give, not what they should give. And very often I think the temptation is to say, I don’t think my members are giving faithfully. Let’s give them a really aggressive budget and let’s hope that that sort of motivates faithfulness. Maybe that happens every once in a while. I rarely find that an engineered budget crisis motivates real biblical faithfulness is what’s going to happen. Right.

0:37:25 – (Jamie Dunlop): You’re at the end of the year, you’re 20% sure. You go to the creation, say, Ah, we’re 20% short. Half of them are thinking, well, this is kind of your fault because we all knew we weren’t going to be able to do this to begin with. And those who do reach down deep to give more are probably the people who are giving faithful to begin with. I don’t think you’re going to find that that kind of crisis is going to help those who have been faithless to become faithful, which is what you want.

0:37:53 – (Jamie Dunlop): You want to focus on faithfulness. You know, whenever I talk about the budget, one thing I have in the back of my mind, in addition to Philippians 4, is the final conversation my members have with Jesus someday when they give account for all that he’s entrusted to them, finances included. And I desperately want them to be very thankful on that last day for every dollar they invested in our church budget.

0:38:18 – (Jamie Dunlop): That’s my focus. I want them to be faithful.

0:38:21 – (Ligon Duncan): Yeah.

0:38:22 – (Jamie Dunlop): So as I think about the top line, you know, I may have an immature congregation. Okay, well, we’re going to have an immature top line. That’s okay. At least we got to start somewhere. The second thing is I’ve. Most churches are not big enough to have much a Very, you know, complicated statistical model. You’re going to have a pretty simple model like, you know, how many members are we going to increase by this coming year and what’s going to change with giving per member, which made you be expected, inflation, wage growth in your area.

0:38:57 – (Jamie Dunlop): If you’re going to send out a bunch of people for a church plant, you want to include that, but it’s not rocket science in part because you just don’t have that much complexity to work with. And some churches, they’re going to be able to forecast with some pretty good specificity. Other churches, it’s going to be kind plus or minus 20%. We see where we go. Depending on how regular your church is given is, that will help you understand, say what size reserve fund you want to have.

0:39:29 – (Jamie Dunlop): And you know, you’re going to budget expenses in part based on how certain your income estimate is. And so if you have a very unclear income estimate, that’s going to affect what you do with your expenses, at least in terms of timing them through the year so that you can phase expenses in as the top line becomes more clear.

0:39:51 – (Matt Smethurst): Yeah. And also on the topic of staff salaries, specifically for pastoral staff, any general words of wisdom there in thinking through a compensation package, retirement benefits, I mean, these are things every church has to think about.

0:40:10 – (Jamie Dunlop): Yeah, well, I think that the most important thing is that there’s a few passages in the New Testament that talk about pastoral compensation. You know, 1st Timothy 5, Galatians 6, Titus 3. And in every single time it brings up the topic, it emphasizes generosity in some way. You know, Galatians 6, share all good things with those who teach you. First Timothy 5 give them double honor. Titus 3 make sure that they lack nothing.

0:40:42 – (Jamie Dunlop): And so obviously generosity is in the eye of the beholder. You know, many churches have told me they want to be generous. I talked to their pastor and he’s like, I can barely survive. So that’s not going to solve your answer your question. But an eye to be generous is biblical and I think it’s useful. I find that it’s useful to find what like minded churches around you are paying. Don’t get the, you know, the data for every church in your area.

0:41:12 – (Jamie Dunlop): Otherwise you’re like lemmings all going off the cliff together. But churches that you trust, they can be useful guides. Figure out what your pastor needs. Some pastors cost more than others and churches need to recognize that. You know, if you hired a pastor whose in laws are in Australia, well guess what, he’s probably gonna have to fly to Australia every year or two. And you knew that before you hired him, so you should pay him accordingly.

0:41:36 – (Jamie Dunlop): Don’t be upset that your pastor costs more than the last guy. Every guy is different. And then I think the most useful benchmark is what does the local government pay their civil servants? Like a high school principal, a college professor, a police chief, someone who has similar managerial responsibilities, similar education requirements for a pastor. Nobody goes to be a pastor to get rich. At least they shouldn’t first. Timothy’s clear on that.

0:42:05 – (Jamie Dunlop): But at the same time, you don’t want your pastor to have to quit for lack of money. That’s what Titus 3 is about. 3:13. And in the same way, you shouldn’t go to work for your local government because you want to get wealthy. That probably doesn’t make sense. But your local government doesn’t want to lose the high school principal after five years because he can’t feed his family. They want a sustainable salary in your area.

0:42:27 – (Jamie Dunlop): And so I do think that’s a particularly useful benchmark for a church as they think about their own pastor.

0:42:32 – (Matt Smethurst): Yeah, I mean, I’ve heard you point out that church member. It’s actually, what good is it to you if your pastor is distracted because of financial stress? And so I think you’ve said something like, we should pay a pastor for what the work is worth, not what we think he needs. So there’s a level of what he actually needs.

0:42:57 – (Jamie Dunlop): Yeah. Which we should take into account.

0:43:00 – (Matt Smethurst): Exactly. Yeah.

0:43:01 – (Jamie Dunlop): Yeah. And that just comes from Paul’s discussion of Pastor pay in 1 Timothy 5, where he justifies pay in Jesus statement. The worker is worthy of his wages. And I just think it’s useful to point out Paul is justifying payment not based on the man’s need, but based on the value of his work. And that’s a paradigm shift for a lot of churches that really honestly are thinking, how little can I get away with? What does he need?

0:43:28 – (Jamie Dunlop): It’s like, well, that’s not how Jesus thought about it, and that’s not how Paul roots a need for compensation.

0:43:34 – (Matt Smethurst): Yeah. As we land the plane on this episode, Lig and Jamie, I want you each to just share any sort of final thought on the topic of individual giving or church budgeting. Anything else you want to add, Lig?

0:43:47 – (Ligon Duncan): I think just to push folks back to Jamie’s book and to think about New Testament emphases on giving. So Jesus teaches us to expect for giving to be a part of our discipleship. You know, he’ll say in Matthew 6:2, not if you give, but when you Give. So he expects this to be a part of being a Christian. And it’s our privilege as pastors to. To help people feel that not as some sort of tool of manipulation or guilt, but as a joyful part of discipleship, we get to do this. This is a wonderful thing to do. And so I think pressing into some of those New Testament texts, some of which we’ve talked about, some of which we haven’t, is really, really good. And when you’re doing expositional preaching, they are going to come up. When you were preaching through Matthew, it’s gonna come up. When you’re preaching through 1 Corinthians, and it’s gonna come up.

0:44:42 – (Ligon Duncan): When you’re preaching through Philippians, it’s going to come up. It’s just sprinkled throughout the New Testament, which lets you know that it was a normal part of life to early Christians and to those who were discipling early Christians. So I would just say, as pastors, get aware of used to into those texts and then let your teaching of your congregation flow out of those texts, because that’s just gonna help you a lot.

0:45:11 – (Ligon Duncan): When you have, on the one hand, people that haven’t been taught at all, and on the other hand, people that are reacting to bad teaching on this, and you’re just able to come right out of the scriptures and say, let me tell you what Jesus says, Let me tell you what Paul says. Let me tell you what you know, that’s just gonna help people when they’re thinking through this.

0:45:30 – (Matt Smethurst): That’s good. What would you add by way of a final comment? Jimmy?

0:45:35 – (Jamie Dunlop): Let me add two things. The first is competence will help your members be faithful. So you as a pastor may not have an administrative bone in your body. Right. You’ve never been on time for an appointment in your life, and you’re. You are feeling like I’m encouraging you to be responsible for the church budget. I am. But get good help. Get good help in the congregation. If there are errors in your financial report, that’s not helping people be faithful.

0:46:05 – (Jamie Dunlop): If you can’t answer simple questions about the financial state of the church or whoever it is, who’s doing the report, can’t answer those. It’s not helping the faithfulness of the church. Competence helps faithfulness. And maybe the last thing to just point out is that the budget is a good teaching opportunity. So as Lig said, simply preaching through the New Testament and the Old Testament is going to give you lots of opportunities to talk about money because it’s all over the Scriptures.

0:46:34 – (Jamie Dunlop): But in addition, don’t waste those regular budget reports. Six times a year, we let the church know the state of the financial condition of the church. And those are wonderful pastoral opportunities. If we are behind our budget, well, it’s a great way for me to model what it looks like to trust the Lord and to be busy trying to think through what we can do about that. If we are ahead, it’s a great opportunity for me to help the congregation. See, this does not mean we’ve succeeded.

0:47:05 – (Jamie Dunlop): You can be faithless and meet the budget all at the same time. Yeah. And so almost every, you know, the, the last meeting we had, the markets had just dipped. And I just, I warn the congregations, I’ve seen this again and again, that our giving is more tied to the stock market than it is to our employment, even though we’re the kind of congregation where people are giving not based on their stock returns, but based on their income.

0:47:33 – (Jamie Dunlop): And that’s because we are susceptible to fear. So let’s be careful as a congregation not to let the fear in the economy around us affect our faithfulness as Christians. I think you will find pretty much every time you talk about money with the church is a pastoral opportunity. Don’t hand that to someone who’s just going to give them the numbers. Make sure that as a pastor, where one of your elders, one of your pastors, sees that as an opportunity to teach and model what it looks like to be in love with Jesus in a way that shows up in your finances.

0:48:05 – (Matt Smethurst): Which is to say, as Christians, we ought to be giving in a way that doesn’t make sense to the world.

0:48:11 – (Jamie Dunlop): Absolutely. Yeah.

0:48:13 – (Matt Smethurst): Yeah. Well, as, as we conclude, I just want to underscore what we’ve said from the very beginning of this episode, that giving sacrificially, it doesn’t just reflect something about you and about your people. It also does something to you. It forms you and it shapes you. Because when we give, when we encourage our people to give, then it’s a declaration of independence from money’s stranglehold on our hearts. So rather than money being this inflated thing in our lives, right, Means of social status or a source of security, or a symbol of being some high and mighty person, money just becomes money.

0:49:01 – (Matt Smethurst): And of course, God doesn’t need our money, but he loves us. And so he challenges us to give, not just to get the money out of our wallets, but ultimately to get the idols out of our hearts and enable us to live single minded in our devotion to Him. I want to just again commend Jamie’s writing specifically on this topic, his booklet why Should I Give to My Church? And his longer book, Budgeting for a Healthy Church. Jamie, thanks for being with us today.

0:49:28 – (Jamie Dunlop): Oh, it’s been a delight. Thank you.

0:49:30 – (Matt Smethurst): Thanks for tuning in, everyone, to the everyday pastor. We hope it’s been encouraging to you. Please take a moment to leave a rating or review so we can help other pastors find fresh joy in the work of ministry history.