REQUEST - "Help, My Church Is Wasting Money" - Here is Help.

QUESTION RECEIVED:

Help, my church is wasting money.
What do you do when your church is struggling with finances each week, but raises money for a big event that they have every year,but struggles each week to raise money for the church with tithes and offerings?

MY ANSWER:

Yes we need to be careful with how we handle God’s money.

God cares how much give.
He says-

Malachi 3:8 (NKJV)

 8 “Will a man rob God?

Yet you have robbed Me!

But you say,

‘In what way have we robbed You?’

In tithes and offerings.”

Jesus knows and cares about what we give.

Luke 21:1-3 New King James Version (NKJV)

“21 And He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury, 2 and He saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites. 3 So He said, “Truly I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all;”

Now what do we do with the money?

We support the Kingdom of God.

Matthew 28:18-19 (NKJV)

“18 And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.”

         The church is the Kingdom on Earth expanding.

How does the Church expand?

1.        We worship and believers glory in and give adoration for grace as non-Christians join us and hear the wonders of salvation.

2.       We edify or build up believers in the Word this is called edification or discipleship and we participate in missions to people of the church and missions to those out side the church.

3.       We participate in the evangelism of the lost with our church witness of the God/man Jesus in his perfect life he became the perfect sin sacrifice to God.  We can tell the lost if they repent they can be pardoned for sin, avoid the wrath of hell and have citizenship in the kingdom and Heaven.

It is really simple handling a church budget doing it God’s way.

It gets complicated when we ignore the church’s biblical purpose and spend on non-sanctioned church stuff.  (We are not a social club or entertainment venue.)

So if a request for money is made you simply ask-

1.       Does this help biblical worship?

2.       Does this help develop disciples?

3.       Does this help discipleship?

4.       Three no answers equals no funding.

5.        Can our funds (from members tithes) support this?  Don’t have fund raisers with the public.  Non-believers are confused when asked to pay for things church members do not believe in enough to pay for themselves.

There are plenty of verses to guide church budgets.

There are several fine Christian financial ministries that can help you with budgets.  

Do not spend what you do not have.

Tell members to tithe.

Hold the servant leaders to biblically give account on how God’s money is to be used in Kingdom life.

Your church is not struggling with tithes and offerings.
You tithes and offerings are what they are.
The members are responding rightly or wrongly with how they are responding to God.
Your church leadership is struggling with how to spend god's money.