Growing health and effectiveness

A blog centered around The Addington Method, leadership, culture, organizational clarity, faith issues, teams, Emotional Intelligence, personal growth, dysfunctional and healthy leaders, boards and governance, church boards, organizational and congregational cultures, staff alignment, intentional results and missions.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Does your ministry budget reflect your ministry priorities?

Budgets tell a story. They reflect our true ministry priorities whether in a local church or other ministries. We can say what we will but how we allocate resources is the real story of what is important to us.

Often budgets simply reflect what we have always done rather than what we say we intend to do. Politics and inertia can keep us from budgeting our priorities. How we have traditionally allocated resources should not be the test of how we allocate them in the future. 

Here is an interesting exercise. Identify the top three priorities for your ministry and then ask the question as to whether you are allocating resources in a way that will help you achieve those priorities. If not, what is keeping you from budgeting your real priorities?

Budgeting should not start with the past but with what you intend to accomplish in the future. The starting point is where we want to go, not where we have been. Budgets should help us drive our ministry agendas.

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