Saving your church some money (my go at public service)

Let's face it, no church members want to sit around during their monthly board meetings and discuss creative and positive ways to grow their ministry. It's hard. And if it works then a whole bunch of people they don't even know may come in and start sitting in the pews next to them. Before you know it they're in the fellowship hour and taking part in potlucks. These are people who are sometimes poor, young, democrats, or of a different race or sexual orientation. Or they may be all of the above. It's much better if these churches can keep their membership pretty constant so as not to have to deal with new people on their boards and committees who don't understand how things were done in the 1980s and why that worked so well.

Provided that a church does the smart thing and puts a lid on their membership, they may face a situation where some of the members move away, pass away, or leave because they're mad at the pain in the ass leaders who want to grow the ministry. Then they're stuck with all of those problems I talked about before and NO ONE wants that! So as the membership rolls begin to decline we may be talking about a decline in giving. These churches would be wise to introduce smart budget options like these:

1) Start cutting the youth programs. Since most of the people making these decisions don't have young children, this will be an easy decision. After all, their children were perfectly happy playing with sticks and participating in fun youth activities like stripping wax when they were younger. A good place to start is with cutbacks of the youth ministry staff as this is usually the largest expense. Then when the youth ministry staff is unable to meet the needs of the church because they're working fewer hours, you can start cutting programs that are neglected. If you're lucky the church will soon reach an ideal balance of no youth programs and no youth.

2) Begin using utilities at Great Depression-era levels. This is simple to achieve but involves at least one maintenance person or staff person who is willing to put in some low-impact time. The way this works is that one person listens for the heat and air conditioning to turn on and adjusts the thermostat accordingly so it no longer runs. This may take a few adjustments in the dead of winter or dog days of summer, but will definitely be noticed on the church's bottom line! As for the water, the maintenance person should locate the master shutoff for the church and the problem will be solved. If people complain about the temperature in the church suggest that they dress in layers and use their bulletin as either a fan to stay cool or kindling to stay warm.

3) Constantly mention to paid staff that the posts they fill used to be filled by volunteers, and that those volunteers felt privileged to fill those positions. In particular this applies to people filling office, Christian education, and financial roles. Please disregard the fact that it now takes two incomes to make ends meet at home where it used to only take one and people take these jobs to meet household expenses. None of that matters. Hopefully these people finally respond to your passive-aggressive behavior by either quitting their position and/or the church. Problem solved! This would also be a good time to once again bring up the story about how when you tithed sometimes you didn't know where money was going to come from to pay medical bills or rent, but the money always came at the last minute.

Think your church can pull this off? Of course it can! If you make your bottom line the focus of all your boards and committee meetings there's no telling what you can accomplish! I hope you feel free to be creative to expand on these or to come up with your own ideas that are unique to your church. Give me your feedback in the comments, y'all, and let me know how they worked! Best of luck!