Align Your Resources With Your Mission
A budget is more than a collection of numbers. It reflects your congregation’s priorities, makes ministry possible, and helps leaders prepare faithfully for what comes next.
These resources can help your congregation plan, budget, build financial resilience, and make thoughtful decisions about the future.
Budget for Mission
Let Your Budget Tell the Story
Congregational budgets should do more than track income and expenses. Thoughtful budgeting helps leaders connect financial decisions to mission, communicate clearly about ministry, and invite the whole congregation into a shared vision for what its resources can accomplish for the realm of God.
Church Budgeting Toolkit
Build a budget that is realistic, understandable, and grounded in your congregation’s ministry priorities. This toolkit offers practical guidance for developing and communicating your annual budget.
Narrative Budgets
Move beyond columns of numbers and show what generosity makes possible. A narrative budget connects your congregation’s financial resources to worship, formation, care, outreach, and other areas of ministry.
Prepare for What’s Ahead
Build Financial Resilience
Healthy financial planning looks beyond this year’s budget. Reserves, long-term planning, and honest conversations about sustainability can help your congregation respond to unexpected needs while preparing for future ministry.
How Much Is Enough?
How much should your congregation keep in reserve? Explore questions and considerations that can help leaders determine an appropriate reserve for their particular ministry and context.
Plan for the Long Term
Steward Today with Tomorrow in Mind
Faithful stewardship includes considering what happens beyond the next budget year. Thoughtful planning can help congregations care for their assets, prepare for significant transitions, and ensure that resources continue to serve ministry well into the future.
Church Closure & Legacy
Sometimes faithful planning includes difficult conversations about a congregation’s future. Explore considerations for congregations discerning closure and ways their remaining resources can continue supporting ministry and mission.
Legacy Giving
Help members consider how generosity can extend beyond their lifetimes. Legacy giving can strengthen future ministry while giving people an opportunity to make a lasting expression of faith and generosity.
Need Help Looking at the Bigger Picture?
Planning does not mean knowing exactly what the future will hold. It means paying attention to what has been entrusted to us, making thoughtful choices today, and preparing faithfully for the ministry God may call us to tomorrow.
A faithful financial plan doesn’t simply ask, “Can we afford it?” It also asks, “What are our resources for? Why have we been entrusted with them?”
Generosity Plus
Sometimes the questions facing a congregation can’t be answered by a worksheet or article. Generosity Plus offers personalized coaching to help congregations examine their financial practices, generosity, sustainability, and opportunities for ministry in their particular context.