Accounting and Money for Ministerial Leadership
Key Practical and Theological Insights
Nimi Wariboko
Accounting and Money for Ministerial Leadership
Key Practical and Theological Insights
Copyright © 2013 Nimi Wariboko. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
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ISBN 13: 978-1-62564-012-3
EISBN 13: 978-1-62189-720-0
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
To my cousin, Obaye Karibo who passed away in October 2012.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Professor Amos Yong of Regent University for reading the whole manuscript and making useful suggestions. Nancy Shoptaw served as superb copyeditor, ferreting out errors with excellence, and smoothing the flow of language. I also thank Christian Amondson, Jim Tedrick, and Diane Farley at Wipf and Stock Publishers. I gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint chapter 8 which appeared as “The Moral Roots of the Global Financial Industry,” in Public Theology for a Global Society: Essays in Honor of Max Stackhouse, edited by Deirdre Kings Hainsworth and Scott Paeth, 51–73. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010). Thanks to Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishers for permission to republish it here.
Preface
Accounting for Ministers who are Afraid of Numbers
“Excuse me, what did you say, ‘money and ministry?’” There is always a double take when the two words are mentioned in a church or seminary. Many pastors or theologians think that the communal/spiritual ethos of the kingdom of God should not be mingled with the individualistic ethos of the market. They identify money and ministry as belonging to two mutually exclusive, separate spheres that are operating according to different principles. This thinking is faulty and anachronistic. The separate-sphere assumption conceals the deep connections between the two and also prevents seminaries from effectively training their students for ministry. More importantly, owing to this outdated assumption most pastors are often not as effective as they ought to be in church management and in providing leadership for economic justice matters in their communities.
Many do not even want to know the real financial situation of their church. My former Episcopal (Anglican) pastor once told me a story about his uncle, a parish minister. At the end of each month the uncle would ask the treasurer, how is the church doing? The treasurer would answer, “all bills paid.” The uncle would turn away and not ask further questions. This went on for decades and one day it was discovered that the treasurer was not only paying the bills of the church, he was lining his pockets with whatever was left.
Maybe this is not our own story, but we have been in finance committee and board meetings where financial reports are discussed and we do not understand what others, especially the chairperson of the finance committee or the treasurer is saying. As far as we are concerned they may just as well be speaking in a foreign language. We are not full, effective participants in meetings like this, and yet we are the leader of the church, its spiritual head and the chief executive officer.
Our discomfort seems to be compounded when we want to go beyond our church’s financial reports. We are at a loss in understanding the monetary systems of the modern economy. We have been given a lot of talks and theologies of money, but they have all been focused on stewardship of personal money, on how to spend our meager financial resources to further the kingdom of God. Not that this is bad, but we wish to understand the workings of the modern monetary system.
You may have searched for books that would offer a theological study of the nature and role of money in contemporary societies. You may have looked for some wisdom on the peculiar dialectics of the monetary structures and forces that frame existence and actively confront persons, peoples, classes, gender, races, and economies in a fallen world. You needed a book that would shine a bright theological-ethical light on the motion of money in both national and global spheres so as to highlight the serious ethical issues that pertain to the production, circulation, control, and use of money in the structures and organizations of economic life.
You do not detest the modern monetary system. You only want a book that will help you reflect on how to nudge the structure and organization of monetary life toward creating and maintaining an embracing economic community that brings unity-in-difference into perpetual play and also fosters more ethical relationality without stifling its creativity and galvanizing force. If there is such a book, you want it to also cover the knowledge gap that seems to yawn at you in your finance and board meetings. For you have long noticed that the knowledge gaps relating to accounting and the monetary system affect your ability to lead your church to accomplish its mission in today’s highly monetized and financialized economy that speaks in peculiar tongues.
This book that you hold in your hands is designed to bring you up to speed in the language of accounting and money in contemporary American society. This book will give seminary students and pastors practical resources for effective (not hands-on) management of church finances. Among others, it will offer training on basic accounting and budgeting, reading of financial reports, and elementary tax and legal issues in order to develop pastors’/students’ core competency in stewardship leadership.
After going through this book, most students and pastors should be able to read, exegete, and make sense of the financial reports that will be given to them by church accountants (treasurers, finance committees).
Specifically, this book is designed to provide seminary students and pastors with the necessary understanding of the place and function of money in ministry and church administration. Second, students and pastors will be able to interpret basic financial reports to enable them to contribute meaningfully to discussions on the financial administration of their congregation. Third, they will be able to interpret the economic signs of their parishes, effectively communicate them, lead or assist in organizing efforts to correct wrong signs or trends, and embody the ideals necessary for ethical/prudential management of their parishes’ financial resources.
Fourth, the book will help seminary students and pastors with no training in accounting to expand their core management competency and church leadership skills to include basic issues of finance and accounting. It will also provide pastors/ministers with financial management orientation to become better leaders/managers of their churches and organizations. In addition to the accounting and theological threads that run throughout the chapters of the book there is a managerial thread (chief executive officer, pastors are CEOs of their organizations).
