Get Radical with Your Church Budget

I can testify of miracle after miracle—all the ways God has provided for our now family of six. We’ve been able to give away more and more every year, yet God keeps providing for our needs supernaturally. We have never been in want. We’ve made decisions to downsize our home, drive old cars, cut expenses and give generously. God in return has blessed us beyond our wildest dreams. God is so good. As a pastor, we’re called to demonstrate the joy and reward of giving.

Don’t take guilt offerings.

Many of my sermons in the early days demonstrated my ability to manipulate people through guilt. Words like suffer, sacrifice and serve were used often; and it left people improperly burdened. The mentality of "suffer for Jesus since He suffered for you" can easily lead us to an arrogance and self-righteousness. It’s an attitude far from what God desires because it draws the attention to us and our sacrifices rather than Him.

God reminds us in Acts 17:24-25 that He doesn’t need anything from us. In fact, all things come from Him. He is the only Giver. Most of my sermons on giving now have to do with the truth that we can never out-give God (Matt. 19:29). Our cheerfulness (2 Cor. 9:7) in giving comes from a true faith that we are more blessed when we give (Acts 20:35).

Demonstrate your faith by giving dangerously.

In other words, put your money where your mouth is. I came to an elder meeting one morning with this suggestion: If we "love our neighbor as ourselves," then wouldn’t it make sense to spend on our neighbors what we spend on ourselves? What if we set up our budget so that half of our income leaves the church and goes to other ministries? To my surprise, the elders decided that morning to commit half of the budget to people and ministries outside of Cornerstone. It’s been almost a year now, and we’ve been able to give approximately 55 percent of our money away.

We made a commitment to send $250,000 to Children’s Hunger Fund every three months. We saw God’s supernatural hand at work each time we gave. When it was time for our second payment, we were low on funds. I didn’t say anything to the congregation. They didn’t even know we had a payment due. That Sunday, the offering was $251,000! Our normal offering is around $90,000. When it was time for our third payment, we had our biggest giving month ever—one million dollars! Again, no plea for money or announcement was made.

When we made our final payment, I asked the finance team what our outstanding debt was. (Cornerstone has had about $1 million debt for about 10 years.) I found out we had $1.4 million in outstanding debt. I then asked how much money we had left in the bank. Take a wild guess…$1.4 million! I began to cry immediately. We had tried to pay down debt unsuccessfully for years! In the year that we gave away half our resources, we had $1.4 million left over? If you think that’s coincidence, you don’t belong in ministry.

God blesses radical choices with supernatural results. Where’s your faith?