Our next series of posts will be a discussion of budget planning for the church.  As I commented on our other blog (Faith Based Accounting: July 27, 2012) “Attitudes about budgets vary greatly among churches.  Some churches operate without one, a practice I definitely do not recommend.  Many others swing to the other extreme expending great amounts of time (and blood, sweat and tears…) creating a budget plan.”

In the next few weeks, we will try to share some insights that will help churches adequately plan and hopefully land somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.  As you read these posts, you might want to consider this as somewhat of a book review because much of the material is based on Money Matters in the Church by Aubrey Malphurs and Steve Stroope.  I highly recommend this book; it is one of the clearest and most concise discussions of church finances I have come across.

Our discussion will be grouped into four categories:

            Definitions

            Types of Budgets

            Budget Development

            Budget Administration