The Transparent Church

How important is transparency in church finances?

The question often arises in connection with shocking allegations of recently-discovered financial shenanigans in this denomination or that. These tend to proliferate wherever funds ripe for misappropriation are significant. For example, police in Kingston, Ontario recently investigated a local Catholic church for “financial irregularities” in the neighborhood of $600,000.

If you’re currently stumped trying to recall the last time your own local church had more than half a million dollars lying around for embezzlers to target, join the club.

Vultures over Corpses

Just as vultures gather over corpses, thieves rarely appear unless there’s something around worth stealing. Back in the first century, the infamous Judas had his hand in the common purse belonging to Jesus and his disciples. Far too many men and women entrusted with money lovingly given to Christ have since followed his sad and self-destructive example. One hopes not all of them went to their “own place” like he did.

Where abuses have occurred throughout church history, they did so because churches made the same mistakes repeatedly. Jenny Terry at 9Marks.org has written one of the more easily accessible recent posts on transparency in church finances. I find little to disagree with in Terry’s analysis. After all, she starts by calling it “the Lord’s money” (exactly right) and referencing the surprising frequency with which Jesus made mention of financial stewardship in his parables (eleven of thirty-nine, nearly a third). As a Director of Business Operations who serves on multiple boards, Terry is well positioned to warn churches about the dangers of too little financial disclosure and inadequate regular oversight.

On and On

What’s interesting to me about Terry’s article is that it inadvertently highlights where the biggest danger of financial exploitation exists: in megachurches, multi-campus churches and “Christian” institutions with big donor numbers, limited accountability and irregular or partial reporting. Terry’s article never explicitly identifies church or organizational size as a risk factor, but every example she cites of potential financial abuse is predicated on a plethora of pastors, secretaries and others with signing authority or access to funds. These all sound like seven figure operations.

It’s not just the potential for a big jackpot that draws thieves these days; victim churches also consistently sport a bureaucracy of sufficient size to obscure the occasional “help yourself” moment and enough people with signing authority that one or two may get lost in the shuffle. Another writer on the subject comments that most financial abuses in churches are small infractions that become long-term projects potentially netting big totals, often as much as seven years of regular dipping. No single theft is big enough to draw the attention of auditors. So it goes on and on and on.

Small, Simple and Safe

The reality is that small, independent local churches with leadership that spends within its means provide little temptation to the type of individual inclined to take advantage of other people’s trust, and little opportunity for significant loss. Releasing a church balance sheet to donors and other interested parties at regular intervals — especially one that documents expenditures roughly in proportion to its income — minimizes both motive and opportunity for criminal behavior.

As an example, everything donated at my local church goes through two sets of hands sitting side by side and the numbers in and out are disclosed annually at a meeting in which any regular can question the treasurer about anything on the balance sheet. There’s no church mortgage, and the reserve fund is small enough that it needs to be topped up a couple of times a year. Gifts in excess of operating expenses go out the door and into the pockets of missionaries and full-time workers promptly, and nobody is salaried. Plundering the reserve fund would be neither easy nor lucrative, and it would only happen once.

The NT Pattern

The biggest documented church in the New Testament was the original church in Jerusalem. At its peak, its numbers were almost surely under ten thousand. If we are reading between the lines accurately, gifts to the Lord were well supervised and did not accumulate. They were dispersed almost immediately. Opportunities for abuse, even in a church that size, were limited and short-term. Also, the church in Jerusalem was not large for long. Persecution scattered its members in relatively short order.

When the Gentile churches, laughably small by the standards of some today, began accumulating funds for specific causes, they did so under the direction of the apostle Paul. 2 Corinthians chapters 8 and 9 document his methodology: a plurality of vetted, trusted servants of Christ (three in this case) charged with handling the money in a manner open to the scrutiny of all the believers who might participate so that there would be no concerns about where it might go.

Prudent and Biblical

So, yes, transparency in church finances is both prudent and biblical, and ensuring it need not be a complex or onerous process. Where the servants who handle money are vetted, identifiable, accountable and especially plural, abuses are highly unlikely.

My biggest takeaway from Terry’s article is this: keep it small. Where there is no big stockpile of cash, and weekly collections serve merely to meet reasonable corporate expenses and as a redistribution convenience, problems will be few and unremarkable, almost never scandalous. When money goes out as regularly and almost as completely as it comes in, very little can be easily raked off the top. Even Judas didn’t net a massive return from his chronic embezzling. If he had, it’s highly unlikely he’d have been tempted by thirty pieces of silver.

A hundred dollars or two in the wrong hands is a bad day at the office. A few million is a much bigger problem.