Preparing a budget for your church can give you the confidence to support its mission and ministry, care for its buildings, and love your community.
While this may seem far-fetched, having the knowledge of what you can and cannot afford will help you to plan ahead with building works, with knowing what projects you are able to start and how you can build up a Kingdom People in your community.
We see examples of budgeting as a virtue and aspect of wisdom within the Bible, in Proverbs 31 the description of a good wife includes managing the house's resources, and in Luke 14, when talking about the cost of discipleship, Jesus refers to the wisdom of budgeting for a building project and the folly of not doing so.
There are several approaches to budgeting and you may find the NCVO website helpful. We are going to look at three approaches: income-driven, expenditure-driven and zero-based; though there are a number of other methods, and all have advantages and disadvantages.