203: Money & Mission: Why Revenue Doesn’t Save the Church | Church Finance Series (Part 1)

Laurie Graham 0:01
Hey, welcome to the Small Church Ministry Podcast, where we help volunteers and ministry leaders experience less stress, more joy, and greater impact as we share strategies that actually do work in smaller churches. I’m your host, Laurie Graham. Let’s dive in.

Laurie Graham 0:23
Hey, welcome back to the Small Church Ministry Podcast. If you’re new here, I’m Laurie, and usually we are talking about volunteers and successful program ideas, everything from women’s ministry to kidmin to worship and coffee, basically all sorts of small church stuff, and all the human pieces that make church actually feel like church.

Laurie Graham 0:44
Today, we’re starting something a little different. This is going to be a six-part series on small church finances, and we are going to take this one step at a time, from money and missions to leadership models to why people give or don’t give, all the way to the messy parts, and finally, the deep breath that we all need at Christmas time. So this series on church finances is going to be a whole journey, and it starts today.

Laurie Graham 1:13
But before we go there, I want to tell you how this series even happened. A little over a week ago, I got an email asking if I had any episodes or blog posts about small church finances. Now this person had heard Episode 187. I know this is a very popular episode. Many of you have heard it. If you have not, please go back and grab it. But in Episode 187, I talked about what to do when you feel like your church is dying. Now, if you haven’t heard it, again, go back and take a listen. But did I have any episodes on church finances? Like it’s a logical follow-up to that episode, and honestly, I had to respond with the email and say I really don’t.

Laurie Graham 1:59
Now maybe I’ve avoided this conversation for a long time, and I will say not because money isn’t important, but because the way churches talk about money, well, honestly, I usually disagree with it. Sometimes it’s a really disconnected conversation, like it’s disconnected from reality, or sometimes that money talk is full of pressure and oftentimes even manipulation when we get into stewardship campaigns—not saying stewardship campaigns are bad, I’m just saying sometimes they cross the line for me. And honestly, a lot of times the money conversations are pretty obsessed with keeping an institution alive.

Laurie Graham 2:41
Now the conversation we’re going to have over the next six weeks here might be a little different than the typical discussion. For today, I want to make something really clear, just so you’re not waiting for the checklist that is not coming today. This first episode is foundation. We’re going to be laying the emotional and spiritual groundwork so the next five weeks make a little more sense.

Laurie Graham 3:06
Now, by the end of today’s episode, you’ll understand why money conversations feel so heavy, and we’re all going to walk away, maybe with a different filter that makes financial decisions in our church feel calmer, clearer, and a whole lot less personal.

Laurie Graham 3:28
But here’s why I’ve stayed away from the money conversation. Like the foundation of it for me, I really refuse to have the typical conversation on how do we save the church with money? Like, if somebody wants strategies to grow their church, just to sustain a budget, or to raise enough money to keep the doors open so that the church doesn’t die, I am not your girl, because I don’t believe the church is a business. I don’t believe the church is something that we save with dollars. The church, like the real church, is something that Jesus sustains. And I am personally not worried about the church. The church is a movement. It’s not an institution.

Laurie Graham 4:16
Now, I know somebody’s listening right now who’s saying, “Wait, I’m the one who said that to her,” and you are. So I was talking to a pastor out in California, and he’s part of a church where all the pastors are bi-vocational, so none of the pastors are paid. And before I did this series, I had a conversation with a few different people. He was one of them, and he had said, you know, a lot of churches that start as a movement—like missional, foundational—they end up as an institution. So those two words, to me, were just really striking, that sometimes churches start as a movement but end up as an institution.

Laurie Graham 5:00
Now I want to say that most churches do have an institution attached to them. In the U.S. here, I know we have a global audience, but in the United States, we talk about 501(c)(3)s or nonprofits. If you are in a different area around the world and you have a different word or definition for this, feel free to overlay whatever—however this makes sense to you. But for me, most churches do have an institution attached to them. It’s a nonprofit. A nonprofit is an organization, again, a 501(c)(3) here in the States, and yes, these nonprofits absolutely require money to create visible, meaningful impact, at least in the way we have them set up.

Laurie Graham 5:45
But whether or not your church is organized as a 501(c)(3), just hang on with me for this concept, because I think this is where some confusion gets mixed in. We treat this nonprofit institutional layer like it’s sacred—like the building, the administration—but really it’s just the administrative structure that is supposed to support the mission.

Laurie Graham 6:14
When people ask, “Why is giving down? Why are churches closing? How do I save my dying church?” my first thoughts truly are, number one, the church isn’t going under. Jesus sustains the church. My second thought, number two, is that the nonprofit side of many churches isn’t functioning well as an institution. It might need a major overhaul. It might be really heavy on the administrative side. Maybe it’s not even doing the work that the nonprofit, when it was designed, when it was set up, actually had the mission to support.

Laurie Graham 6:55
So for me, as I talk about money and churches, it is foundationally important for me to separate these two, because when we think our church is dying, that has major spiritual and emotional implications—the church, the Church of Jesus Christ. But when we know that the church is fine, that Jesus sustains the church, our relationships, the mission, the community, the impact, but maybe it’s our institution that needs some help, I don’t know—for me, that takes some of that personal, emotional, spiritual implication off. The church is fine, the institution, yeah, that might need some help.

Laurie Graham 7:43
So let’s just step back for a minute and just think about regular nonprofits. So consider some non-church nonprofit that you support or that you like or that you’re invested in. So for me, when I was thinking about this, two big ones stood out for me in Tucson. In the city of Tucson, Arizona, we have an organization that’s called Youth On Their Own. They do amazing work, not just supporting unhoused teens, but connecting them with resources. And also, they’ve kind of raised awareness of how, I don’t know, how widespread it is that many youth are on their own. It’s an amazing organization.

Laurie Graham 8:23
Another organization that popped to mind to me as I was preparing this episode was The Asher House. Now, some of you might have just gotten a big grin on your face. The Asher House. You can look it up if you don’t know it, but basically, it’s an animal rescue, and it’s a gentleman named Lee Asher who took off in an RV for a year to promote rescuing animals from local humane societies or local, you know, animal shelters. And I love this organization.

Laurie Graham 8:54
So think about an organization, a nonprofit, that you support, where you give your time and your money. Now, why do you support them? How do you choose these organizations? For me and for many people, if you gave money to a nonprofit that said they fed starving children in impoverished areas and they weren’t actually feeding any children, you would stop giving. If we donated time or money to an animal rescue organization and found out they’re not rescuing animals, we would question their leadership.

Laurie Graham 9:35
Or how about this—gets in the news quite often about bigger nonprofit organizations: How much of your money goes to administrative costs? In many nonprofits, the percentage is huge. It can even be upwards of 90%, and we question that. Like, “Wait, we are giving for this cause and we’re just paying salaries.” Now you might know where I’m going here.

Laurie Graham 10:01
Hmm, non-church nonprofits know these things. They are really focused on the impact they’re making and clearly communicating the impact of the mission. They build trust through visible work. I’m going to say that one more time: non-church nonprofits build trust through visible work.

Laurie Graham 10:26
But in a lot of churches, a huge portion of our budgets go to buildings, utilities, salaries, maintenance. A huge portion of what we’re asking for money for or for giving isn’t the mission, it’s the institution. It’s keeping the lights on. And again, let’s just remember that’s not the church. The church is fine. It’s sustained by Jesus. We don’t need a building to have a church. Again, not saying a building is not important, but we don’t need a building to have a church. The church is fine. But when we have nonprofits that aren’t expressing the visible impact they’re having, aren’t communicating it, are taking an exorbitant amount of their budget to keep a building open, that’s also not an effective nonprofit.

Laurie Graham 11:27
So as we move through this series on church finances, I just want to be crystal clear, I’m not talking about saving your church through finances. I might be talking a little bit about running a nonprofit side well, so that we don’t lose the mission inside of an institution. We’re going to be talking about effectiveness and clarity and visible impact. We’re not going to get overly churchy with our language or with guilt or especially with fear. We’re going to talk about building something that actually serves people, shows impact, and reflects the mission that we all care deeply about. That is the heart behind this series.

Laurie Graham 12:17
So let’s get into it. Here’s the distinction that nobody really teaches in seminary, nobody explains to volunteers, and every church desperately needs. The Church is the people, the mission, the relationships, the organic discipleship. The 501(c)(3), the nonprofit, the institution. This is the building, the payroll, the insurance, the utilities. Only one of these needs revenue. The Church doesn’t need money. The 501(c)(3), important things like building, payroll, insurance—that’s where the revenue is needed.

Laurie Graham 13:02
But sometimes we treat these two things like they’re fused together, like if the checking account dips too low, the actual Body of Christ, our community, is about to collapse. So let’s just breathe that out, because you and I know the Church is fine. It might be the nonprofit that’s stressed a bit. But when we confuse these two layers, we panic about the wrong thing.

Laurie Graham 13:27
Sometimes, instead of asking, “How do we make a difference in our community? How do we feed people? How do we make disciples?” we start asking, “How do we afford our building? How do we keep the lights up?” Instead of asking, “How do we build deeper trust and better relationships?” we start asking, “How do we get people to give more?” And by the way, when we say, “How do we get people to give more,” that is getting into manipulation.

Laurie Graham 13:56
So this is why money conversations feel so heavy. We’ve assigned a lot of spiritual weight to administrative problems. So let me say it again. The Church is eternal. The 501(c)(3) is a filing status. That alone should lower all of our blood pressure just a little bit. Now, again, I’m not saying those pressures aren’t important. They are real, and we’re going to get into it, but let’s just keep it in the right order. Money sustains the infrastructure. Money isn’t needed for a mission. Money keeps the building functional. Money gets insurance paid. Money keeps the staff staffed, if you have a paid staff, and that’s what it does. But money doesn’t sustain the Church.

Laurie Graham 14:43
Now, I understand that we use the institution to do ministry at the church, but if we think about the early church, the early church grew way before they had their own buildings or budgets or paid staff or giving campaigns or spreadsheets or line item. The early church grew through community and hospitality and teaching and sharing life and presence and sacrifice.

Laurie Graham 15:12
So your building right now might be at risk. I know it in many churches. It is post-COVID. Not just small churches, but big churches feel a lot of financial pressure. Something has happened in our society. Church numbers are down. So your building might be at risk, but the Church is not at risk. Our budget might be really stressed, but our mission does not have to be. It might take some adjustment, but it doesn’t have to be. Our nonprofits might be making some really hard decisions, but our faith communities—they are not in danger of extinction.

Laurie Graham 15:55
I really believe we need to stop merging these two ideas, because when we do, we start like, we start acting like Jesus needs our PayPal link or something to keep the gospel going, and he doesn’t. Revenue does protect our organizations, and I’m not saying that’s not important, but it is not the Church.

Laurie Graham 16:17
So let’s just let that settle in. Again, again. This first episode in the series. This is just a foundation, maybe where things start shifting a little bit. But here’s the part that causes some damage. When churches talk about money through fear, when maybe we’re panicking—panicking a little—we’re not sure where the money is going to come from. When we start talking about money through fear, even if it is not said out loud, our church cultures really do start bending under that pressure. People feel it, even if we never say it directly.

Laurie Graham 16:59
You know, this list that gets said: “We’re behind on giving. We need everyone to step up. If things don’t change, we’re not sure what we’re going to do.” Or a little softer, a little more spiritual, still, can be difficult and shows a fear base is, “Please pray about being faithful,” right? We’re questioning people’s faithfulness, or, “We just need people to trust God and give.” Even if those words are said softly, what we hear a lot is that we’re spiritually responsible for our financial survival. That’s the mixed message, and it’s not just bad messaging, it’s spiritually manipulative because fear—it distorts decision-making.

Laurie Graham 17:51
I’ve been on church staffs. I’ve been on committees where we’re scared about money, when urgency and pressure are like the primary emotions. Think about it, we don’t think as clearly. We cut the wrong things. We pressure the wrong people. We make decisions from anxiety, not wisdom. We honestly, and this is neurobiologically true, we lose creative thinking, like we lose creativity. We also lose mission. We also lose trust.

Laurie Graham 18:27
So to shift from fear into some calmness and clarity and peace and trust—and I get it, that is not an easy shift to make. It’s not overnight, it’s not instant, but this is what brings the room back together. People not only don’t think well under panic, they don’t give well. People give well with meaning and purpose and trust and vision too. If you want to think about it this way, fear is a terrible fundraiser. Vision can be really fantastic.

Laurie Graham 19:10
Okay, another deep breath, another little bit of a shift here, and it’s a really important one: A healthy nonprofit structure supports ministry. It doesn’t consume it.

Laurie Graham 19:30
If you have a healthy organizational structure for your nonprofit, for your 501(c)(3), for the institution of the church that you’re in, it supports the ministry. It doesn’t consume it.

Laurie Graham 19:44
So if people feel like we need to, like, we exist to keep the lights on or to fund the building—or we’re going to talk about this a little more next episode—to sustain salaries, to fill volunteer gaps, to cover the building. Goals. Please hear this. This is not just about money. It’s also about service and time and energy and heart. But when we feel like we exist to sustain all these things, it’s really upside down, because people don’t exist to serve the institution. It’s the other way around. The institution exists to serve the people, and our budgets should really reflect ministry. Well, our budgets should reflect ministry reality, and sometimes our budgets look a little more like institutional anxiety. Again, we’re not going to get to all the answers today or at all in the next six weeks. But I think the shifts that we’re talking about are so important in order to get us to solutions that we might be seeking.

Laurie Graham 20:52
But I will say this: If a large majority of church revenue goes toward maintenance, we no longer have nonprofits that support the mission. We don’t. What we have is building preservation societies, and that’s not why anyone gives anymore. The nonprofit, the institution, the 501(c)(3), it’s the tool. It’s not the heartbeat.

Laurie Graham 21:22
And one last little shift that really is the stabilizer for everything else: having a clear mission, a vision of what we’re doing and why we exist. This often is the stabilizer. People don’t give to desperation. People give to purpose. Again, serving time, talents, money, energy. When we talk about volunteering, I talk about this so much when I talk about, you know, finding volunteers, building your volunteer teams. People want to be involved in something that’s making a difference. It’s the same with money. People don’t fund panic. Now, they might give under some pressure, but when it comes to what we want to invest in, we don’t want to invest in “Help us survive.” We want to invest in “Look what we’re doing. Look where we’re making an impact.”

Laurie Graham 22:24
Now I will say that there are some people in most of our churches who do give on a regular basis, no matter what is going on. Okay, and I get it, those of us who’ve grown up in churches our whole lives, and we’re taught to tithe and and have a loyalty to an institution. It’s often really hard for us to understand the younger generation, who might be in their 50s or 60s or 40s or 30s or 20s. But there is a shift in our culture, which we will talk about in a few episodes, and it’s not a bad shift, it’s not bad, it’s different. But people invest in “Look what our giving is doing,” and I think that’s a God-given desire. I don’t think it’s evil. I don’t think it’s unfaithful. I think it’s stewardship. Mission clarity, knowing where we’re going, what we’re doing, how we’re making a difference, is more stabilizing than any kind of revenue boost you could have. When people see trust and purpose and relationships and actual visible outcomes—sometimes we are so blessed to see those. When we see real human impact, we want to be part of sustaining that. That’s why so many grassroots movements can be so exciting. Or if you see some of the even like business campaigns, where they’re they’re doing like this pre-funding before a business idea is off the ground, it’s exciting to build something from nothing. People get behind missions, behind vision, behind actual impact, where we’re making a difference. You don’t need a big budget to fund a mission. You just don’t.

Laurie Graham 24:21
So let’s zoom out just for a second, because this whole distinction between a church and an organization or a church and a nonprofit, it matters differently, depending on our roles, and I just want to acknowledge that before we close out this episode. Pastors feel it one way. Elders feel it another. Finance teams, totally different, right? Volunteers, those of us not involved in the numbers, we feel it in hallway conversations that nobody prepares us for. Sometimes we all carry it differently.

Laurie Graham 24:52
But if you’re a pastor listening to this, I just want to lift something off your shoulders: You’re not responsible for keeping the church alive. Jesus already handled that before you were born. I know how it feels. I understand the pressure to preach hope while maybe you’re looking at a declining budget, to lead the church when there’s a bit of fear about what’s going to be here next year, the pressure to make decisions while you feel personally responsible for every shortfall, or the pressure just to smile when something in your stomach is just twisting you in knots. It is so easy to confuse “I’m stewarding a nonprofit” with “I’m failing the church,” but I just want to say you’re not failing the church, even if your numbers don’t look good. You’re managing an infrastructure. That’s leadership work. It’s not spiritual pressure or spiritual failure.

Laurie Graham 25:48
Now, if you’re an elder or you’re on the board, I want to name somebody that most people don’t say out loud. Sometimes elders and board members, they carry a quiet fear that they don’t talk about. You hear the numbers first. You see the trajectory. You feel responsible for protecting other people from panic. You want to make wise decisions, but you also don’t want to crush the pastor or upset people or seem faithless yourself. So you hold it and you carry it and you internalize it. So here’s your little pressure release, elders, lay leaders, committee members: You’re not responsible for sustaining the church either. You’re stewarding a resource structure, nothing more, nothing less, and that clarity can help make your decisions a little lighter. Panic makes everything heavier.

Laurie Graham 26:50
And for finance teams, bless you. A lot of times, the finance teams are the ones who only hear about money when it’s bad. You’re the ones who see the giving dips, the insurance increase, the surprising roofing estimates, the utility bills that went up for no reason, the staff costs that nobody ever really gets. Finance teams, you often carry practical pressure, pressure that is really wrapped up in a lot of spiritual expectation as well, and that can be exhausting. I want to acknowledge that, and I also want to reset your job description. Your role is to help the nonprofit operate with clarity and wisdom and sustainability, not to spiritually carry the fate of the church. You’re not the savior of the building. You’re the steward of the spreadsheet, yes, and that alone is a lot.

Laurie Graham 27:46
And for volunteers, you all are the unsung heroes in all these moments, because you’re not at the finance meetings, you’re not staring at the budget. But all of us absorb the culture. We hear the tone. We feel anxiety when it’s there. We carry the emotional ripple effects. Sometimes we pick up the avoidance of certain conversations or decisions. We notice all the time when leaders get nervous, and too often volunteers, I’ll say we, we think, “Are we doing something wrong? Should we give more? Is it on us? What can I do? Are we failing?” And I just want to say, No, fear isn’t ours to carry, either. The organization stress is not a spiritual assignment. We are part of the church, the relational, human, mission-centered part. All of us as a volunteer, you’re not responsible for the administration. The administrative institution like staying afloat. We don’t need to fix the nonprofit, but what we do need to do is stay rooted in what actually makes the church the church: loving, following, being, seeking, relating. When we stop confusing the church with the organization,

Laurie Graham 29:19
I really believe that fear starts loosening its grip, because we don’t need to be scared that our church is dying. Our organization might need some help. Our organization might need some big shifts, but the church, the people, the community, us, Jesus, holds that together.

Laurie Graham 29:41
So before we close out today, I just want to get just get a little bit practical. I always love to leave something really practical in our podcast episodes, nothing overwhelming, just something small that might bring a little clarity. Sometime this week, sit down with one or two people, maybe a friend. And maybe you’re on a board, maybe you’re a pastor, maybe you have a couple of leaders you want to surround yourself with—not a whole committee. Don’t bring your board together, just some calm, steady people who can hold some perspective well, and just grab two pieces of paper. Could be the back of a bulletin, a napkin, I don’t care. Just keep it super low pressure and just make two different lists.

Laurie Graham 30:20
Make one list that says, “What parts of our church are actually the Church?”—the relationships, the mission, the people, the discipleship, aspects that are very relational. So make a list on one side: “What parts of the church are the Church?”

Laurie Graham 30:36
And then make another list: “What part is the 501(c)(3), or the organizational structure, the institution?” On that side of the list, start throwing things out, like the building, utilities, insurance, admin. So make two different lists, and then just ask one clarifying question, just one question: “Where is organizational pressure turning into like personal weight or personal stress?” Look at what Jesus is holding together, because that’s the big side of things. That’s the most important side of things.

Laurie Graham 31:19
And that’s it. Just make those lists. You’re not deciding anything, you’re not making cuts, you’re not launching a campaign, you’re not solving a budget issue, not today. But it’s kind of cool to sit down and just tell some truth. Maybe it’ll release a little pressure you’re carrying in a way that you weren’t meant to.

Laurie Graham 31:44
As we come to the end of this first episode of the finance series, I want to circle back to what I said at the very beginning. Today wasn’t the day for a checklist. This was just Foundation. We just built a filter that might make the next five weeks seem a little calmer, clearer, and a whole lot less personal. Like if there’s one takeaway you could walk out with today, wherever you’re listening from, you’re not carrying what you think you’re carrying. Or maybe a better way to phrase this is we don’t have to carry all the pressure of finances that we think we need to carry. Jesus holds the church together. This might be about an organization that is not functioning well, but the church—he’s got that. So let’s just name that so we can all just breathe a little lighter.

Laurie Graham 32:45
We’re not responsible for keeping the church alive. We are stewarding—pastors, elders, finance team, volunteers—we’re all stewarding a structure that was built to help us love people well. That honestly is a lot lighter than what most people in church are carrying when it comes to thinking about finances. We don’t need more pressure. Let’s just take some really good breaths, and this is exactly where the whole six-part series is heading. We’re not here to rescue an institution. We’re here maybe to right-size the structure so the mission can breathe again.

Laurie Graham 33:32
When we stop merging the church with the whole nonprofit institution, our conversations can get calmer. We can make cleaner decisions. Fear stops leading the way. Things feel a little less urgent. Pressure loses its spiritual power. That pressure is not a spiritual thing. Please hear that. And hopefully our mission doesn’t just become visible again, but it becomes forefront when we’re giving out of purpose instead of pressure, right? And this doesn’t happen just because our revenue skyrockets. It happens because we kick fear out of the room. Let’s kick the fear, the panic, out of the room, because Jesus has got the church.

Laurie Graham 34:25
Okay, so that’s part one. Next week, Part Two, we’re going to get honest about leadership models that small churches use: paid pastors, bi-vocational leaders, and, yes, fully volunteer churches. We’ll be talking about all of these, and I will just give a little bit of a sneak peek. The surprising truth is, all of these can work well, as long as expectations are shared, and that is key.

Laurie Graham 34:55
So thanks for showing up today for this first of six finance and small church series. Thanks for being part of this community. We care so deeply about small churches. We believe that small churches are making an impact all over the planet, not because of size, not because of money, but because we’re walking out exactly what Jesus asked us to walk out. Small churches really are very, very much like the ministry that Jesus had on the planet, and I think we’re just really close to the heart of Christ. Love you all. Until next week, be a light.