May 25, 2006
Annual Reports
In the May 22 edition of USA Today reporter Matt Krantz writes, “Investors will notice big changes to some annual reports that are now arriving in the mail: They’re missing the financial statements.” Over the last few years I’ve seen this trend in the church. No longer are our financial reports posted on the bulletin board for all to see. I can request a report and receive ‘summarized financials’, but not the complete breakdown of financial information. For instance, staff salaries are lumped together and never reveal individual salaries. In light of the collapse of some churches who didn’t fully disclose financial expenditures to its members, it’s not unreasonable for us to expect and get a full financial accounting. Actually, the financial software we use is so confusing that even if I had the report, I couldn’t read it. All is not lost though; some of our members are bankers, accountants and investors who can understand it. Now if they just had a copy of it!
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Gail;
----We should ask ourselves, "What does it really matter if we are not given a financial reporting by the church leaders?" After all, I can not find anywhere in the Bible where the church leaders are directed to give a financial reporting. Neither was the priesthood ordered to give an annual financial reporting to the nation of Israel. I think it is a question that needs an answer.
----One can just as surely state that the early church of Acts did not own property, at least for its own consumption. That church did receive property, but it was for distribution to those in need. Certainly there was need to copy and safeguard the letters and books that began circulating (now known as the New Testament), and those were property. But the early church owned nothing in the nature of what we see today. It continued through its first stage of existance to meet in homes, synagogues, catachombs, and wherever else they could. Indeed, the earliest church building uncovered to present was constructed in the late second or third century AD. The early church of the New Testament was just not a propertied church.
----This is why the Bible is silent about the church's responsibilities toward asset holding. The church at that time was not an asset holder, so there was no issue to address. (This same point sheds light upon what the "affairs of the church" are as mentioned in I Timothy 5:17.) But the church did become an asset holder very quickly, as the late second or third century church building evidences. This characteristic of asset holding then must be acknowledged as having grown from man's own respect for expediency, not a Bible directive. And it is only one way of serving the Lord as a community that was chosen by man above alternative ways. So then it is not surprising that attitudes towards this selected alternative have varied through the centuries.
----Looking at it as a continuim, having on the one side the attitude that all church property is the business of the leaders exclusively, and having on the opposite side the attitude that all church property is the mutually provided and used property of all the church members, whether or not there is a reporting illuminates the depths of the hearts of the church leaders. For leadership attitudes can also be examined on a continuim. On the one side is the attitude that the leader is the controller of the church, they decide how the church is going to do what it does, think what it thinks, meet where it meets, etc. On the opposite side are the leaders who see themselves as enabling a gathering of people to serve the Lord in their lives as they come together for strength.
----I certainly tend towards the latter attitudes, because I see those attitudes in the New Testament. Although it tells us to obey the leaders, never does it tell us to merely agree with the leaders. Rather we are told to agree with one another. We are not told to look to the interests of the leaders, we are told to look to the intersts of one another. We are not told to please the leaders, we are told to please one another. On this end of the continuim we find leaders who are servants in deed. And they are very aggressive about putting the church's financial reports into the hands of the congregation, just as a servant's attitude would be.
----But on the other end of the continuim are the leaders who rule in deed. They have to talk about servanthood in order for servanthood to be apparent in their lives, because their deeds are those of masters. All of the church's affairs and all of the church's property are in their control, and the congregation is expected to agree with them, to align their interests accordingly, and to make their leading a pleasure.
----That is why it matters whether or not there is a financial report. It may not be a requirement of the Word, but it is a direct indication of the heart of the leader.
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