Church vs. Business

There are key differences between Church finances and business finances. Some say that they are poles apart. Here's one major difference. In business, budgets work by and large according to expectations. In the Church, they seldom do. Any given Church, therefore, will have been saved this year by a fluke -- and last year, and the year before. Yet it is businesses that go under, not Churches. For this reason it is "moonshine", too, to predict that any Church will go under. OBSERVATION: Here's a real example. My final year in city ministry was the strongest financially in generations. Some said it was a fluke -– like the last year, and the year before. It happened in an anomalous way, as usual. Bequests were particularly strong that year. But was it a fluke? Every one of those bequests had been personally solicited. Looking at it from the spiritual point of view, God placed it on our hearts in earlier years to solicit those bequests. Or to be more spiritual still, God favoured the Church during that best final year, and He favoured its ministry. Church leadership author Bill Hybels says what I think is the only permissible view for a Church: people don't give, God does.