January 11, 2007 | Read Time: 1 minute
PRESS CLIPPINGSBy Sam Kean
Contributions to churches have grown far faster than donations to secular charities, with contributions reaching $93.2-billion in 2005. But that growth has brought with it an increasing need for financial sophistication among church administrators — and many are struggling to adjust, reports SmartMoney (December).
Most pastors, the article reports, receive little financial training, and are therefore not prepared to handle the budget of even modest parishes. And since national trends indicate that people today give more than in the past to local nonprofit organizations, including churches, many of those budgets are no longer modest.
“Many seminary students look at their duties as spiritual only,” says a dean of theology at one seminary. “We have to disabuse them of their naïveté.”
Small parishes often get by with volunteer business managers, but the rise of mega-churches with thousands of worshipers has forced many congregations to hire full-time financial officers.
Indeed, the National Association of Church Business Administration has doubled in size since 1996 — growth which also indicates that churches are now more open about discussing financial matters, which were once considered an unseemly if not taboo topic.
Many pastors, however, are happy with the new developments, since ceding financial control gives them more time to concentrate on preaching to their flock.
