Thursday, February 28, 2008

Money and Plants

In the move to more organic and incarnational churches/missions, where everything in your usual church default mode is turned inside out and upside down, this can help with the perennial issue of financing too. Already bi-or-tri vocational planters are an established means, but as we make the church a woven part of the wider community breaking down secular/sacred space, look for ways to do this with finances too. Here in Turley in our first site we not only have community donations an integral part of supporting us, but we are now setting up our ministry as a truly community based ministry as its own non-profit community foundation, able to tap into many more grants and donations to operate A Third Place overhead, what our church members and supporters donations go mostly toward now, which will then free up those funds to go toward staff and more growth here or expansion into new sites.

Existing churches can adopt this method by looking at how their church fund-raising events, such as dinners and auctions, can be seen not as by and for the church organization, but the church is a conduit and its events are by and for the wider community to support the church as mission and the church's community missions. Like everything else in organic incarnational communities, such as attendance at events, daily contacts, etc. I think the financial ratio too should ideally be 2 or more non-church community people supporting you for every 1 church person. End.
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