God Showed Up in a Budget Meeting

By Brad Ransom

I’ve written and taught on the subject of outreach for many years. After all, outreach is something the church does, and I’ve been a part of a local church all my life. However, I vividly remember the day outreach took on a new meaning in my life and ministry.

It happened in the strangest place—the annual trustee board budget meeting at our church. I had been the pastor for a good number of years, and our church was strong and everyone seemed happy. We weren’t setting any records, but we had first-time guests show up frequently, and we were seeing people saved and baptized. We had just completed a new 8,000-square-foot building that included a 600-seat sanctuary, nursery, foyer, and restrooms. Momentum was pretty good.

Then it happened. God came on the scene. No, the phone didn’t ring with God on the other end. He didn’t physically appear to the board during the meeting. In fact, it happened quite ambiguously. Our church people knew outreach needed to be a top priority in our local church ministry. If you had asked any regular members, they would have indicated outreach was important to our church. We talked about it. We held several events each year. We were known in our community.

During this particular trustee board budget meeting, conversation shifted to outreach. As we reviewed the current year’s budget in preparation for the upcoming year, I made the statement, “You know, we probably need to look at increasing our outreach budget next year.”

The search began. I started looking through the line items in the current budget. It made sense to me that the outreach line would be under world outreach. This section included missions and other ministries we supported beyond our local church. We gave to several different things. I was very proud of our church. Outside giving was a priority, and we faithfully supported the cooperative program, state missions giving plan, missionaries, church planters, Christian colleges, and more.

But I still could not find the line item called outreach. I continued to scour the budget until finally I came to a haunting realization. Our church said outreach was important. We had several events such as VBS (and great ones at that), special services, and other things but we didn’t need to increase the outreach budget, we needed to create an outreach budget! We didn’t have a single line in our budget for outreach. We’ve all heard it said, you can tell a person’s real priority by looking at their checkbook register. The same can be said about a church. God pretty much hit me over the head and said, “Now, what are you going to do?”

I sat there embarrassed as our trustee board realized we talked more about outreach than we actually did outreach. That day, everything changed. We knew this had not been an accident. I fully believe God used that budget meeting to show me something very important that would shape the rest of my ministry.

Over the next few months, our church launched an entirely new outreach ministry, including hiring a part-time staff person to oversee outreach. We began praying and planning events and revamping visitation, follow-up, and outreach practices. We enlisted new volunteers and started “putting our money where our mouths were.” God blessed every step of the way.

The first major outreach event transformed our church. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you what happened, so I’ll leave that for another opportunity, but everything changed after that. Through this experience, God taught me many things about outreach and I want to share just a few with you:

Outreach must be a priority in your church. We can talk about outreach all we want, but things will only happen when we put feet to our faith. Churches that only reach inward or meet the needs of the congregation will soon die. The older a church gets, the easier it is to shift focus from the world to “us.” We get busy doing good things, mainly maintenance ministry, and before long it’s just us, and we get very comfortable with that.

Outreach is the only way your church will see long-term growth. You may have a few drop-ins who drive by and decide to visit your church and some younger families will have babies, but if you want to grow, outreach must be a priority.

Outreach has one purpose—to win people to Jesus. If you just do events, you’ll throw some great parties for your community. Hide those Easter eggs. Give away candy at your fall festival. Let kids jump until their hearts are content in your rented inflatables. But if your outreach stops there, you’ve thrown some great parties with little real impact on anyone’s life.Don’t miss this very important point. Outreach should point people to Jesus. Community involvement is crucial, and I am an advocate of giving back to your community, but in every outreach event, the primary purpose should be to point people to the gospel.

Outreach is only as good as your follow up. If you have an event, get contact information. If you collect contact information, follow up! The money you spend on an event is well worth the contacts you will get…if you collect the information. The real work begins by reaching out to visitors through text messages, phone calls, emails, letters, and personal visits.

Outreach WILL stretch your church. I don’t know how to say this gracefully, but when your church starts to reach the community, most of the people you reach won’t look like your people, act like your people, or talk like your people, and you need to be okay with that. In time, if you do your job in discipleship, they’ll get there. But new people come with baggage, lots of baggage. Baggage is a nice way to say problems. You will encounter marriage problems, addiction problems, anger problems, drinking problems, problems, problems, and more problems. Your teens may see some things you don’t really want them to see. For that matter, you may hear some things you don’t really want to hear. I learned a long time ago, sinners act like sinners. We can’t expect them to act like Christians until they become followers of Christ.

Outreach must be a priority in all our churches. A great big world is waiting, and it starts at the door of your church. You will never reach the world holding services inside the walls and carrying on with business as usual. People will only hear the important message you have to share when outreach becomes your priority.

We all learn in different ways. I’m thankful God taught me a valuable lesson about outreach many years ago, even if it was in a budget meeting.

About the Writer: Dr. Brad Ransom is chief training officer for North American Ministries. Learn more: www.fwbnam.com.