One of the blessings of my career as a pastor was that I served congregations that had very capable businesspeople in their leadership. One of the challenges of that career was teaching business leaders that the church doesn’t operate like a business. Profit and service are different goals. That does not mean that the church can be irresponsible regarding finances. A healthy church needs to live within its means. However, projecting income for a church differs significantly from a business's. Profit and loss statements assume that the goal is profit. Not only is a church a nonprofit, but it also doesn’t behave like a nonprofit corporation. People give when they are inspired, and inspiration cannot be manipulated by marketing and advertising. One must constantly tell good news to raise funds to operate a church. The more church leaders complain about what they do not have, the less people give. When a church chooses to live in scarcity, it declines. Church leaders must live abundantly with whatever resources they have, which can be very frightening to those whose experience is in business, where one’s eye must be constantly focused on the bottom line.

I had the good fortune to serve congregations that lived abundantly and witnessed a lot of ministry that defied business sense. We began our ministry in two small rural and isolated congregations on the eve of the Farm Crisis of the 1980s. The county where the congregations were located saw its population decline more steeply than during the Great Depression and drought of the 1930s. The congregations, however, continued to grow and thrive. They were engaged in serving their communities a quarter of a century after we had moved on to other calls. Both congregations eventually closed, but not because they ran out of money. They closed because they ran out of members in the continuing population decline as corporate farming replaced family farming throughout the nation’s food-producing regions.

I had the joy of serving a congregation that had experienced two major building fires a decade apart. The first resulted in the total loss of their building. The second burned the roof off of their new building and falling debris and water damage destroyed almost all of the main floor below. Both times, they rebuilt more extensive buildings. The first fire was during World War II when labor and materials were focused on the war effort. Nonetheless, they found a way to build a modern concrete block structure with brick facing and an addition with classrooms to serve the post-war population boom. After rebuilding the second time, congregational leaders were exhausted and stopped building. When we arrived more than 30 years after the second fire, the congregation needed to expand their building but had no reserves for construction and did not own enough property to grow within the requirements of city code for parking and street and neighbor setbacks. First, we had to purchase adjacent property. Then, we had to come up with an affordable construction plan. It took us a decade, but finally, the congregation could engage in construction once again and build a future for their ministries.

In another church, we decided to fund and build a home in partnership with Habitat for Humanity when our income fell significantly short of our operating budget. People contributed to the house project with incredible generosity and gave their time and energy to finish construction and have the home ready for the family to move in by the end of the year. The operating budget of the church ended in the black that year, even though instead of asking for more support for the operating budget, we challenged the congregation to give over and above. Giving supports giving, however, and both funds grew substantially. Another time in that same congregation, we got the opportunity to purchase a new concert piano for the sanctuary when we were in the middle of a fund drive to expand the church organ. A sensible business decision would have been to pass up on the piano and focus on the organ. But churches are not businesses. The congregation voted to purchase the piano, and the funds came in to pay for both projects. Giving begets giving.

A nonprofit corporation must consider who has significant wealth. Cultivating major donors is part of nonprofit management. Church members, however, are different. Churches often have people with little wealth who are generous despite their limited means. People give to churches out of their poverty rather than their wealth. The biblical story of the widow’s mite plays out every day in the life of a church.

There are other examples from my career of churches not behaving like businesses. A church employee once confronted us with a serious addiction. The addiction continued to get worse, leaving the employee with significant legal problems and leaving him a danger to the children and youth of the congregation. A business would have fired the employee. We decided to support the employee and promise continued employment as he underwent treatment. Our intervention did not go as we had planned. The employee was unable to face the addiction. He resigned angrily, leaving us to fill his position without notice. However, the church found new leadership, and he later engaged in successful treatment and went on to a higher-paying position outside of the church.

Another time, when a congregation I was serving needed to terminate a member's employment, we managed to do so in a way that retained the member's membership. The person had served in another position for several years and remained active in the congregation after retirement until the end of his life. A business would have moved on from that person, but a church isn’t a business. Even when changes are required, churches can honor the individuals involved and find new avenues of relationship and support.

Of course, it doesn’t always work out that way. I have many stories of times when the church forgot its mission and behaved like a business, often with painful results. Those stories, however, are for another day.