When googling church and business, there are many different search results. Half of the articles state why churches should be run like a business while the other have say it is wrong to even think about a church being a business. It is often viewed that churches are focused on people, while businesses are focused on money. When a person brings up the idea of a church being a type of business, it creates tension because there is a belief that if a church is operated like a business than they are not caring for people. The question is though, why can’t a church use business principles in order to better serve God and the people? Continue reading to learn more about how churches apply business principles to help them reach more people and better serve the congregation.

Financial Responsibility

Every church has financial responsibilities. From paying rent on their building, the salaries of the staff, funding missionaries, the maintenance and utilities of the place you are meeting, and especially in the digital-technology. These costs are not something that a church can get away from, they have to be paid.

With bills to pay and money to be handled, the church needs someone, or a team, that is able to manage responsibly manage the funds. Like in business, there has to be a budget. This is an area that churches can review where their funds are going and help them become better stewards of their funds.

Sustainability and Planning for the Future

Churches have big hearts. Sometimes though, they can be too big for their own good. If a church does not pace themselves properly, they will not be able to pay for their expenses. While in the short term, using all the funds has benefits in the long term the church will not be able to help as many people. Businesses want to gain as many customers as possible but they have to pace their growth model in order to keep themselves afloat. Churches can look to businesses to learn about how take manageable bites of projects in order to impact the most people possible.

Understanding Their Audience

In business, if a company does not produce a product or service that people desire and purchase, than the business simply goes out of business. This requires business to understand the pains, joys, and emotions of the audience. They have to solve a problem or find something that gives joy. In order to successfully do this, you need to be familiar with your customer.

Churches can take this principle and apply it to their church. The church has to learn and understand the needs of their community. They might be providing services that the community does not want which leads to a waste in funds. If the main need of the community is grief counseling and the church is not serving that need, then they are going to lose members

 

The questions still stands, can churches apply business principles? I believe that we can. There are definitely good and bad things that businesses are doing but there are also good and bad things that the church is doing too. What we need to take into consideration is the transferable skills. This does not mean that we should copy businesses exactly. Before implementing anything, it needs to be evaluated in order to make sure that it is not compromising the mission of the church.