Cynthia Gordon Floyd, C.P.A., C.F.E., Contributing Writer
The preparation of an operating budget can be a daunting task. It requires making estimates and plans based on assumptions about future revenues and expenditures to ensure the successful operation and strategy for gathering funds appropriately for the next year. Considering the various challenges naturally present, it is counterproductive to approve a new budget for the year without clearly reviewing and analyzing the actual results for the past year. Reviewing and properly analyzing past results should serve as a guideline and monitoring tool for operations and future planning. Yet, at our 2024 General Conference, we passed a four-year General Budget with an increase, without any reporting or discussion of actual expenditures over the past four years. Why did we do that?
During the General Conference, Pastor Mark Griffin presented a resolution calling for a complete overhaul of our General Budget process to address this lack of accountability and relevant variance reporting. This resolution called for the General Board (through the Commission on Statistics and Finance) to summon each department, agency, or entity that receives funds from the General Budget to give an account of how they have spent the funds received from the General Budget allocation, as well as to provide audited financial statements to the General Board. This resolution would enable the opportunity to review the work of each recipient of General Budget funds and determine if the use of funds is consistent with the goals and objectives of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Further, it will allow us to properly analyze whether the funds should continue to be allocated for the stated purpose. (General Budget funding should not be automatically given without understanding the need and use of the funds committed.)
The resolution also promotes the need for review sessions to be structured into the General Board meetings to provide time for thorough review, discussion, and consideration of the entire General Budget before preparing a General Budget for presentation at the General Conference. This resolution was an excellent new path forward. It necessitates a process of proper oversight, review, and assessment of each component receiving General Budget funding. The General Board and Commission on Statistics and Finance should implement it.
The next step in the process would be for the Commission on Statistics and Finance to compile actual results annually and report to the General Board. This would allow all comprehensive data to maintain critical relevance in planning and considering the church’s financial needs and constraints for the following budgeting cycle.
Are we properly stewarding the hard-earned and, in many cases, sacrificial dollars submitted from churches for the General Budget? Considering the current status of our church and the obvious drop in membership, do we believe we can continue moving forward without making the desperately needed changes to adjust to our new reality? I don’t believe we can.
We absolutely should not continue to approve Budgets without knowledge of past expenditures. If we continue this practice and not demanding accountability from our Church, we will be our own “undoing.” The time is far past for the Church not understanding budgets and where our sacrificial dollars are going.
Good stewardship mandates continual review and adaptation to keep us mission-focused, spiritually relevant, God- and man- accountable, and God-pleasing. This proposal addresses a necessary step in that direction.
In the absence of the General Conference, may the General Board step up and implement these proposals.