Earlier this year our church completed our annual budget development process. This season inevitably triggers the question, “Where does the money go?” Personally, I think that’s a terrific question because Jesus clearly taught an expectation of ROI (Return On Investment). Consider the parable of the talents, for example, where He describes a king who entrusted servants with some of his talents, intending them to each use the resources for financial gain. To the servants who generated gain on their investment, the king called them “good and faithful servants,” but to the servant who generated no gain (not a loss, just no increase on the original investment), Jesus called them a “wicked servant.” As a leader at Southridge, I want people to care about where our church’s money goes, because we have a responsibility under God to use the resources God has entrusted to us for maximum Kingdom gain.

Often, people assume that the best use of our church’s funds is to invest directly in the needs of people. Frankly, this assumption isn’t just prevalent in our church, it’s pervasive across ministries and non-profits everywhere, forcing many service-oriented agencies to quantify the percentage of every organizational dollar that is “invested directly into meeting the needs of people”—as opposed to spending on things like infrastructure and staffing costs. It often seems that our desire to see funds invested to make the greatest difference assumes that the way to do that is to maximize the money directed to meeting specific needs.

Here’s a challenging question though: is that the way the Bible encourages funds to be invested?

Think about a passage like Matthew 9 for a moment. The text says that Jesus is looking over the crowds and His heart is being broken over the immensity of the needs around Him. It says His heart was filled with compassion. In response, in verse 37, He says this, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few.  So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask Him to send more workers into His fields.” To Jesus, the antidote to the ills of society was to produce more Kingdom workers. In essence, Jesus taught that in order to meet the most needs most effectively, you need the most and most effective workers as possible.

Now consider what the Apostle Paul teaches about how churches work. In a passage like Ephesians 4, he reminds people that God intends all believers to share in the work of ministry (see the article called “Saints, Ministers & Priests: The Meaning Behind Our Movement” for more detail). But he notes in verse 11 that, “These are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do His work and build up the church, the body of Christ.” Paul explains that to enable everyone in the church to do the work of Christ, certain people of a specific giftedness—known as “equippers”—are required to bring out the best of everyone to be effective Kingdom workers. Therefore, to enable the most and most effective workers possible, you require as many effective equippers as possible. Can you follow the Kingdom logic here? To optimize a church’s capacity to meet the needs around them, they should seek to develop the most and most effective workers possible. To develop the most and most effective workers possible, a church needs as many effective equippers deployed as possible.

So in the case where a church is responsible to steward resources, or specifically money, to have the greatest return on its Kingdom investment, here at Southridge we actually believe that the best way to do that isn’t to invest directly into meeting specific needs. I’ll say that again just so we’re grasping the significance of what I’m saying: we understand the scriptures to teach that the way to serve the greatest needs isn’t by investing into directly meeting those needs, but rather by investing into equipping people who, in turn, can develop and mobilize workers who, ultimately, can make the greatest and best investment into the needs of people.

To be clear: we believe that by investing in equipping—or, more specifically, in freeing up people with equipping gifts—we can make the greatest difference for Christ and realize the greatest Kingdom return on investment.

So when people ask me, “Where does the money go?” (often wondering how many dollars go into meeting needs directly) I feel like there are two answers I could give. On the one hand, only a very small percentage of our church’s operating budget is actually earmarked to directly meet the needs of people. At the same time, because the vast majority of our budget is intended to fuel our system of equipping (by supporting staff, facilities and programs), I feel like every single dollar we spend seeks to invest in people and meet the kind of needs that broke Jesus’ heart when He walked the earth. Like Jesus prescribed though, instead of investing those dollars directly into meeting needs, they’re invested indirectly into a system of equipping to develop and support Kingdom workers to meet more needs, more effectively. In some sense we see our approach to stewarding money as a way of multiplying our capacity instead of merely limiting our dollars to the end of the line need. We believe this multiplication strategy meets more needs more effectively, and produces a far greater return on investment.

So if you’ve ever wondered or wrestled with where Southridge spends its money, I hope you can hear our heartbeat on this. We feel responsible to use the funds God entrusts to us to make the absolute greatest difference possible. Instead of using those funds to meet needs directly, we understand the Scriptures to encourage a church to invest resources in equipping, in order to optimize the capacity of its workforce, in order to meet the greatest number of needs the most effectively. More and better equipping leads to more and better workers, which ultimately leads to much more and far better need-meeting capacity than simply meeting needs directly could ever achieve.

It’s our hope that as you understand how we see the Scriptures guide us in this way, and more clearly understand how Southridge spends its money, in response, that you’ll be encouraged to partner together with us to invest a greater number of resources into the system that ultimately seeks to make the greatest difference in our world!