Turn Trash Into Treasure
By Raul Rivera
In 1995, my wife and I purchased 1 and 1/4 acres of vacant land in South Florida. Since the previous owner used the property as "storage" for farm equipment, trash, and cars, it was quite an eyesore to the community in which it was located, and it was definitely not a very desirable piece of land. In fact, at the time we purchased the land, it was a really ugly, containing holly bushes, saw-grass, and other types of unwanted trees. I knew that the land would require a lot of hard and backbreaking work if it were ever to become something beautiful. The current condition of the land must have greatly discouraged others from valuing its potential, because NO ONE wanted that land, and that made the price very, very cheap! I took a trashy piece of land and converted it to treasure.
It is too much work, so we will ignore it
Does that sound like your church's records? A mess, all kinds of clutter, incomplete records, and bad documentation. Although you are doing the best you can wtih your church records, you are quite sure that not everything is being done correctly. It is an uncomfortable feeling and the work to get it right looks insurmountable. So it seems better to just look the other way.
The same thing happened with the piece of land I purchased. Because it looked like it needed so much work, the property just sat there; empty, with an old, worn out "For Sale" sign that had a phone number caked over in years of dust. It was the amount of work required that scared everyone away.
Oh, by the way
There is much that many churches today do really well. They plan every part of the worship service from the greeting at the door, to children's services, worship, offerings, announcements, preaching, and an altar call. With so much excellence in ministry, why do the records and compliance with the law look like that piece of unwanted land? It is because in many churches record keeping and compliance with the law is something that happens in an "oh by the way" focus of ministry. Anything that you do as "oh, by the way" never gets the proper attention it needs.
Every problem has a solution
When I began to clean up the land, I found the chassis of a car, two transmissions, car doors, glass, chains, bicycles, tires and many more truckloads of trash. For everything that was steel or metal, I was able to get a steel recycler to come (at his cost) and haul it off. Some of the trees went to a local sawmill, and the unwanted ones were cut down with the saw grass and burned. After four months of hard work, a beautiful plot of land emerged with beautiful green grass, a couple of fruit trees, oaks and jacarandas. What was such a sore in this rural community was now a delight.
Perhaps your church needs to go through the same "cleanup" process. It may look intimidating because all you can see is an unbalanced check register, missing minutes, lost tithe records, undocumented reimbursements, and poorly kept expenses. You may even have received love offerings that were never reported, and feel uncertain about whether or not the housing allowance has been properly established. Those concerns are always in the back of your mind but, they seem so big that it feels best to bury and ignore them.
Put your hand to the plow
In Washington DC, there is a Hispanic church that had some issues with their church records. In particular, they had been giving their pastor monthly freewill love offerings. Moreover, the church paid all of the pastor's personal bills such as rent, water, light and natural gas. The board of directors of the church approved the love offerings and payment of the pastor's home expenses, but their board meetings were never recorded. No one kept board meeting minutes.
This went on for about ten months until one day the pastor and the church treasurer called me. The administrator explained to me that he and the pastor were uncomfortable with the arrangements of the church and wanted to know if they were in error and how to fix them.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the "presence of a single nonexempt purpose, if substantial in nature, will destroy the exemption regardless of the number or importance of truly exempt purposes," (Better Business Bureau of Washington vs. United states).
This church, like most churches, had the three most common compliance issues. Just one of these being wrong is enough to cause a church to jeopardize its tax-exempt status.
Digging through the past
One thing I admired about the pastor in Washington DC and his treasurer was that they were not afraid to face their issues and fix them. With our help and a lot of hard work and dedication on their part, it took almost nine months to get their records in order. The most difficult part was digging through the past and fixing it. Not too long ago, the church treasurer attended one of our conferences in Washington DC and testified about how their church finances and attendance had significantly improved since the time they gave equal priority to the business part of ministry.
It reminds me quite a bit of the land I purchased in Florida. It just needed someone to apply the proper focus. Because I took the time to correct the problems and to regularly maintain it, not too long after I moved in, many of my new neighbors asked how we were able to keep such a beautiful lawn. My answer was always the same: ¨You gotta stay on top of it. ¨