Youth Ministry Basics: Budget

It is that time again. Time in the year where it makes jobs hard to get through. Some of you may know what I am talking about.

We are working towards our Christmas Bonus.

We are working towards the possible raise we might get.

We are working towards the holidays because we get time off with our families.

We are working towards the inevitable job change.

We work throughout the year looking forward to this time of year because it brings back memories. It brings back tradition. It brings back joy.

This is the same for me as it is for you. I love this time of year. It is quite possibly my favorite time of year. It is the time that I look forward to all year long.

Here is the bottom line though: I love 75% of my job. It is awesome. It is irreplaceable in my life. I wouldn’t want to do anything else. But, there is a 25% piece of my job that I just don’t like to handle. Mainly because I don’t understand it all. I don’t get it. But that 25% is managing and creating and tweaking budgets.

Youth Ministry, I should say ministry in general, run off of budgets. The hard part about budgets is figuring out how to budget. The idea of projected incomes is completely foreign to me, so I will not try to figure it out. But it does leave a question:

As a youth minister, how do you budget your year?

I am trying to figure this out and this is how far I have gotten:

1) You need a team.

Not only is a team important for doing ministry itself, but a team allows you to have others input and others help in creating the budget. A team can allow multiple avenues of thoughts to put together the best possible budget you can come up with.

How do you find this team? Do you have a team you work with?

2) Less = More

Having a year to plan is a daunting task. It is a task that not many people enjoy doing, but it is one that I love to do. I love the big picture stuff of ministry. I love planning out events that will hopefully be executed well. I love the idea of planning annual events and new events. What I am finding is that with a year to plan, you have to make a decision. That decision will be based off of what you have done in the past and what has worked and what hasn’t. For our ministry, I am learning that less will hopefully equal more. It is funny to think that a lot of times, youth ministries get critiqued for doing too little, but then when you plan more, you get yelled at for planning too much. It is a fine line that we cross when we are beginning to plan for a year in advance.

What have you found that works for you? Does Less = More in your ministry?

3) Impact

This is the catalyst for a great year in ministry. I am becoming a firm believer that whatever you offer, you have to be able to have impact. This could mean a whole to different groups of students. It could mean that you don’t do that event because it is old, out of date and you just waste money on it. It could mean you do that trip that doesn’t seem to get much notice but it delivers a lot of impact for the students and adults that go. The impact of the events, programs and trips that you plan for will determine what you should plan for. For our student ministry, we are now at a crossroads in what will deliver the most impact. How do we set up our ministry to have maximum impact on a minimum budget? How do we impact our students with a limited amount of offered trips and events?

How do you rate impact? Do you have a system that you use?

I am no genius when it comes to this idea of budgeting. Not saying that I will not work as hard as I can to stay within the budget. But I am saying that it is something that I am still learning how to do.

Do you have any helpful hints on how to manage or create a budget?