Episode Summary:
In this episode, Kenny Jahng sits down with Greg Daley, founder of Parable, to unpack key findings from a nationwide survey on the state of church finances. Greg shares practical insights on trust, transparency, and the financial habits that help—or hinder—ministry impact. Discover the quiet disruptors affecting church giving, the risks of volunteer bookkeepers, and steps for building a culture of generosity rooted in freedom. Whether you lead a church plant or a multi-site ministry, you’ll gain actionable strategies for stewarding every dollar on mission.
In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
→ Why the gap between perceived trust and real transparency could be eroding your congregation’s confidence
→ How regular, clear financial updates can serve as a gateway to greater generosity
→ Risks and hidden costs of relying on volunteer bookkeepers—even if they’re “free”
→ The unintended complexity churches create with too many digital giving platforms
→ How budget versus actual reporting protects your ministry and points to system issues before crisis hits
→ Practical ways to shift your financial leadership posture from scarcity to abundance and partnership
→ The power of connecting giving directly to mission impact for all generations in your church
Key Quotes:
“You’ve got to actually get more simple as you get more complex.” — Greg Daley
“Trust is a gateway to generosity. Without trust, there is no true generosity.” — Greg Dale
“If you don’t have a budget versus actual report you look at, you’re basically driving a car without any dashboard.” — Kenny Jahng
“That lack of transparency is like a little blister, or a hairline crack that’s easy to miss now but can really undermine trust over time if not addressed.” — Greg Daley
“The Bible says, where your money is, there your heart will be also. If we can shepherd our people and talk about money as discipleship, not just when it’s timely for our campaign, we bring freedom and partnership.” — Greg Daley
Links & Resources Mentioned:
Parable State of Church Finances Report
Barnabas Network
The Respite
Parable Accounting Firm
Generous Giving
About the Church Tech Today Podcast:
Hosted by Kenny Jahng, the CTT Podcast helps pastors, church staff, and ministry leaders navigate the intersection of faith and technology with confidence. This resource for leadership is brought to you by MinistryLink.com
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Kenny Jahng [00:00:00]:
Hey, friends, it’s that time again. Kenny Jiang here with the podcast that we are just delivering one after another, leader after leader, to give you the insights and context and some zeitgeist type of material so that you can actually lead better. And today is no different. We are at the top of the A list here. We’ve got Greg, who lives in Colorado, and he has been a friend for years. And what I’ve seen him do in terms of equipping and supporting churches across the country has just been incredible. Greg is a church planter. He’s been an executive pastor.
Kenny Jahng [00:00:37]:
He is the founder of Parable, which is a company that I’ve come to know and respect because they’re dedicated to helping churches keep every dollar on mission, and that’s through bookkeeping and accounting and CFO services. But as I’ve gotten to know Greg and his team, they do much more than that. And you can see his passion comes out because I think Greg’s dedicated to helping pastors stay health, finish strong. And he does that through not just his venture here at Parable, but his involvement with other ministries like the board of Barnabas Network and Respite and all these other things that he’s involved in now. Welcome. Welcome, Greg, to the show. How are you doing?
Greg Daley [00:01:20]:
Thank you, Kenny. Wow. We’re gonna be zeitgeisting. This is amazing. I love it.
Kenny Jahng [00:01:26]:
Well, this is just really interesting. And this is just, I think an example of how Parable is doing more than just the transactional finance services, etcetera, is that recently you and your team executed a state of church finances nationwide survey. Right? Hundreds of churches in their cross, pretty much from coast to coast. And I think data is really important for leadership that we can figure out what’s going on, what is the trends. And that’s why I want to put you in the hot seat here today and really figure out how our church is giving, how are they spending, how are they adapting to all those financial and technological shifts in front of us today? And I think if anyone wants to get the report, we’ll put it in the show. Notes you can get at the powerful website. That thing is something you should download. They’ve got all these summaries of findings.
Kenny Jahng [00:02:14]:
They’ve got a webinar. All that kind of stuff is there. But today we’ve got Greg in front of us. And so I thought, Greg, why not tap your brain in terms of your leadership and experience across the decades of helping churches in this area. But asking you about the current findings. And so I’ll just get right to it, Greg. It’s like what is just like one trend that you might be able to share with us that might feel like it’s under the radar, like a quiet disruptor, like what should pastors name out loud now rather than later? Do you have anything that you can share with us?
Greg Daley [00:02:47]:
Yeah. I love the word quiet disruptor because this summer I was on a sabbatical, I took a sabbatical and we got to my, my wife and my daughter, who’s 15, got to walk part of the Camino de Santiago, which is part is a pilgrimage. And so you can walk from all different places. But we did 165 miles. Some of them are like 500 miles. So we did 165 miles, which is like a lot. It wasn’t like something I was doing a lot before that. And so we did 10 to 15 miles a day.
Greg Daley [00:03:23]:
And we realized as we were walking, we did a lot of research ahead of time and talked to a lot of people that had done it before, right. To try to see what, what we’re going to be into. And one of them all, everybody that had walked it before always focused on our feet and they were like, take care of your feet. And that was, I feel like a quiet disruptor because it was one of the things that could literally take you out of the game completely. And we saw it happen time after time, even with young people that showed up kind of ill prepared a little bit, maybe had, you know, just whatever shoes they had. I saw somebody hiking in Chuck Taylor’s one day. I’m like, you are just literally going to destroy your feet. And we saw some of those same people down the road with multiple blisters.
Greg Daley [00:04:12]:
We even had, you know, that was one of the things we did. We brought a blister pack care kit with us in our backpack so we could. And we never had to use it on ourselves. We actually just got to use it for other people and kind of take care of them. But you know, you would, then you wouldn’t see those people for the next four, four days or so because like once you get a blister, you’re done, you’re, you’re pretty much done. And it’s that tiny little thing that kind of cracks open. So one of the things that we saw on our survey was the gap between trust and transparency and church finances. And our survey showed 90% of churches or pastors believe their congregation trusts their financial leadership, which in and of itself, that’s a positive thing.
Greg Daley [00:04:56]:
That’s really great. But our survey focused actually on church leadership. So it was the leaders that were answering the questions. Right. So they saw themselves and their churches as trusting in their financial leadership. But then there’s so many other surveys out there that have focused on church attenders and what they believe. And most of those say that there’s a distrust in institutions like the church and that the trust in the church is at an all time low. So at first this kind of felt like a contradiction.
Greg Daley [00:05:31]:
And anywhere, anytime in data there’s a contradiction. It’s like, ooh, let’s dig in there and see what’s going on. But I, I think when what our team kind of, as we were looking at it, it felt more, it felt closer to a paradox really that it seems like it contradicts. But later in our survey it actually showed that some of those same churches that answered, we, you know, there’s a 90% trust. Those same churches answered that they aren’t regularly showing people where the money goes. So there’s this lack of transparency. Peace. And I don’t think it was intentional like they’re trying to hide something, it’s just that they don’t regularly do it.
Greg Daley [00:06:12]:
And so if you look at like, I think the people that are the 90% trust is probably the people that are givers, those that already trust and give, whereas the people that aren’t giving yet, the people that are just coming to your church and are attending but they haven’t yet give, those are the ones that are probably feeling that lack of trust.
Kenny Jahng [00:06:37]:
Wow, that’s such an interesting insight. And I think when you hear, sounds intuitive but you don’t think of that. Right. I think that gap that you’re talking about is completely something that every leadership team should start to talk about and discuss.
Greg Daley [00:06:56]:
Yeah. And it’s that lack of transparency is like that little blister, it’s that hairline crack that’s easy to, it’s kind of easy to miss now. But it can really undermine trust over time if not addressed because it’s better for pastors like as you said, to call it out and start sharing clear regular financial updates so really that nothing starts to erode that trust.
Kenny Jahng [00:07:21]:
So what about those that are attending but not giving? Like what would you, what’s the, you know, off the cuff, what’s one suggestion, tactical thing that you think, I mean it’s probably not just let’s publish our QuickBooks online for everybody to see and send it to a first time giver. What is an actual practical, you know, concrete thing that someone can consider.
Greg Daley [00:07:41]:
Yeah. I mean we say trust is a gateway to generosity. And so without trust there is no true generosity. And so I think it’s about building that trust. And how do you build that trust? Well, you show them where it goes. And I think so many. I just remember when I was a pastor, like there’s so many church people that think that their pastor only works one day a week, right? Yes. Like because that’s the only day they see them.
Greg Daley [00:08:12]:
And so without a pastor kind of training the church on what they actually do the rest of the time and being transparent with that, they, they have this, they have this like weird thing where churchgoers are like, yeah, well he only works on Sunday. I think the same thing happens with money. If we only talk about it once a year right before generosity Sunday or you know, the end of the year giving push or when we’re doing a capital campaign, well, that’s self serving. We’re saying, hey, God says you should be generous. And by the way, you can write that generosity check to us. Right. That that does not build that trust. And so I think the churches that are successful are the churches that use vision and show the impact.
Greg Daley [00:08:57]:
Not just, yes, the church dollars that, that people give do keep the lights on and pay salaries, but that, but that’s not the why. The why is so that they can make a missional impact in their community and change their city for the good. That if their church disappeared that their city would actually be sad about it. Right. And so if they can cast that vision, then people will give. That’s why I think the younger givers, it’s not like they’re not giving. They’re giving to organizations that are clear in their giving trends. Compassion and World Vision.
Greg Daley [00:09:33]:
These organizations that can tie a dollar to taking care of a kid and feeding them. Like that’s a real connection.
Kenny Jahng [00:09:42]:
Definitely. And as a certified story brands marketing consultant, I completely see that over and over again. That when we actually bring the clarity to the messaging that things change for any organization and ministry. Now your team works with churches of all sizes across the country. Right. Like it’s small church planters, large multi sites. Could you share, I guess what financial pattern from that survey maybe surprised you? Like, there’s a lot of things in there that are probably normal and is confirming things that you might have guessed. But what financial patterns from the recent survey surprised you the most?
Greg Daley [00:10:21]:
Yeah. As we crunch the numbers, a couple of patterns really did catch me off guard. I mean first, 75% of churches in the study needed improvement in at least three financial areas. Oh, there were, I think there were seven total financial areas. And these are areas like accountability and oversight, mission driven financial planning, generosity and donor management. And there was, you know, a four or five others. And at least three, 75% of churches needed, needed improvement in at least three. So I expected some challenges, but not really that many at once.
Greg Daley [00:11:00]:
Which honestly is why we’re, why we’re in business. It’s good for us, right? Yes, we did see a stark contrast in bookkeeping approaches. A lot of churches that were struggling were also relying on volunteer bookkeepers. Those that maybe don’t have the financial expertise or the breadth of expertise of working with multiple churches. They only work with one. And so, you know, they get kind of myopic. And the ones who felt most financially confident were using experienced bookkeepers that were focused on the church because bookkeeping for the church is actually different. Businesses are worried about profit and loss.
Greg Daley [00:11:42]:
I’ve never once heard a church excited about profit. And so, you know, they, and balance sheets and stuff like that. Pastors don’t get excited about that stuff because they get excited about mission, but business people get real excited about that. And so it matters even the experience level of your bookkeeper.
Kenny Jahng [00:12:04]:
Oh, that’s interesting.
Greg Daley [00:12:05]:
So I knew they have, I knew we know that having the right financial support mattered and obviously we believe deeply in that. But seeing the difference, that difference show up and that disparity so clearly in the data was kind of like a wake up call.
Kenny Jahng [00:12:20]:
So there’s, there are tons of churches that use volunteer bookkeepers. Right. Someone from the community that might know a little bit, you know, finances. They might not even be an accountant or been in the accounting department at work, et cetera, but they just know excel better than the pastor.
Greg Daley [00:12:36]:
Right.
Kenny Jahng [00:12:36]:
And things like that. What would you say is like one of the common risks or the, you know, the blind spots for that type of help? You know, instead of someone that’s professionally trained in the, the niche of ministries and churches and non profits.
Greg Daley [00:12:53]:
Yeah, I mean the blind spots are there, there’s, there’s quite a lot of them. But I will say, like we don’t see any other business that does church finances and helps churches with finances. We don’t see them as competition because our biggest competition is, is that volunteers in the church because it’s free. But free isn’t always free. So the real costs of it are one just really easy. They don’t know what they don’t know. So if they know, let’s say they know a little bit about bookkeeping, but they don’t really know GAAP accounting. Right.
Greg Daley [00:13:29]:
And so there’s a reason why Gap got started is because they wanted to make sure everybody was talking about the same thing. And so they end up adding the numbers. Right. But no one else could look at it and say, oh yeah, this is, this is, this all looks good. Right? And so even if you have like a finance team that has some business people on it, they’re going to get the reports from an untrained bookkeeper and be like, what is this? Right? Like they just don’t know. So they can’t then say, are there holes or not? So that’s one. Another one is if they ever get upset, they leave your church. Right.
Greg Daley [00:14:11]:
And sometimes they want to sadly burn it all down. And this is a real life example from a church that we worked with and they had this bookkeeper right before on staff. It wasn’t an untrained bookkeeper. They were a larger church. She knew what she was doing, but when she left, she got a bug in her bonnet about something that the church was doing or thought she thought they were doing wrong and went straight to like the, the attorney general of that state. And now the church had an open investigation. They went through years of, of having to spend money on, on lawyers and fighting this. They had to do a forensics accountant to come in, only to tell them they were doing nothing wrong.
Greg Daley [00:15:00]:
And they spent, they spent a ton of money doing that just because somebody got really upset and decided to try to burn it all down when she was going out the door.
Kenny Jahng [00:15:11]:
Right.
Greg Daley [00:15:12]:
So that is definitely not free.
Kenny Jahng [00:15:15]:
I mean, I know from my own personal experience that unless you’re working with a professional who understands the church world specifically, they’re just common, even strategic stuff like how do you actually prepare the statements that’s board ready for your elders and your board. Right. Or how do you deal with things like, I don’t know, in kind gifts that typically is not done in the business world or housing allowance documentation and things like that. Right. There’s all these very tactical things that are easy to just say, oh, that’s okay, you’ll google it, figure it out. But they are significant in the church world that, that it’s.
Greg Daley [00:15:56]:
There’s whole companies like ours dedicated just to E commerce. Right. Because an E commerce business is actually different than a painting business. And so same thing with the church.
Kenny Jahng [00:16:08]:
Awesome. Digital giving is another thing. Right. But businesses don’t have online giving and fundraising, et cetera.
Greg Daley [00:16:14]:
And I think that’s, I bet a lot of businesses would love that. Absolutely right.
Kenny Jahng [00:16:19]:
And so. And digital giving, online giving is. Represents a majority of the donations. And I think in the report you found this, that 2/3 of the churches are in that category right now. What would you say is like a mistake that you see churches make when they are adopting new giving tools right now?
Greg Daley [00:16:37]:
Yeah. This is a funny one because actually when I saw the question, I thought it would come back way higher than 2/3. Right. Like, who are those people that still can find cash? Like they just took the penny out of.
Kenny Jahng [00:16:53]:
Well, forget about the cash. It’s checks. They’re people who are mailing in checks though.
Greg Daley [00:16:58]:
Right. I haven’t wrote a check in years and hope I never have to. But yeah, it came back. About 2/3 of churches now are seeing the majority of giving coming through digital platforms. The great thing about this is those are transparent by nature. Yeah. Because it, it. It’s, you know, coming in through an app.
Greg Daley [00:17:19]:
So already there’s a, there’s an eyes on it. Whereas cash, you know, could be taken by somebody if without the right things in place. But one of the, one of the mistakes we often see, and we’ve seen this over and over again because a new app comes out that’s a giving app, and they, they, you know, a pastor will get all excited about it and they’ll adopt it and they’ll announce it like once or twice from the, from the stage.
Kenny Jahng [00:17:50]:
Yeah.
Greg Daley [00:17:51]:
And that’s it. And then they wonder why people don’t start using it or why people, you know, why. Why it’s not adopted. And so they end up actually getting less efficient. Because. So, I mean, we’ve. We’ve worked with churches. When they first come in with us, they have like five giving platforms.
Kenny Jahng [00:18:12]:
What?
Greg Daley [00:18:12]:
Why? Like, you have five different ways that people can give. That sounds all good, except that you have also five different. The companies that you’re paying money to and you don’t get any of the volume discounts or anything like that. But you also have to keep track of that. And it’s a nightmare on our side, actually. So we encourage you have one. Have one. That’s a, that’s one of the mistakes is kind of seeing it as the wild west that it is and adopting more than one or not rolling it out in a.
Greg Daley [00:18:47]:
In a. A way that truly trains the church.
Kenny Jahng [00:18:51]:
And I’m assuming that your team could help a church if they have multiple, you know, giving accounts on different platforms, et cetera, that you can figure out a migration basically, like a playbook, a way to shepherd them through a process that makes sense to consolidate all those platforms together.
Greg Daley [00:19:09]:
Yes. And even more than that, every one of these giving solutions out there has. They. It behooves them to get you on their platform. Right. And so they have extensive training that they will help churches is do it the right way. And they have a lot of experience there, a lot of giving apps. They will even.
Greg Daley [00:19:29]:
I mean, there was one that I don’t know if they’re still doing it, but they used to actually give a guarantee, like, if your giving doesn’t go up, by switching to our app, we’ll give you money back, which they. That means they are so confident that if you rolled it out the right way, that you will. That you will go up.
Kenny Jahng [00:19:48]:
Yeah.
Greg Daley [00:19:48]:
And so. So, I mean, that’s. They will help you. They will walk alongside you and make sure you roll it out. Right. If you’re willing to do it.
Kenny Jahng [00:19:56]:
Absolutely, Absolutely. Okay. It’s not always up and to the right. Right. And sometimes your finances are not where you want to be. Right. And sometimes they stall. And I think when you’re working with a team, you’re able to, from the accounting, the bookkeeping, the financial strategic side, you’re probably often able to see issues before the pastors do.
Kenny Jahng [00:20:15]:
Right. And so could you share with us, like, what’s an early clue that usually tells you that the ministry might be drifting off course?
Greg Daley [00:20:23]:
Yeah. For one, our team sees it first because they see the reports first. And sometimes the reports that we send out, they’re not even looking at. So that’s one issue. But also I think our team, where our team sees numbers and sees story when they see the numbers. And so that’s often why we can spot it first. One of those first red flags that we see is often when cash flows starts to get tight and a church starts to dip into its savings or reserves. One that’s really bad because we found even within the survey that most churches believe that 45 to 90 days of cash reserves is enough.
Greg Daley [00:21:06]:
So, you know, to put that in perspective, you’re like a month away from shutting down the church. If. No. If no money’s coming in. Right. That’s not a lot of time. And so when cash flow gets tight and they start dipping in the savings, it starts as one month and then moves on to multiple months. But they’re not recognizing the problem.
Greg Daley [00:21:28]:
There’s another one that we see often, and that’s when expenses just keep rising faster than giving. And this happens especially as a church is growing. A church starts growing fast, then you got other leaders in the mix. Before, it was one leader kind of making sure everything’s working. And then now you got multiple leaders in the mix, and they’re all spending money because they’re all on mission two for their departments. Right. And before you know it, it can get way out of control. This actually happened when I was a church planner, and it was a couple years in, and it was the worst meeting I ever had to have with our core, you know, our core people.
Greg Daley [00:22:06]:
And I had to go to them and just be like, hey, guys, we. We ate through some of our reserves and if, if we don’t get like $15,000 or so, we’re gonna have to like, start not doing payroll.
Kenny Jahng [00:22:22]:
Right. But the thing is, Greg, sometimes you are spending more, but you’re seeing revenue, like you’re giving is creeping up and up. You’re not like seeing a big dip. Right. So are you saying that it’s not a revenue issue? Like, is there something else? Like, is it something in terms of, like, how you manage how you report? Is it a systems issue?
Greg Daley [00:22:43]:
Yes, I definitely think it can be a systems issue. The other part of our survey found that over 40% of churches don’t feel well equipped. Well equipped to forecast and budget. So that’s a systems issue. Right? A budget is a system, which explains why a lot of pastors miss the warning signs. If you don’t have these systems in place where when it comes hits it like kind of pings you and starts to flash that dashboard warning sign, well, then you can run your car out of oil if you don’t have that light that pops up. Right. So we try to look at the patterns.
Greg Daley [00:23:20]:
If, if giving is steady but money still not enough, there’s probably that actually probably more points to a system or management problem internally. It’s one, one that’s, you know, somebody’s not watching the budget closely. I mean, the budget to actual report is one of the reports that is like, so important to see where you are in relation to your spending, because you can start a plan, but if you don’t see where you are in relation to it every month, if giving takes a hit but you, you spend the same amount that you’re planning, well, that, that doesn’t work.
Kenny Jahng [00:23:58]:
Absolutely. Yeah. I’ve always, I’ve been taught early on that the budget versus actual, that report is basically. If you don’t have it, you don’t look at it. You’re basically driving a car without any dashboard. There’s no speedometer, there’s no fuel gauge. Like you’re, you’re flying blinds basically.
Greg Daley [00:24:15]:
Yeah. And it’s just one of the reports, but it’s a great one to find the quick because if, if giving itself is shrinking, then that is where it goes back to. It might be a revenue problem.
Kenny Jahng [00:24:26]:
Gotcha. Okay. Now again, I love the fact that you have this intelligence of working with tons of churches, church plants, traditional prevailing church models, your multi site ministries. Right. There’s a whole spectrum of ministries and models that you work with. What would you say is one common behavior that you notice that these churches, when they are thriving, they are actually handling complexity pretty well.
Greg Daley [00:24:54]:
Yeah, I love that you said complexity because the church world, it, it gets very complex fast and if you can’t reduce that complexity, you are not going to handle it well. You gotta, you gotta actually get more simple as you get more complex. And so one of the things is they don’t stick to financial habits, like solid financial habits. Financial habits are kind of like the gym. If you work out once every month and, but you work out all day for that month, I mean all day for that. The time that you work out, you will not see gains. But if you work out every day for 10 minutes, you will see way more gains. Because it’s actually about the consistency of the habit.
Greg Daley [00:25:46]:
It’s sticking to that and making it a habit. So they, they don’t assume things will just fall into place even early on. They put clear. The ones that I say handle complexity well are the ones that actually put clear processes in place for budgeting, tracking, accountability, those types of things. Again, the budget thing is so important and I think when I was a pastor I didn’t really understand that because one, the finance piece of it was one, just one part of my job, right? And it was the part of my job that was sometimes depressing because you look at the reports and you’re like, oh shoot, we don’t have enough coming in or we’re spending too much. And so I kind of put it off. I remember it switched for me. I’m married to an accountant, so it was super helpful and she would, she would help me see it differently.
Greg Daley [00:26:37]:
And one of the things she said to me was like, don’t think of it as a budget because when you think of it as a budget, you’re thinking a constraint. Because I’m a creative person, I like to see opportunities, I don’t like to see constraints. And so I was, I was really looking at the budget as like this, you know, this almost this necessary evil, like I have to do it, but I don’t really like it. And then I started to switch that mentality to seeing it as a tool to make sure that I knew exactly where my dollars were going and that they were going to the right place, that they were actually going to mission. Sometimes we’d get to the end and be like, man, we spent a lot of money doing this thing, this, like, this great event. Right? But it yielded almost no missional movement in our church. I’m not saying the event. Event was negative.
Greg Daley [00:27:26]:
It could have had a lot of other things that it maybe did. But if. If you did an event that then causes you to have to not make payroll. Did. Would. No one would make that decision. Right. No one would say, let’s do a fall festival and do it really big and then not be able to pay their pastor at the end of the month.
Greg Daley [00:27:46]:
But that is essentially what we do when we don’t have a good budget, a good plan.
Kenny Jahng [00:27:51]:
That’s such a good word. I think that that to me is so much intentionality is needed at the leadership level. And pastors often lead well in mission. Right? Like, they. They mean well. They have this intent. They’ve been really thinking about this deeply. But I guess what I see and what you see is that the leaders sometimes hesitate in that financial leadership zone.
Kenny Jahng [00:28:17]:
I would say so again, I just think there’s so much incremental gain that you can have if you just have the right posture. Right. And so what would be some wisdom you have on what’s one shift in that posture that a pastor could have that would actually change their impact the most if they actually address the financial leadership part of their responsibilities?
Greg Daley [00:28:40]:
Well, yeah, I actually think the shift is a huge shift in mindset. I’m going to say a hot take. Is that. Okay, maybe a hot take. Here we teach. Part of teaching on money typically ends up in the area of tithe. Right. And I’m not against teaching on the tithe necessarily, but I actually think teaching on the ties sometimes comes back to bite us because we’re teaching a principle about something as.
Greg Daley [00:29:14]:
As from a law standpoint rather than where it is in the freedom standpoint. Generosity should be about freedom. That’s why it says that God loves a cheerful giver. Right? The givers that like. Like the true. The people that really have the spiritual gift of generosity, they are excited to give the amount that they’re giving. They don’t have any. Any of those like.
Greg Daley [00:29:41]:
Like the sweats or like the feeling of pressure or any of that. So they’re not Giving out of compulsion. And so that’s ultimate freedom when you can actually give generously because you know that God gave it to you first. I think a lot of churches and pastors and even, you know, we come at it from a scarcity mindset, and we come at it from this, like, because there’s. There isn’t always enough. And so it ends up leading us down that path. And so if we can make a mindset shift to where we look at money as a gift from God, something that. That if we steward well, there’s more.
Greg Daley [00:30:22]:
There’s more abundance there that. That we don’t have to be afraid. I think so many pastors teach on the tithe because they’re afraid if they don’t teach on the tithe, then their people won’t give. And I just think that’s a sad place. I think we could. We could shift our posture to really seeing our talking about money as shepherding people. The Bible says, where your heart is, where your money is, there, there your heart will be as well. And so if we can shepherd our people and talk about discipleship, not just, I mean, talk about money as discipleship, not just once when it’s time, you know, timely for our stewardship campaign and being more transparent and inviting people.
Greg Daley [00:31:07]:
I even, you know, we were. You were playing around with, like, this concept of donors. We call, you know, that’s what we call people who give in the church. And I’m like, when else are you called a donor in your life? It’s. It’s when they take your liver, actually, after you die. Like, I donated my liver, right? And so this, this, even that concept of, like, we are managing donors, right, rather than stewarding kingdom investors, that has a different spin. Like, and I’m not saying that’s the word, but maybe we have to use as churches. Thankfully, I don’t have to make that decision anymore because I’m no longer a pastor.
Greg Daley [00:31:47]:
But, like, the word about investment means we’re partnered together. We’re. We’re invested in the same thing. I’m actually thinking, what is that roi? And how can I help it even succeed more, right? Like, that’s what investment is. And, man, if. If more of our people thought about that. When I give to the church, I’m investing in a mission that’s so much bigger than what I could do by myself. Now we’re onto something.
Greg Daley [00:32:12]:
Not going, hey, you should tithe. Give your 10%. Right? Like, don’t steal from God. I mean, I’ve heard some of these messages before, and Again, I don’t necessarily think they’re completely wrong. Helping people be more consistent with their giving, doing that by percentage basis, all that’s going to be good financial wisdom. But, but if, if we just go to 10%, I’ll kind of close this portion with this. But it’s such a great story. I, I’m part of this thing called generous giving where they celebrate generosity and it’s not necessarily in the church world, it’s, it’s external and business world.
Greg Daley [00:32:52]:
But I was at one, one time and, and the guy next to me actually he, he saw, he saw this story on screen where somebody donated their whole company and so all of the profits basically go towards of just amazing missions around the world. And he got excited about this. So he decided I’m going to give all of 100% of my business profits away for the next couple of years and just see what happens in three years. He gave a million dollars away. Wow. I’m going to guess that that was way more than a tithe.
Kenny Jahng [00:33:29]:
That’s, that’s.
Greg Daley [00:33:30]:
We went to that guy, business kingdom minded guy in our church and said hey, you need to tithe. All of a sudden we restricted his freedom to give all of the profits. Now I don’t think every businessman is called to give away all their profits. Right. God only said to one businessman in the scriptures, Jesus only said to one, give it all away. There was plenty of other businessmen Jesus talked about and talked with and he never said that same thing. And so it’s different, different hearts, different heart postures need different things. So anyway, small thing but I just, I just, I think that we get in the wrong mindset about money that it’s this, it’s this thing that we need to protect so much against because the love of money is the root of evil and all these things which I think are true, but then we miss the like leveraging that money can actually provide.
Kenny Jahng [00:34:23]:
I love it. I love it. Well Greg, thank you so much for spending some time with us for the clear practical wisdom today. I mean I love how you talk about transition transparency and budgeting on a mission, shaping generosity around freedom. I think that’s so important. And friends, for those of you that been listening in, you can catch parable State of the church finances report. We’ll put it in the show notes, you can get it at parable site. I think you want to be able to share this conversation whether it be this specific episode or the report with a pastor or finance lead that you know that will benefit from it.
I think this is an important conversation to steward as we move forward so that your mission and your ministry can actually flourish. Greg, truly appreciate the time and the heart you have for your churches today. Thank you so much for everything.
If this has helped you lead better, I want you to hit that subscribe button, leave a review and we’ll see you here next time. Make sure to stay focused, stay generous, and keep on leading so that every dollar is on mission.
