Philosophy Of Giving
Scripture leaves churches a fair degree of latitude in how they choose to finance their shared mission. We have opted for three guiding principles.
1. Excellence in grace of giving: Part of the role of a movement is to help provoke churches to excellence in the grace of giving (2 Cor 8:7) for both their local mission and our wider mission, and to coordinate the effective spending of money for the wider mission.
2. We give mostly to planting and strengthening: We give the majority of our pooled finance to church planting and strengthening. There may be times when movement funds are given to crisis relief or ministry to the poor, but we believe these areas are better handled at local church level, or sometimes hub level.
3. Empowerment of both partner churches and the movement leadership: If the movement asks local elders for too much money then local elderships may not have enough in their war chest to give to causes that they wish to give to, and/or they might feel personally disconnected from where the movement money is going. Conversely, if local churches don’t give enough to the movement war chest then the movement can be hamstrung when it needs to act fast or it needs to embark on an initiative for which it is impractical or inappropriate to canvas multiple local churches. Therefore, we need a way forward that both empowers and resources both local elders and the movement. To this end we do things as follows:
Three Action Points.
a. We encourage partner churches to sow at least 10% of their monthly income towards church planting and the poor, under the oversight of their local eldership team. We understand it may take some churches time to work up to this level, but we warmly encourage churches in this direction.
b. We ask partner churches to sow an amount to their Hub Mission (also from within their 10% if they like). This amount is determined by each Hub and might be a percentage or an ad hoc amount according to the vision of the Hub. Note that because the Hub is closer to home than the global mission, the local church will have a much greater say in where the money goes, and be closely connected with where the money goes.
Hubs finance their own church plants, gatherings, training programs, travel/hosting costs of incoming speakers/leaders whether from inside or outside of Advance. Some hubs might pay a portion of the salary of their hub leader or coordinator. In the event of a hub / emerging hub not being able to pay their own way, the Hub Leader will use his initiative and/or approach other Hubs or churches for assistance.
c. We ask partner churches to sow 2% of their monthly income to our Global Mission (from within their 10% if they like). This money is used for:
Direct planting or strengthening initiatives that either we want to do together as Hubs from around the world, or that is beyond the reasonable reach of a single hub or group of hubs. Current examples include partly financing church plants in Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, and our Hub launch in the UK. It is hoped that all three of these costs will be absorbed into Hubs in due course.
Indirect planting or strengthening initiatives that serve all/most hubs around the world, such as a resource rich website, administration and accounting, and a very limited number of salaries (currently, PJ Smyth and Stephen Jack have a portion of their salaries paid from this fund, as does Dave Adams who runs ACPC).
The team that guides our global mission oversees this fund. They endeavour to keep an approximate 50-50 split between direct and indirect planting and strengthening initiatives. In the event of excess building up in this account, surplus will be given to direct planting and strengthening initiatives.
Five Other Things To Note.
We have high levels of accountability for global and hub funds, including detailed and transparent annual reports and audits where appropriate.
We encourage partner churches to pay their own way in terms of travel, conferences and other costs associated with our mission. We encourage eldership teams to have a line item in the budget to fund the travel of the lead couple and other elder couples to Advance gatherings and initiatives, and to consider spending in this area a priority because the health of the lead couple and the elder couples is the single most important investment that church can make. Churches that need assistance are encouraged to ask for help from other partner churches because we are in this together, and love to help each other out.
Under normal circumstances the travel costs of Advance leaders are paid for by the local church that they are part of, and in the event of being employed or partially employed by Advance, ideally a portion (or all) of their salary is paid by the local church that they are part of. This is to keep central salaries at a minimum and keep Advance leaders and their salaries earthed in the reality of local church and meaningful relationships.
We try to make all Advance events self-funding.
Honorariums: Whilst we encourage a culture of honor and generosity that we see in the Bible, we have no Advance policy on this. It is up to hubs/churches to do as they see fit.
Giving To Our Global Mission.
We ask partner churches to sow 2% of their monthly income to our Global Mission (from within their 10% if they like). This money is used for:
Direct planting or strengthening initiatives that either we want to do together as Hubs from around the world, or that is beyond the reasonable reach of a single hub or group of hubs. Current examples include partly financing church plants in Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, and our Hub launch in the UK. It is hoped that all three of these costs will be absorbed into Hubs in due course.
Indirect planting or strengthening initiatives that serve all/most hubs around the world, such as a resource rich website, administration and accounting, and a very limited number of salaries (currently, PJ Smyth and Stephen Jack are have a portion of their salaries paid from this fund, as does Dave Adams who runs ACPC).
The team that guides our global mission oversees this fund. They endeavour to keep an approximate 50-50 split between direct and indirect planting and strengthening initiatives. In the event of excess building up in this account, surplus will be given to direct planting and strengthening initiatives.
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