Serving as a financial officer or in a financially related position within a local church requires that we serve with fiduciary responsibility over the financial matters of the church. This fiduciary responsibility means that we stand in service to perform our duties with the trust and confidence that we act for the benefit of the church and not for the benefit or convenience of ourselves. As we serve with these responsibilities in local churches, we are guided to provide the most effective and most efficient ways to safeguard the assets entrusted to our care. One of the ways we safeguard the assets is to put procedures in place that have been proven to minimize risks by preventing and detecting error, deterring fraud and protecting innocent staff and volunteers.
Guidelines have been developed to assist those with financial responsibilities in local churches to identify and implement basic internal control procedures. These guidelines are intended to aid in the prevention or deterrence of fraudulent behavior and are not accusation that fraudulent activities are being performed. These guidelines provide protection for those in a position of controlling financial activity from being accused of fraud. Part of the fulfillment of our calling to be good stewards of the Lord’s funds is having effective procedures in place to safeguard those funds. These minimum standards should be increased for churches with higher volumes of transactions but should not be compromised for lower volumes of transactions.
The guidelines are available on the Downloads page of the Treasurer’s Office website. If questions arise on implementing these minimum standards, please contact your District Superintendent or the Treasurer’s Office at (800)849-4433.
I am the Treasurer for Trinity UMC in Red Springs, NC. We are working to implement the new Local Church Finance Minimum Standards. Under the Receipts and Disbursements section of the Guidance Letter we received from the NC Conference, is reference to a Template available on the Treasurer’s Website. I have been unable to locate that template. Please send me instructions on how to find it.
You can access the document we reference by going to the Treasurer’s Office website and clicking Training Materials on the left of the screen. The policies template is under the Local Church Audit section of the Training Materials. If you don’t see it there, let me know and we will email a copy to you. Thanks!
i am the finance Chairman for Mount Olive UMC. My problems are: issuing w2′s to Pastors when they ask for 1099′s, members refusing to complete vouncher for non repeating expenses and refusing to follow budgeted amount for thier expenses. they just think a budget is just something on paper. There is also an attitude of The Pastor can over rule the guidelines outlined and our procedures that have been in place following the guidelines that you have published.