JimBo Stewart: [00:00:00] Here we are. Back at it again, Bob. I hope you’re ready for the next episode. We’re home from, travel in Arizona, Illinois, with a REVIVE conference, and super excited to get to be back on our own domicile just for a little bit before we each hit the road for various reasons, yet again.

Bob Bickford: Yeah, and I just wanna say W Pig, Sui, Jimbo, the Razorbacks took down Kansas and I was resting on my couch with the pit bull pups and, they were sleeping and I was watching the, uh, game. So I was, was pretty happy coming home from our events. We had great events by the way, which was, was awesome in, uh, Arizona and then also in Illinois.

And you, Jimbo, you got to, you probably get the best rental car I think I’ve ever.

JimBo Stewart: Yeah, especially for Arizona. I got a brand new Toyota 4runner, T r d off-Road Pro with 500 miles on it. and man, I, I kept seeing the mountains and I, I just kept being tempted just to throw that thing in four wheel drive and see how far I could get up the mountain you know.

Bob Bickford: That was good. I got a, a Mercedes that was kind of a [00:01:00] combo between a TAUs and a Corolla. , and it was, it was not that great. , I will say that

now. Hey, lest we lead our listeners to think that we’re just blowing, CP and North American Mission Board money on those things, I just wanna, we need to clarify that you and I rent so many cars that we are in the higher echelons of the Hertz Gold Club, which means we can get a really fancy car for a cheap

JimBo Stewart: Yeah, for the same price. As a same price as a regular rental. Yeah.

Bob Bickford: should put that, we should put that out there. Since we’ve got a, a guest on talking about a particular topic today,

JimBo Stewart: Speaking of which our guest today is, a friend of mine that, I was looking at, we’ve been friends now for, uh, nine years, and he’s been a friend and a mentor. as a matter of fact, he was my first phone call, when I was moving from New Orleans to Jacksonville. I knew that, uh, Associa.

were such a great thing and I knew I needed to connect with my local association. And so Rick Wheeler at that time was the, [00:02:00] director of missions for the Jacksonville Baptist Association, and then he was, even on the team that helped change that name, whether you liked that name or not, of associational, missional strategist.

and so if you hate that name, you can, you can blame Rick for that. No, I, think it was a great

move and

Rick Wheeler: and many people often do, so

JimBo Stewart: I, I’ve learned just an immense amount from Rick over the years and, grateful for his investment into my life, and, so I’m excited to have him on the podcast. But you’re in a, you’re in a different role now. Tell us just briefly about the role that you’re in now.

Rick Wheeler: I will thank you and thanks for, thanks for having me on. I’m obviously, I’m friends with you guys, known you a long time, big fans of not just this podcast but more. significantly what you do in your ministry across North America. It’s an important work. it’s a work that is desperately needed and I think you guys are making a big dent and so grateful for what you do.

And you obviously rent a lot more cars than I do because the most exotic thing I usually get from Hertz is a Chevy Malibu. congrats on that, on that status level you’ve got going on. [00:03:00] Yeah, I, you know, the Lord has kind of brought me through a very circuitous route to this. You know, many of us have, I was, uh, outta college, had a finance degree, spent about a decade in banking, commercial banking and, retail banking.

best thing I got outta my finance career was my wife. we met working for, a regional bank here in Florida, and we’re married in 1993. Spent, about a decade doing that. And then, around the late nineties, uh, after kind of taking, experiencing God and some other things, had all the, the Lord kinda move us.

We weren’t really going in the wrong direction, but it was like we were ready to move into the kind of the vocational ministry world. Went to seminary and, uh, ended up coming back on staff at a church here in Jacksonville, Florida that I had, been a member of and actually was ordained as a deacon. in served on staff there for about three years and.

had the privilege of, working, with the Florida Baptist Convention. I know y’all have Bob Bumgarner on from time to time as a special guest and got to work with Bob and that was just a real growing and stretching time, kind of putting me in the consultative role of coming alongside churches, across the state of [00:04:00] Florida.

And then, in 2011, I had the chance, my, my wife said, Rick, I, I love what you’re doing, but you need to not be gone so much. And so, our girls were younger at that stage of life and I needed to not be traveling. And so localized here in the Jacksonville area. And I served a network of churches of about, about 200 in a variety of contexts.

Did that for about eight years, and then in 20, late 2019 and beginning in 2020, moved to our, what, what has historically been known as a foundation, a Baptist foundation. We’re the Florida Baptist Foundation. We kind of go by the, the name of stewardship simplified now, and the whole idea is we come alongside churches and we take that which is daunting sometimes in the financial world and simplify it.

So we. Church financially thrive. we don’t want them to be stuck missionally, in the area of finances. A lot of times God’s put a, well, every time God’s put a call on a church to move the great commission forward in advance in their mission causes, and sometimes finances get in the way of that. Personally as families and as a [00:05:00] church.

And so, we want to come and help remove those barriers, help churches financially thrive in more important missionally thrive in the great commission work that God’s called them to do. So that’s a little bit of background and kind of, how the Lord’s brought me to lead, Florida Baptist Financial Services.

Bob Bickford: Rick, that’s awesome. and I’m so thankful that, you’re doing what you’re doing in Florida, hear great things that, are taking place there When we think about stewardship. In the church, most of the time we think about it kind of in a limited way. Okay. Receiving money, being responsible with money and those sorts of things.

You, you have a little bit broader definition of, of stewardship, don’t you? And could you share that with us?

Rick Wheeler: Sure, sure. Yeah. You know, I, it really is, I think, a very limited approach to it. And so what we try to, do is help a church see the biblical truths that that kind of undergird, this, the short answer to your question is it’s not about fundraising. It’s about Jesus following. And so, we many times characterize the idea of stewardship in the church as just about, okay, we need some money.

Let’s talk about, you know, let’s talk about giving and hopefully get the [00:06:00] offerings up. If that’s what you’re doing. a it’s not effective. B it’s not biblical. It’s, it’s just not how Jesus approached the topic. And so we want it to help see that, first of all, you’ve gotta meet people where they are. The average North American is, pretty messed up financially.

Okay? Not all of us, but the average North America. We spend more than we make, on average, about a hundred depending on which research you look at. 110 to 115% of annual income. People spend more than they make. they’re burdened with, installment loan debt, you know, car, car loan, debt, student debt, credit card debt.

so if we’re not kind of coming in and talking. What does the Bible say about how we approach money management in the area of finances and, and there’s some great helps out there. I’ve been certified in involved with Crown Ministries. Compass Ministries. I know Dave Ramsey does a great help in there, but, we can’t really outsource that as a church.

I mean, we have to own that because, and here’s why Jesus talked about it so. you know, people have been doing this [00:07:00] research for a long time, but there’s over 2,350 verses in the Bible that deal in some fashion about stewardship or money. 11 of Jesus’ parables helped us understand or used stewardship or money as a, a way to understand a biblical truth.

And so here’s what Jesus knew, Jesus is not concerned about our money, but he is concerned about our. And he says, where your treasure is there, your heart will be also. And so if we don’t address the issue of finances, we’re leaving so much of people’s spiritual walk. aside, we, we’ve gotta incorporate that about what it means to be obedient to Christ in the area of our finances, and, factor that into, what it means to be a disciple and just being obedient to Jesus.

JimBo Stewart: I love that approach of thinking of it as discipleship rather than, just saying, Hey, how do we make sure we raise enough money to pay the bills or build this next building or, give money so that we can meet this budget. but really it’s about our, following Jesus and what he’s called us to do and the way that he’s called us to [00:08:00] view money.

one of the things that I’ve seen in kind of a consultative role is a lot of times when I come into a church and I am by no means, someone you want auditing your finances, but just, just in conversations, I’ll hear things that I’ll go, okay, that does not, it’s either, that’s either un. Or it’s a lack of integrity.

Like, I don’t know what all the laws are, but I hear things and I think, man, how so many smaller, normative sized churches, churches in decline, if. I have witnessed so many practices of handling finances that just don’t seem right. And I guess my thought, my thought is if I’m noticing that, then man, someone who understands finances better than I do, would probably have a even higher alarm going off in their head when they hear and see some of the things that I see.

 So how do we as smaller churches, think through walking with wisdom and integrity when it comes to finances. And just as a funny example, I remember [00:09:00] early on, you know, we had a process at, the church that God allowed me to be a part of replanting, where, the deacons would come, they’d pass the offering plates, they’d get to the back, and they’d all get there and they’d put it in the money bag.

And, two guys would get in and go walk and put it into the safe together. And, you know, we had this older deacon, you, you knew him, Mr. Alfonso. And, somebody looked at Alfonso and was just joking and said, oh, is this the part where we take our share out of the finances? And Alfonso said, you take as much as you think you can get away with,

Rick Wheeler: Hmm mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Not the narrative you want, out there about how you handle finances. Right. Yeah. and we all know stories like that. We all, can be kind of, almost comical or passive, you know, about just joking about it. But the reality is, I mean, Jesus took it very seriously.

I think, I think we should take it pretty seriously, and it has a lot to do with just, the, the financial accountability that we have. And, and it really speaks a lot about how. how seriously we take all of the stewardship of our time, our talent, our resources, everything. And so, you know, the thing [00:10:00] I would say as church leaders and particularly pastors, three of us here on this podcast, we have a lot of seminary in our background.

you’re not gonna get a lot of this kind of training, in a, a ministry, vocational pathway. And so you’re either gonna need to get that on your own or you’re gonna need to bring in people. Train up people within your church who can add that and compliment your leadership. I would just say be intentional, first of all, about how you approach this.

I think one of the biggest mistakes we see, leaders make is they just kind of take a hands off approach. It’s, it let other people deal with that. I’ll deal with the spiritual and other people. Well, that’s fine, except for how many red, how much of the red letters in the New Testament. Jesus is talking about this and so if we’re just gonna give it the fair treatment that Jesus gave it.

We’re gonna be intentional about this. We’re gonna talk about it in the new members class. We’re gonna, when we come across a passage and we’re preaching through the gospels, we don’t avoid those texts. We, we kind of plow into ’em and just say, Lord, what do you have for us here? So just make. Talking about stewardship issues, normative in [00:11:00] your normal conversations about what it means to follow Jesus is, is what I would generally say.

Now with respect to financial controls, I do think, it’s probably one of the most common areas of, problems. We all know stories where there have been large amounts of monies that have been embezzled from churches. Most of the time when you trace back to how that happened, there was a lack of financial control.

And let me just be specific about what I mean by financial control. So there’s two or three very basic accounting principles that all churches should employ. It’s gonna look a little different. . you know, here’s the good thing about your story. You told, at least there were multiple deacons back there handling the money, uh, when they kind of told that joke.

so it wasn’t just a deacon back there handling the money. So that’s, that’s the idea of dual control, right? Anytime you’re handling money, reconciling baiting statements, you want two sets of eyes. Two sets of hands, because it’s not your money. It’s, it’s other, it’s God’s money, but it’s money that’s been entrusted to the ministry of the church.

And so you wanna have, with issues of financial reports, invoices, bank statements, [00:12:00] payroll, you want another set of eyes looking on that. Beyond the person who’s actually doing it. So that’s what we mean by dual control. The other is kind of separation of duties, which means the same person who writes the checks is not the same one who opens the invoices or, you know, looks, makes the financial reports.

And so certain people do certain things, other people do other things. And so you separate those duties so that there’s a, a control. Not one person has control of the, the giving all the way through the financial process from the moment of. All, of course, most of that’s done digitally, you know, electronically now to the point of, cutting a check or, you know, hitting the, the send button on a payment.

So dual control and, it just having separation of duties, handles a lot of that. Unfortunately, it’s a lot more common in our churches to have, sloppy maybe the best, the best word. Cause I don’t think most of it’s intentional. I think we just don’t pay attention to it. And so, I was telling the story, briefly about we have a third party ministry that we work with sometimes that, does bookkeeping [00:13:00]services for churches.

And they were telling me about having onboarded dozens and dozens of churches, across the country, into their, accounting system that. Every time they’ve onboarded a church. And these, by the way, these aren’t just small churches. These are churches of all sizes. But there was, there was at least things that were being done that were improper.

And actually sometimes things that were illegal that were happening now. I don’t think the, the illegal things were intentional. I think they were just things that were being overlooked or not, there wasn’t attention being given to them. But, you know, the thing I would impress is, you know, pastor, you are not only the spiritual shepherd of the church, but you are also the leader of a 5 0 1 And like it or not, I know in Jesus’ eyes, The church is a spiritual reality and we, we get that, we understand ecclesiology, but how many times have you heard a church either get stuck or actually explode, through conflict and, and other things simply because there was a financial problem in the church.

You just wanna avoid those things. If it can be avoided. Just practice good [00:14:00] rhythms and skills and things in the church so that you can avoid those problems.

Bob Bickford: Rick, one of the realities is, we work with churches that are single staff, churches that have, have small congregations, limited number of volunteers with expertise, and you might find a trusted person. A faithful member who, who has executed their responsibilities as treasurer or bookkeeper for, for quite some time and done, done a great job.

But maybe we’ve become aware of either process or some issues that require a transition. How does a single staff pastor who’s a replant or revitalized how, how, how does he begin to communicate? People who are, are fine with old bill or old Sue who’ve been been the ones who write checks or cut checks on those things.

And then, and then also I, I think one of the things we see is, is sometimes if old bill or o Sue are on vacation, are unavailable, the church is kind of in a pinch at times.

Give some wisdom to the guy who might find himself in that situation, how to navigate to a different place.

Rick Wheeler: Well, I’ll, I’ll give a little bit of thought on how to approach the conversation and then maybe some [00:15:00] strategies on, on what to do. But, you know, if, if it’s just such a sensitive topic to talk about, like it’s insulting to that person, you know, whether or not it should be. To even talk about, Hey, we need to put in some more controls and more, people involved with this process.

bring in an outside voice. You know, let, let your , if you’re a, a Southern Baptist church, you know, bring in somebody from your state convention, uh, or your Foundation like us or somebody who can come in and just kind of talk about financial controls. There’s some good handbooks out there.

There’s one that the executive committee has published for years called the Church Financial Handbook. That covers all of the things that I’m talking about. So in other words, you, you kind of take it out of the personal attack realm and into, Hey, this is just what objective, wisdom is in the area of finances.

This is what smart people who, who deal with money all the time said we should be doing. What do you, how do you read this? What, you know, just kind of present it that way. So bringing in outside sources to have the conversation. The other. I, you know, rather than trying to, you know, remove somebody from an office or limit them in some way, just build things around them, meaning, those accountability [00:16:00] structures aren’t meant to necessarily, remove somebody, but to add support.

And the other thing is just let them know, like, Hey, right now, if an accusation were to occur, You wouldn’t have any backup. You would be left defenseless against any sort of an accusation. But what I’m trying to do is save and help your reputation and your, integrity, so that there’s not even the appearance of anything being done in an improper way.

So those would be some of the, the general ways I would try to approach it.

JimBo Stewart: I was talking with a pastor in another state and he was telling me about a church they were looking at potentially taking on as a replant and, the finances. , everything to do with the finances was handled by the secretary. everything was tracked on her yellow legal pad and in a way that wasn’t really coherent.

and so he was trying to, you know, as they were considering replanting this church, taking it on, they were looking at the finances of it. that also operated a school, that the school had about a million dollar budget, for the year. But the church was only about 10 people. And. All shared finances and it’s all [00:17:00] on the legal pad and it’s, and it’s all over the place.

And the way they managed their budget was literally like, you know, is there money in the bank then, you know, cause they didn’t really do a lot of activity with only 10 people. And, so obviously they needed greater senses of control, but also just needed understanding. How do, how do we think about a church budget?

you know, the Bible gives us. Spiritual principles and even some wisdom principles on handling our finances. But, neither the Bible nor seminary will usually give you very specific details on how to view a budget, what to do with a budget, how to operate a budget, what wisdom would you have for smaller, normative sized churches as they think about their annual.

Rick Wheeler: Yeah. so there, I think there is some wisdom there. but as we’re thinking about the financial controls and a budget is a financial control document, it, it kind of helps give some guidance and supervision. You know, I would also say make sure you’re communicating with your church about the things that you’re doing to apply [00:18:00] financial controls and wisdom and accountability in your church.

There’s very strong research that says when people know. That this ministry or this church is handling finances in a responsible way. And there is backup and there’s accountability. there are controls in place. Guess what? Giving goes up. people actually feel more generous to an organization, including churches.

And churches don’t get a pass on this. You know, people, you know, you’d like to think, well, you’re just gonna give to the Lord regardless. No. If people aren’t confident that things are being handled appropriately, they’re less likely to give generously. And so that’s just from a practical standpoint, I know it’s not like really exciting to stand up on Sunday morning and say, Hey, let’s talk about dual control for a second.

You know, but however you communicate with your folks and in the rhythms of communication of your church, make sure you’re weaving in regular. Times where you talk about it with some level of frequency. Hey, just so you know how things are handled around here, we have, we do everything above board. We do, we’re completely transparent.

Anybody can ask a legitimate question at any time [00:19:00] and we’ll, you know, we’ll, we’ll answer to the best of our ability. now when it comes to specifically with a budget, and again, a lot of my experience has told me that churches either will kind of fall in two traps. One is. If they have a budget, sometimes, it’s just some lofty number that’s not very meaningful.

Like, oh, well our budget’s a million dollars. Well, no, no, but your church hasn’t collected a million dollars in a year, in a long time, if ever. And so, it’s not a realistic number. I’ve actually come into certain ministries that I was leading, and that’s kind of how the budget was led in that particular ministry.

And so that’s not good stewardship. The other would be that the budget is like such a controlling document. That is, it is like this super bylaw thing or something where, you know, people use the budget to knock people over the head or things like that. And so I think having a good, healthy organizational approach to budgeting is good.

 And here’s a little talk that somebody shared with me a long time ago. I’ll just pass it along. Uh, it’s not original to me, but it’s been very helpful [00:20:00] to me. And, and that is three things that a budget is and one thing that it is not. the first thing that a budget is, is it’s a. it should stretch you.

It should stretch you, in your efforts and it should stretch your faith. if God were to show up and bless, what are the things that we believe we’re believing God will do in the next season of the life of our church? If you’re, say, planning an annual budget. And so it should, it should be a goal.

It should be something you’re leaning towards, you’re striving towards. And so it should express that effort and it should express that faith that needs to be realistic, but it should have some faith element. I also think you should have a little bit of. In it as well. budgeting down to the very penny, just doesn’t leave any room for the Lord to work.

And so try to, try to give yourself a little bit of margin for spending in there. And I like to call it a ministry spending plan, not a, not a budget, because then that just approaches it like, hey, the Lord’s called us to do some things. He’s gonna provide the resources. you know, it’s kinda like the, the preacher who got up on Sunday morning and said, Hey, the good news.

The Lord’s given us every last penny of everything we need to do [00:21:00] all that he’s called us to do. But the rest of the new news is it’s in your pocket, in your pocket, in your pocket, in your pocket. You gotta give it, right? And so think of it as a ministry spending plan. The second thing, in addition to being a goal, is it’s a guess.

leaders operate with some level of uncertainty. And usually if you’ve got 60 to 70. Understanding of something is time to move forward. And so there’s always a guess that goes along with budgeting. Opportunities come up, challenges come up, you know, pandemics come up, you know, things happen that we don’t plan for.

And so it’s a, it is based upon our best understanding of what we believe the Lord’s calling us to do and what our, our realities are. Here’s where we intend to go from a spending standpoint. So it’s a guess. The third thing is it’s a guide. You know, life is kind of one or lost sometimes in the course corrections.

You know, these rockets that go off from Cape Canaveral, do a lot of course corrections to get to the Space Station or get to Mars or wherever they’re trying to go. in the same way a spending plan needs to be a guide, but a guide that can [00:22:00] allow us to make course corrections. Oh, we’re spending a little too much in here.

We need to, we need to let it guide us. We, we have an opportunity to spend more over here. Let’s not forget about that. So it guides you along the way of your spending, plan throughout the year. The rest of it is though, it’s a, a goal, a guess, and a guide, but it’s not a God little g God, you know, again, we don’t use this, as the final say, it’s Jesus’s church.

He gets the final say and the budget should serve ministry. The ministry doesn’t serve the budget, and so we gotta kind of keep it in its place. It’s an important document. It’s a necessary document, but it’s not the final say on how the Lord would, lead us to, spend money.

Bob Bickford: I mean, that’s super helpful, Rick, just to put it in those simple categories and, and break it down for us like that. most of the time when we talk about stewardship, we think of just the money, the inflows and the outflows. Are there any additional areas that we need to. Think about in terms of overall stewardship, like property, facilities, those sorts of things.

What, what are some other things that we should consider as we’re thinking about [00:23:00]stewarding? Well, the resources God’s given us.

Rick Wheeler: Yeah, I think, hopefully the, the overall theme here is that if we’re calling people in our churches to be good stewards, we as a church have to practice that from a leadership standpoint. We have to be good stewards, ourselves and they have to look to the church. I mean, the church ought to be the beacon.

It ought to be the example. For how to handle finances. People ought to look to the church. Well, they do it so well. We should just try to do what they do. so practice good stewardship in your church, meaning, utilize the things, be good managers of the things that God has put into entrusted to us.

And so for most churches, particularly, smaller, typical size churches in, our convention usually, not always, but usually the, the most valuable asset you’re going to have is your real. Okay, it’s gonna be your property, your buildings. And so the thing I would, probably say in terms of, thinking about stewardship as a church is ask questions about how you’re leveraging, how you’re utilizing your facilities.

Are you utilizing them well? you guys probably see it and have. More stories than I [00:24:00] do. But I know even in my church resourcing days, there’s a lot of times where we see a church in a community and the buildings are run down. There’s been deferred maintenance, there’s been just things that have gone on.

The roof’s not in good shape. There’s paint needed. Just, you know, things don’t look good. But what does that say about the gospel witness of that church in the community? What does it say about the God we serve? I know you guys have talked a lot about those kinds of things and so, think about, be creative.

I mean, even as a smaller church, you can be creative to think about how you’re utilizing your resources. Is there another church or a church plant that you would wanna partner with in your city that might, could share space with you? Maybe a language church. A number of of churches, you guys probably know, I know several churches where there’s more than two churches that are sharing a facility and all can kind of help share in the, the burden, if you will, or the upkeep and the, the cost associated with maintaining those facilities.

There might be a ministry need in your community. that you could host at your facility. Uh, maybe a preschool or daycare. And, you know, you have to tread wisely in those, those dimensions. But [00:25:00] there may be a way you can meet a need in a community, generate more income for your church, and help maintain your facilities.

And so the thing I always say, just, you know, practice good stewardship. You know, Matthew 25, the Parable of the talents teaches us, it doesn’t matter if it’s little or. Stewardship is stewardship. And Jesus expects the same amount of stewardship from us, whether it’s one talent or five talents. And there’s actual evaluation done of how we’ve done with that.

And so I would say don’t, just because you think you’re in a, a smaller church environment and well, we don’t have a million dollars, we don’t have this, that, or the other. You have something you ha you have things that the Lord’s put in your hands. And if I’m reading my Bible correctly, we will give an account for how well we have stewarded everything that, that the Lord has entrusted to us.

JimBo Stewart: Man, that’s such a good word. Rick. I appreciate you taking the time to share with us. Just to recap, some of the things that we hit today is one, when we view stewardship, this is not just about fundraising, but it’s about. Following Jesus and making disciples and helping us follow the commands that Jesus gives us.

Cuz he [00:26:00] talked a lot about money and scripture. And so we need to be obedient to the commands that he’s given us and the wisdom that he’s given us. But also in wisdom, we need to have wise control of how money is handled and how decisions are made to try to, prevent even unintentional illegal or improper activity, but certainly also intentional.

 there just need to be. The things there that can help protect us from that. And then on a budget, I love that a budget is a goal. It’s a guess and it’s a guide, but it is not a God. And stewardship isn’t just about money. it’s a, I mean, stewardship is about anything that God has entrusted us with and that we be wise.

With that, Rick, thank you for taking the time to be on the Replant Bootcamp with us today. So glad that we got to have you.

Rick Wheeler: My pleasure guys. Good to be with you.