Business in Practical Theology

As many of you know, my job at the church is includes a lot of the business side of operations.  What's funny about me having that job is that I'm really there to learn right now.  In 10 years of theological training, in Bible college and seminary, I never had a course or even part of a course that instructed me in staff manuals, federal tax laws relating to non-profits and their employees, corporation, even basic finances.  Not only that, but I've never even had some basic instruction on personal financial management, with information on how mortgages work, how to budget, how to do your taxes, how to go about buying a house for the first time, etc.  

I suppose all this stuff is pretty simple.  For the personal side of things, I'm learning as I go.  I just met with someone to look at what sort of position we are in right now to look at buying a house.  It was a little sobering but I'm not feeling hopeless.  I'm just glad its a buyer's market right now.  But I learned quite a bit about what a mortgage is and how it works just in this little appointment.  In the last few months I've been working to really put together a budget that makes sense.  Today I found myself plugging in all the actual data for November.  I did it on my own based on all research and stuff that I've done on my own.  I just wish I'd learned it even ten years ago.  It could have really helped, I think.  

When it comes to the business side of running a church, I'm just really glad we have an awesome finance team that pretty much handles everything and is very knowledgeable, including at least one CPA that I know of.  Even so, I've learned a few basics lately about churches as non-profits, how benefits work, what disability insurance is, tax laws relating to clergy, and my big project has been putting together a staff manual.  It's been tiring and cumbersome at some points, but I'm proud of what I've learned.  Again, I just wonder if there could have been a class in seminary that really gave us all these basics about church administration.  So often I think churches these days just hire executive pastors who either have business degrees or some background in it.   Praise God that Mike and the Grace staff have had faith in me and have been willing to invest in my continuing education in on the job training for all the things seminary failed to teach me.