This week the blog is sponsored by Church Social and is written by Jonathan Reinink.
In 2 Corinthians 9, we’re taught that “God loves a cheerful giver”. Giving is an important part of church life as it’s a practical way for us to show our thankfulness to God for all he has blessed us with. There are many ways we give, including supporting the work of mercy via the deacons, the annual church budget via our regular voluntary contributions, special fundraisers like church renovation projects, and many different ministries and outreach initiatives.
Giving is an important part of church life as it’s a practical way for us to show our thankfulness to God for all he has blessed us with.Jonathan ReininkShare
While there is absolutely a strong spiritual element to our giving, there is also a practical side to it. Every church has someone tasked with the responsibility of tracking all these donations, accounting for them in their accounting software, generating giving statements, and in some countries (like mine here in Canada) generating annual tax receipts. What might go unnoticed by the regular church attendee is that there is a lot of work to be done that quite often lands in the hands of a (mathematically inclined) volunteer.
I run a software platform for churches called Church Social, and one of our goals is to help church members spend less time doing administrative-type work. One way we do this is by helping church treasurers with the tracking and management of donations via our giving module. This has been a popular feature, as it saves church treasurers a ton of work.
Tracking contributions
With Church Social, treasurers can effortlessly input member contributions to various funds. Contributions can be entered manually or imported from an Excel or CSV file. Contributions are organized into “deposits”, which group a batch of contributions for a particular time period or fund.

Since Church Social is also a membership management tool it always has the most up-to-date version of your membership records, meaning treasurers don’t have to maintain a separate membership list. They can simply assign contributions to the members that already exist in the software.
Contributions are not limited to just members. If you have outside donors or businesses who contribute to your church, you can track those as well.
Giving numbers
Church Social lets you assign giving numbers (sometimes called envelope numbers) to members, a technique often used by churches to help keep contributions anonymous to everyone except the church treasurer. Treasurers can even import contributions based on those numbers.
Since giving numbers are often sequential, Church Social makes it easy to identify unused giving numbers so that you can assign them to new members.
Giving statements
Once contributions have been entered into the system, Church Social makes generating giving statements a trivial task. Simply choose a date range, the statement type, and which funds you’d like included, and the software will handle the rest. No more complicated mail merge process required!

If your church uses shepherding groups (sometimes called wards or districts), Church Social provides giving statements specifically for the members in those groups. These statements can be shared with the elders and deacons responsible for the care of those members.
As a bonus, member statements in Church Social are designed to work with #10 windowed envelopes, so if your church provides printed statements this is a wonderful time-saver.
Tax receipts
For our Canadian and New Zealand customers in particular, Church Social lets you automatically generate CRA and IRD-compliant donation receipts from your contribution data.
Creating tax receipts each year has historically been a laborious task for church treasurers. Not anymore! Simply set a couple of required pieces of information, like your charitable registration number and an authorized signature, and then generate tax receipts for your entire congregation in just seconds. Treasurers can either print the receipts for distribution or email them to members directly from within the app.
We’ve spent more time than we’d like to admit reviewing government requirements for tax receipts so that you don’t have to! If you issue a tax receipt and there’s incorrect information on it, Church Social properly handles the cancellation and reissuing of those tax receipts. We’ve worked hard to ensure that your church is compliant with government regulations.
Works with your existing accounting software
Church Social isn’t intended to replace your existing accounting software, but rather it’s designed to work with it. The way most of our customers operate is to record the individual member contributions within Church Social, and then to take the totals for the various funds and enter them into their accounting software.
What’s great about this approach is that treasurers aren’t required to manage all their church’s membership data in two platforms. Instead Church Social does the heavy lifting here, tracking all the membership and contribution data plus generating giving statements and tax receipts, leaving the accounting software to simply track the totals.
Not just for treasurers
What’s nice about the giving features in Church Social is that it’s not just for church treasurers. Churches can choose to let members view their own contribution history from within the app, as well as download their past tax receipts. This is all done from the “My Contributions” page and can help further reduce the burden on treasurers since members can securely access this information themselves.
Permissions and security
Only treasurers can access the contribution area within Church Social, and this role can be assigned to one or more members within your church. We’ve taken a lot of care to ensure the safety and security of the data housed within Church Social, and the contribution data is no exception. You can read more about our security practices on our website at https://churchsocial.com/security.
Try it today!
If your church is interested in streamlining the management of your member contributions, or interested in a software platform to help manage your membership records in general, definitely give Church Social a closer look. Your treasurer will thank you! You can start a free trial on our website at https://churchsocial.com.

As we go through times of suffering and sorrow, we inevitably come into contact with those who would seek to comfort us. Some offer true help and true hope while others, unfortunately, do not. In this short but sweet quote, Theodore Cuyler reflects on what we need most in our times of affliction.

There are some of us who have known what it is to drink bitter draughts of affliction, and to have the four corners of our house smitten by a terrible sorrow. At such times, how hollow and worthless were many of the stereotyped prescriptions for comfort!
“Time must do its work,” was one of them. As if time could bring back the dead, or cruelly eradicate the beloved image from the memory!
“Travel,” is another of these quack recommendations for a wounded spirit. Just as if God had ever made an Atlantic wide enough to carry us out of the reach of heart-breaking misery!
Wretched comforters are they all. The suffering heart heeds not the voice of such charmers, charm they never so wisely.
Never, never have I been able to gain one ray of genuine consolation until I lifted my eyes unto the hills from whence cometh the Almighty help. As soon as I have begun to taste of God’s exceeding great and precious promises my strength has begun to revive. As soon as His everlasting arm got hold around me the burden grew lighter,—yea, it carried me and the load likewise. God opened to me paths of usefulness which were in the line of His service, and also of blessings to my fellow-men. And so help flowed down to me from the hills like the streams that make music from the precipices to one who climbs the Wenzern Alp.

Is there more spiritual abuse in the church now than there was in days past? Or could it be that the world has shrunk so that we simply see more evidence of it? I am inclined to believe the latter, but regardless, it is high time that Christians address what is clearly a too-common issue. Whatever we believe about the church’s history, we cannot and should not escape the fact that some pastors and some church leaders behave in abusive ways. Not only that, but some of the traits we may even desire in our leaders are opposed to the characteristics of leadership the Bible lays out. This is a church-wide problem, not just a leadership problem.

Michael Kruger’s Bully Pulpit is meant to address the issue by addressing Christian leaders. “I am writing as a leader in the church to other leaders in the church. Church leaders are the primary audience because they are the ones who can prevent spiritual abuse. They can stop bully pastors.” While there are other books written for the victims of spiritual abuse, this one is written for the ones who may purposely or inadvertently find themselves perpetrating it.
Of course Kruger is careful to affirm that it is only a slim minority of pastors who perpetrate abuse. “In some ways, the problem of abusive church leaders is not all that different from the problem of abusive police officers. While most officers are honorable, kind, and brave, some do use excessive force. And the reality of the former can’t be an excuse to ignore the latter. But, sadly, to protect the ‘dignity of the office,’ abuse is sometimes minimized or overlooked—sometimes even by other police officers.” There’s a terrible irony in this, for “it is this misguided desire to protect the office that may actually be harming it. The dignity of the office would be better protected if more good police officers had the courage to stand up to the abusive ones.” What is true of police officers is equally true of pastors. This is an issue that, for the sake of the purity of the church and the safety of the sheep, must be addressed.
Kruger begins by positing some ideas about the apparent rise of the bully pastor and, as he does so, covers some recent well-publicized cases like Mark Driscoll, James MacDonald and, to show that the issue is not uniquely male, Judy Dabler. He explains why Christian leaders may be prone to abusive behaviors: churches that emphasize giftedness over character, leaders who surround themselves with “yes men,” a misunderstanding of authority, and so on. Having done this, he defines spiritual abuse and defends his use of the controversial term. Spiritual abuse, he says, is “when a spiritual leader—such as a pastor, elder, or head of a Christian organization—wields his position of spiritual authority in such a way that he manipulates, domineers, bullies, and intimidates those under him as a means of maintaining his own power and control, even if he is convinced he is seeking biblical and kingdom-related goals.” As importantly, he is careful to point out that not everything is abuse, for there are some traits that may mark leaders who are merely unskilled or immature, but not abusive: unfriendliness, big personalities, or a willingness to confront people’s sins.
As he progresses into the heart of the book, Kruger discusses the biblical qualifications for ministry and how they necessarily disqualify abusers. After all, the Bible lauds characteristics like gentleness, patience, humility, and self-control. He considers why churches are slow to stop abusive leaders, too often waiting until there is a “trail of bodies” in their wake. He then discusses some of the retaliatory tactics abusive leaders employ to gain power and to maintain it: building a coalition of defenders, deflecting attention by crying foul about due process, claiming to be the victim of gossip or slander, attacking the character of the victims, and loudly reminding people of character and accomplishments.
A chapter is dedicated to the devastating effects of spiritual abuse on its victims while a final chapter lays out measures churches can implement to create a culture that is resistant to spiritual abuse. This includes key measures such as evaluating pastors more on their character than on their competency. “If we create a pastoral profile guided by biblical principles rather than worldly ones, it will hopefully be unattractive to potentially abusive pastors. The key issue is not only whether the church is attracted to the prospective pastor but also whether the prospective pastor is attracted to this kind of church.” He provides guidance as well on accountability for those in positions of leadership and protection for those who may call out abuse. An epilogue addresses pastors one last time to plead with them to resist the temptation toward heavy-handed and harmful leadership.
Bully Pulpit is a book that needed to be written and I am thankful that Michael Kruger took the opportunity to do so. I appreciate his handling of a difficult subject, his precise defining of the term, and his care in distinguishing between behaviors that are abusive and behaviors that are not. I appreciate his analysis of why churches are prone to elevate leaders who exhibit abusive characteristics. I appreciate his kind but insistent calls to pastors and church leaders that they ensure they are measuring up to the biblical qualifications for those who would take leadership positions in churches and Christian organizations. Most of all, I appreciate that he took on the topic at all, for only by facing it and admitting it can we address it. It’s my hope and prayer that Bully Pulpit is widely read so it can purify, bless, and strengthen the pulpit and, hence, the church.

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