A church’s benevolence fund is not like a social service agency that receives grants like many non-profit community agencies. It is also not like your personal home budget and how you choose the way you dispense charitable gifts.
Church members provide funds from their giving to the church for limited emergency assistance to local families, in addition to the tithes and offerings they give for support of the church’s programs, operation, and for designated local, regional and international missions activities approved by a church’s governance board. A certain amount is set aside for local individual family hardship needs and, as you might guess, that need for assistance is greater every year from those within the church and even moreso from those in the broader community.
A church’s responsibility financially is to be a good steward of the resources entrusted to it for the sake of serving God’s kingdom. We are instructed to serve those who are part of the church congregation and their families or our faith’s associational connections across geographic and denominational lines first, as part of the church’s missional vision. Then, in compassion and mercy, to serve individuals’ and local agencies’ needs in the larger community in ways that are helpful in times of urgent documented need due to unexpected circumstances or because of the church’s missional commitment to an agency’s mission that dovetails with the church’s own mission, respectively.
An individual’s periodic or regular budget shortfalls due to lack of planning for known and anticipated annual seasonal changes in family income or ordinary repairs and maintenance does not generally meet normal criteria for community benevolence assistance from church funds, though we may provide assistance at some level one time in such cases for the sake of a family’s immediate well being- whether it’s partial financial help with a bill or seeking out specific items for a need…. like back-to-school supplies (which we recently provided for over 160 students in a local school partnership), or finding furniture for a family whose home has burned, or beds or clothing for children going into foster care out of our foster family supply closet. Every church defines its community giving response both by its faith fellowship’s gifts and interests, as well as by the geography it serves. We cannot meet all needs but we do what we can to serve as many as we can in an accountable and responsible way.
Our prayer is that people in the community who have a need will find help through a local church or other sources and will want to become part of a church fellowship themselves and participate in being served there and zserving one another and others beyond themselves for the well-being of the church and all our community.
Churches weekly serve those who are already part of Christian community in their congregations or who are desiring to be part of a Christian fellowship. But they also serve the broader community with numerous volunteers engaged in activities all over the county. At our church we conduct monthly food truck distributions that generally provide for 300+ families each month, as well as by sending emergency goods and services to neighboring communities in times of disaster, like the recent tornadoes in Bristol, or to our neighbors who’ve just experienced Hurricane Idalia, and other Gulf Coast and southeast US communities struck by disasters. Church benevolence funds and services meet a widely diverse range of needs across a large territory that extends around the globe. That is why it may be necessary to limit some types of assistance by meeting a one-time-only need for an individual, and exploring what their plan is for moving forward from the immediate issue after help is given.
I am happy to work with individuals and their families to identify ways they may access additional resources in the community to meet needs. As community assistance minister with responsibility for reviewing benevolence requests for two churches, I see requests that are sometimes from the same people multiple times. Ater a second request we are happy to meet with people and do financial counseling and a budget review to help them address their financial resources and needs. Ongoing support for individuals without documentation and accountability is neither wise not helpful in the long run.
A book a few years asked a salient question regarding charitable giving; “are we servant or sucker?” Some may think that churches ( and also Christians, in general) are obligated to provide assistance for as long as there is a need. Individuals with the physical ability and other resources to act on their own behalf also have a responsibility to address ongoing financial issues by evaluating their budget, making lifestyle changes, or seeking other appropriate community sources of regular income or assistance.
It can be hard to say “no” to someone’s need. Having established guidelines and criteria for what can be considered and what cannot eliminates some of the emotional factors. Also, having a case review person to do the background work needed for assessment of the request and identifying options and resources takes a burden off of pastors and other staff. This is very much the role of deacons as it was intended in Scripture in Acts to provide for equitable distribution of the church’s resources for all its “widows and orphans” in need.