The Difference Between a Safety Net and a Savings Habit

AI generated image of safety net larger than needed

To return to last month’s illustration of the trampoline and the safety net, the best practice is, of course, for the safety net to match the size of the trampoline. If a Safety Engineer were to develop larger and larger safety nets for the same, original trampoline, “just in case,” it would raise suspicions as to how good they were at their job. There may be a large safety net, but there's a lot of room for failure of purpose as well.

Churches create safety nets without any idea of what size and purpose they’re for all the time. This creates a dangerous zone.

A safety net has a purpose and a size. You know what it’s for and when you’d use it.

Endowments, or reserve funds, often become an end to themselves. They represent fear, a deeply-ingrained suspicion that someday everything will be taken away. Basically, they represent a savings habit, or accumulation without intention. (Many of our congregations’ endowments were first started by people who lived through the Depression. That’s not happenstance.)

To be clear, “because we might need it someday” is not an intention.

“Because our giving units are down but we need to keep doing everything we’re doing the same way we’re doing it now,” is not actually an intention, as much as it might seem to be. It’s a security blanket that keeps us warm and unchanged even in the face of all the signals that things need to change. ("Dangerous zone of failure," per se, but that’s a different blog post.)

Here’s a question to ponder: Can your finance committee, your trustees, your church leadership, or your congregation articulate specifically what your reserves are for?

If the answer is vague, or different answers for every person, that’s worth noticing.

Reserve funds should not just make us feel comfortable about the future. They should make us nimble, able to address the needs and the new ways that God is calling us into mission and ministry today.

Recommended activity

Determine exactly what reserve funds should be used for based on your congregational values. Once you know the purpose, calculate exactly how much you need in reserve to ensure those uses could be met. Be cautious about fear creeping into the conversation. Be cautious about planning in advance for ministries that don’t even exist yet. What is a realistic number for you to have in reserve? Once you’ve calculated that number, you know what your reserve needs actually are. Everything else can be put towards the ministries of the church.

Key takeaway:

Name the net, know its size, and release everything above it into mission.