The purpose of step five is to make sure the church is on mission in its budget planning.  In step five the church takes one last look at its budget before moving into the implementation stage.  This should include a critical analysis of all budget requests submitted by ministerial and lay leaders confirming that the requests are within dollar amounts previously established and consistent with the church’s mission and vision for the next year. 

• This should be done BEFORE the adoption and implementation of the budget.  To do otherwise would open the church to the discouragement and disillusionment we discussed in a previous post.  It is hard to undo this kind of damage…
• However, it is a good practice to perform this step at mid-year to determine if realignment is necessary.  Budgets are not written in stone, they are to serve primarily as a guide.

A few of the questions that need to be addressed during this process are:

• Are our numbers in alignment with our mission?
• Are we balanced between in-reach/outreach?
• Should any of these budget items no longer be funded? (Are they carrying out our vision/mission/strategy?)