For 2010, our church produced a narrative budget to tell the story of our ministry and programming in a way that integrates dollars, people and mission into one portrait of our Church. The narrative budget includes salary, building and office expenses as part of the cost of individual ministry & programming categories.

Our narrative budget is vision-driven, providing glimpses of how we as a congregation are living out in practical ways the broad brush strokes of our vision statement. This narrative connects our congregational story with “The Story” of the Christian faith. Jesus used narrative and story to excite people to follow God’s way. Within all the practical details Jesus would name, he always named that larger vision of being a people of God.

Our narrative budget does not replace the financial statement. It builds upon the financial statement and reshapes the same information within a
narrative—“the story of our church.”