Building an Effective Benevolence Ministry in Your Local Church

On this edition of the Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses the complexities of benevolence ministries within local churches, particularly during the holidays when requests tend to rise. He emphasizes three critical questions to consider when building an effective benevolence ministry in your church.

Creators and Guests

Host

Jeff Iorg

President, SBC Executive Committee

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Jeff Iorg: 00:54

Welcome to the lead on podcast. This is Jeff Ords, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, hearing on our continuing conversation about practical issues related to ministry leadership. That's what we do on this podcast. We talk about the daily work of ministry, the challenges we face in churches, schools, ministry organizations, to actually do, on a day to day basis, the work we've been assigned. So today, I want to talk about benevolence ministries, particularly in local churches.

Jeff Iorg: 01:24

During the holidays and particularly during the winter months, it seems to me that benevolence requests increase during that season. And so today, let's talk about how to think through the issues related to a an effective benevolence ministry in a local church. And to do that, I wanna ask and answer some key questions, Then I wanna lay out 3 different models of how churches approach this kind of ministry,

Jeff Iorg: 01:57

and then at the end, summarize some best practices no matter what model you implement in your church. So first of all, 3 key questions about thinking through how to do benevolence ministries in your church. The first question is this. Do you want to handle the money? Do you want to handle the money?

Jeff Iorg: 02:22

Now what I mean by that is, do you want people giving money in your church designated for benevolence needs? Do you want to hold that money in some capacity And then take on the responsibility for distributing that money or distributing the results

Jeff Iorg: 02:40

of what that money is able to purchase. Do you want to account for the money? Now, if you say yes, then that means you'll need a control system.

Jeff Iorg: 02:54

It means that you will need

Jeff Iorg: 02:55

to have some mechanism by which people can give, either through, some kind of written check or through websites or something. But they're gonna have to

Jeff Iorg: 03:08

be able to designate giving to benevolence. So you have to have a means for people to give, and that control system has to include the means of giving and then the accountability for that gift and then how, of course, the gift is used. If you decide that you want to account for the money, it means that you're going to have

Jeff Iorg: 03:29

to make an appeal for the money. Let people know that the possibility exists to give to this cause and then the kinds of ways that it's going to be used. Now if you answer the question, no, we don't wanna account for the money, then you're going to need to find ways to promote benevolence needs being solved by other organizations and direct people to give toward those or to invest in those.

Jeff Iorg: 04:03

So for example, you might decide that in your community, there's a significant need for helping families that are impacted, by drugs or alcohol. But you may say, our church sees a great need for doing this, but, frankly, we're ill equipped to minister in this way. But there's an organization in your community, perhaps a Christian organization, that has an effective ministry going on in this area, and so you say, our church does not provide benevolence assistance to families that are impacted by drugs or alcohol use or abuse, but instead, we refer families to this organization. And we also challenge our church members to give to this organization, or as a church, we actually make a gift to this organization to give it strength and so that we can send people there with confidence that we're helping to resolve this need even though we're not doing it directly. So one of the fundamental questions about how to do a benevolence ministry is deciding, do you

Jeff Iorg: 05:06

want to handle the money? Meaning, you have a means by which

Jeff Iorg: 05:10

it can be given, control mechanisms for how it will be managed, and then accountability for how it's dispersed, and that somehow that is connected to meaningful ministry through your church in the particular area of need that you're trying to meet. And if so, then you're able to receive the money and use it appropriately. But if you say, nope. We do not wanna be involved with the finances of this, then you're probably also making the decision to send the ministry outsourced to another organization or to another place, and you're gonna help maybe support that financially, but you're not gonna get yourself involved in or your church involved in the financial aspect. 2nd question you have to

Jeff Iorg: 05:47

ask, is our benevolence ministry going to be only for members or is

Jeff Iorg: 05:52

it going to be for members and attenders or is it simply going to be for anyone? Now, if you decide that your benevolence ministry will only extend to church members, then you're going to have an enhanced accountability for how your benevolence funds and benevolence ministries will be used. Now you might think, oh, well, who would only restrict it to members? Well, I think there is some reason to restrict some kinds of care only to members. But nevertheless, that's one option that you can take.

Jeff Iorg: 06:23

But the more common option is to extend benevolence to members and attenders or even members, attenders, and community. Now if you extend to members and attenders, what you're saying is, we extend benevolence care to anyone who's actively participating in our church really in any capacity. When you open it though to the community, you're saying that we open it to people who just walk in the building or walk into our ministry or who make a contact with us and request help from us. So these are the 3 categories you have to decide who you're going to help. Most churches do not restrict only to members, although there may be some capacities of benevolence care that can only be extended to them.

Jeff Iorg: 07:06

Some churches extend to members and attenders, but, frankly, most create benevolence opportunities that extend primarily into the community. So who are

Jeff Iorg: 07:17

you going to help? Members, attenders, or anyone. Just to be clear about the members only aspect. Some churches, for example, extend, a benevolence of counseling ministry

Jeff Iorg: 07:30

to members only at a reduced rate, but may charge the community a higher rate. Something like that is what

Jeff Iorg: 07:36

I mean when you're distinguishing between members and community. And then the third question, what kinds of needs do you want to meet? For example,

Jeff Iorg: 07:47

are you going to meet needs like food, clothing, shelter?

Jeff Iorg: 07:52

In the context of shelter, are you going to pay utilities like light bill, electric bill, gas bill, water bill? In the context of those things, will you also pay rent or mortgage payments or anything like that? And then what about medical care? Do you provide medical care? Do you provide medical assistance?

Jeff Iorg: 08:14

Do you provide a way to help people with those kind

Jeff Iorg: 08:17

of bills? Another kind of need is transportation. Do you pay for people to ride the

Jeff Iorg: 08:22

bus or have a van or ride an Uber? Do you pay for people

Jeff Iorg: 08:27

to be transported? Another one is counseling.

Jeff Iorg: 08:31

Do you pay for people to experience counseling or even care like a residential care program in drugs and alcohol or other kinds of things? Do you provide residential care, for example, for women in crisis or

Jeff Iorg: 08:42

for unwed mothers or for someone like that? Now you may say, well, we'll just

Jeff Iorg: 08:47

do it all. No. You really won't do it all. There's just way too much need in our world for you to take that approach. It's more likely that your church is going to say, here are the kinds of needs that exist in our community.

Jeff Iorg: 09:00

Here are the kinds of things that are happening among our attenders or our members, and here is the best way that we, as a church, can make an impact. Recognizing that you're not going to be able to meet all the needs of all the people who come to you at requesting all kinds of benevolence assistance. But instead, you can meet certain needs in certain ways that your church is particularly equipped to do, and you can do that well. So three key questions. Do you want to account for the money or be involved directly in the financial aspects of Benevolence Ministry?

Jeff Iorg: 09:35

2nd, are you going to help who are you going to help? Are you going to help members, attenders, or everyone in the community? And then, what kinds of needs will you identify that you specifically feel your church is capable of and really equipped to meet in your context. Now with those three questions in mind, let me shift gears now and talk about 3 models

Jeff Iorg: 09:58

of how you can do benevolence ministry. The first model is what I

Jeff Iorg: 10:02

will call the outside organization model, outside organization model. I already alluded to this a little bit when I was talking about money at the beginning of the podcast. The outside organization model is that your church identifies an outside organization, and that outside organization does a particularly effective job in one kind of benevolence ministry or need in the community, and you have determined that

Jeff Iorg: 10:28

you are going to work with that outside organization to meet those particular needs.

Jeff Iorg: 10:36

Now this outside organization could be a stand alone organization that has popped up in your community to meet a specific need. And while it may not share all of your Christian doctrinal convictions, it shares your moral convictions and your ethical convictions, and so you feel that you can support that organization in its context. An example of this might be, for example, a community food bank where people where churches and or other organizations have pooled together to provide a central location for food to be gathered and dispersed to people who are in need. That can be done if it's done morally and ethically without necessarily there being a commonality of all the doctrinal convictions that we would insist upon as Baptist in some other areas of community ministry, like, for example, caring for women in crisis or, helping women who are pregnant and dealing with issues about abortion and about childcare or childbearing and issues like that. Now if you're gonna cooperate with an outside entity or an agency on that kind of Benevolence assistance, then you're talking about a whole another thing because you do have to have those doctrinal standards that come into play.

Jeff Iorg: 11:45

But for now, we're talking about helping working with an outside organization, where you can make donations as individuals or as a church, and you simply support that organization. And then when people come to you with that need, you refer them to that organization for the help that they need. Now, using an outside organization has some real advantages that I think we need to think through. One of the first advantages is it allows for the commonality or the, the cumulative impact of a common effort being made. So rather than your church having a little food pantry, which is a closet in your basement that people could come by and get some noodles and some soup.

Jeff Iorg: 12:25

Instead, you work together with a significant number of churches and organizations in your community to create a community food bank that looks almost like a grocery store because it has stocked so well and has a wide variety of things that can be provided to families who are in food crisis. I'm I'm familiar with one of these because, frankly, one of my cousins took early retirement and was looking for a meaningful ministry to really invest himself, and he became, the executive director of a community food bank. He led something that seriously looked almost like a supermarket, and it gathered food from multiple sources in the community, brought those together. This was such a large operation that it had it had to have daily volunteers. There were food shipments arriving daily.

Jeff Iorg: 13:17

They they had to have people that were processing the people that were looking for help. It it it was an amazing operation that the entire community, came together to make happen. And because of the commonality of the shared effort, it was a substantial ministry that was provided in that community to people who were in food crisis. So this is one positive. Another positive,

Jeff Iorg: 13:43

an outside organization limits what I'll call serial abusers of a system. Serial abusers. Now I don't know if you're younger in ministry, you may think, wow, this really happens, and you may think I'm

Jeff Iorg: 13:58

a bit jaded on this point. But I was surprised when I first became a pastor that people would approach our church and and ask for help for things like rent or utilities or something like that, especially during the winter months. And, you know, my general perspective on things like this is and I'm I'm a little I'm a little hardhearted, to

Jeff Iorg: 14:20

be honest with you, and,

Jeff Iorg: 14:22

wanna wanna ask a 1000000 questions before I help anybody with anything. But I've learned that I need to be more compassionate and more patient and more generous, and so when I was, starting out in pastoral ministry and trying to learn all these things, you know, I would try to help people, and I would try

Jeff Iorg: 14:38

to find ways to do that. But to my shock, I discovered there were serial abusers. There were people that would go to

Jeff Iorg: 14:46

the Methodist Church on January to get their electric bill paid, and they would go to the Baptist Church in February, and they would go to the Episcopalian Church in March, and they would go down the street to the Church of Christ in April, and and they went from church

Jeff Iorg: 14:58

to church to church asking for help. None of us knowing that others were being involved in providing this help, but simply being, taken advantage of by serial abusers who were coming church to church to church to really build cuss rather than get help in a true crisis situation. So

Jeff Iorg: 15:22

when you use a central organization, whether it's a central organization to provide food or provide shelter or provide medical care or to provide even a rental assistance, or even utilities assistance. When you provide a central location, you eliminate serial abusers because everybody has to go through the same processing, and when someone comes in the second or third time, it's the opportunity to ask the question, what's really going on here, and what's your true need in your situation, and how can we really help you to address what's causing you to have to come back here month after month after month. And when they're not a serial abuser, but they're just a serial user, it alerts you to the fact that there's a serious problem in a person's life or maybe in a family, and maybe a higher level of intervention is needed to help them in a more significant way because their problems are such that they just simply can't overcome them on their own. So an outside organization has the the, impact of a cumulative effort and the the way that working together can produce something large and significant. It also eliminates serial abusers and helps you identify serial users that have real needs that someone needs to step in and try to address.

Jeff Iorg: 16:35

And then, when you use an outside organization, it's also oftentimes more effective at diagnosing, the real help that a person or family needs. So for example, they may be coming repeatedly for food assistance, and after that, you may discover that what's driving that food assistance need is that they're using their money to pay medical bills, or they're using their money to fund a drug habit, Are they using their money in some other way that is draining them from able to provide their basic food stuffs? And depending on the situation, it's an opportunity again for intervention to step in and say, listen, we have other ministry available to you. Let us help you in some other ways than even what you're asking for. Yes.

Jeff Iorg: 17:21

We'll keep meeting this immediate need, but we think we need to start helping you address the larger issues. And only when you establish a relationship that comes from someone going repeatedly, into a large enough outside organization that it can have these kind of resources, that you have these kind of conversations, that

Jeff Iorg: 17:39

you have this kind of follow-up is this really possible. So the first model is to

Jeff Iorg: 17:44

use an outside organization. The second model is to use, your own church's internal organization to do benevolence ministry. Now this can be done through a committee, a task force, or through deacons or deaconesses or something like that. But you assign some group in your church the responsibility for a benevolence

Jeff Iorg: 18:05

ministry. Now, when I went to my first church as a pastor many years ago,

Jeff Iorg: 18:10

I discovered when I arrived that the deacons of our church had a benevolence ministry to the community and that they managed it on behalf of the church. And that periodically, in our church, they would ask for special offerings that would fund the deacons benevolence fund, and it would be used to meet crisis needs of members, attenders, and community persons who came to our church requesting help. Now, using this kind of approach of a committee or a task force or, in my case, the deacons, it has some real advantages because it gets your church directly involved in meeting these benevolence needs. It allows you to have immediate spiritual counsel and impact on a person who comes asking for assistance. When you're dealing with, an organization inside your church that you've created, you have no issues about raising the issues of the gospel or talking about lifestyle issues or talking about Christian character or Christian ethic issues.

Jeff Iorg: 19:08

These are just natural parts of the conversation when it's a church based approach to meeting Benevolence needs. Now, this gives you more control over the program as well, because now your church is asking for the money. Your church is receiving the offerings. Your church is entrusting it to people that you believe will use it appropriately, and those people are using it. And then they are reporting, maybe not in the names of the individuals they assisted, but they're having to report back to the church in some way that gets audited or accounted for the way the money was used.

Jeff Iorg: 19:39

Now those are some of the advantages of an internal approach. There's others. Another one is that this kind of approach can also limit these repeat users or serial abusers as I've called them. Because you have deacons and they know who's asked for help the previous month or the month before that or the month before that, and they're able to diagnose what's really happening here. I remember that, when I first got acquainted with this as a young pastor, I was really impressed, quite frankly, with our deacons' capacity to sit down with the family and say, now you've asked us to help you with groceries.

Jeff Iorg: 20:13

We'd like to come to your home and sit down and talk with you about that and see how we can help. And when the deacons would go there and sit down with his family, they would say, you know, I I know that you're asking for help with groceries. Let's talk about why you're needing that help.

Jeff Iorg: 20:26

Do you have a job? Are you able to earn money on your own?

Jeff Iorg: 20:31

Do you have retirement income? Are you getting your Social Security? And sometimes people would say, no, but I'm looking for a job. We said, well, let us help you. We'll see if we can find you work.

Jeff Iorg: 20:40

Or sometimes people would say, you know, I'd like to get my benefits, but I I I I I've tried, and I just don't know how. We said, well, let us see

Jeff Iorg: 20:46

if we can get you some help. Like, get

Jeff Iorg: 20:48

get someone in our church who specializes in that or get a local attorney, get some help for you. So we were able to send people out and not only talk about the immediate need, but, like, what's driving this need, And then can we find a way to help you? And then quite frankly, I was proud of our deacons because there were several times, not often, but several times over the years I was their pastor, they would come back from an a benevolence call and say, pastor, we need to let you know. We decided not to help that family. When we got there and started diagnosing the situation, they are in their situation because of irresponsibility, and we just simply couldn't help them.

Jeff Iorg: 21:23

Are we we gave them enough food for this crisis moment or enough money for this crisis need, but that's all we were willing to give, and we've told them that we won't help them any longer because until they address these issues that are driving this need, we just didn't feel like

Jeff Iorg: 21:37

it was good stewardship to keep funding their situation. Now, when you have a group, like a committee or a task force, or

Jeff Iorg: 21:44

in my case, the deacons, who have this responsibility, they can develop some of this expertise on their own where they can actually identify the situation and see what's going on and make the call in the moment of who to help and who not

Jeff Iorg: 21:55

to help. This diagnostic ability can

Jeff Iorg: 21:58

be developed, and it gives the church and the church leadership greater confidence that the money is being used appropriately because they are experienced at doing this kind of work in their community. I could tell you specific stories about this that would help you to see the point if we had longer on the podcast, but these kinds of approaches are effective in helping a church do a Benevolence ministry. And then the 3rd model is what I'll call

Jeff Iorg: 22:24

the small group model. Now, this

Jeff Iorg: 22:26

is where you don't have a centralized, like, deacons or committee, but you simply do your benevolence through the small group structures of your church. Now the advantage of this is it's closest to the needs of the people. People are in a small group together. They they know each other. They they they see who needs help.

Jeff Iorg: 22:45

They're very sensitive to, you know, caring for one another, and they can make more immediate response because they're more immediately aware of what's happening. However, there are some limitations in this kind of an approach that I think need to be addressed. One is, it's it's sometimes subtly pressuring of wealthier members of small groups, to contribute more than they may feel comfortable doing so to help another individual with a need that they may have. It's also sometimes hard to say no in a context like this and maintain their relationships. You know, if you're looking at someone and they're claiming they have a certain need, but you really feel like that need is caused more by their responsibility as you've gotten to know them and you say, no, I just don't feel like our group should help you with this need.

Jeff Iorg: 23:30

It is hard to maintain that relationship going forward when you've had to say that kind of hard no in a situation. And sometimes, it's difficult because you have uneven responses among groups. So you have 2 or 3 or 4 or 50 small groups in your church, and one small group is helping people this way, and another small group has a person who has a need, and their group won't help them in the same way. And now you're creating different standards of response and different standards of help, and that can be difficult as well. Now, I'm not saying small groups can't be helpful or can't be a way by which some benevolence needs are met, but I'm saying that this one raises some significant concerns for me.

Jeff Iorg: 24:07

I think you have to be really careful about how you measure this and about how you account for it, and about how people feel pressured in those groups, and about how the groups relate one to another in terms of any kind of even response across a church family to particular needs. So these are the 3 options that I've seen in churches, and they all have strengths, and they all have weaknesses. And you have to think about how you're going to do them in your context. Outside organization, inside organization with a committee or a task force or maybe the deacons, Or 3rd, your small group structure like your home groups or your life groups or your Sunday school classes and letting that be the structure by which all the benevolence help is offered.

Jeff Iorg: 24:48

Now it's possible to combine these in meaningful ways.

Jeff Iorg: 24:54

So for example, you may say, there are certain kinds of benevolence needs that we've decided as a church that our deacons will handle, but only for our members. And when a church member has a need, we have some funds set aside. Our deacons will meet and evaluate that need, and they will decide if they're going to help in that context. And by doing that, there can be some principles and some policies developed that make sure that we're handling this, not on a case by case basis, but on a principle by principle basis of how we respond to church members. But on the outside, benevolence, benevolence for our community, we're going to use an outside organization for that.

Jeff Iorg: 25:30

We're gonna partner with Salvation Army, or we're going to partner with some kind of, inner city ministry, or we're going to partner with the drug and alcohol bilitation program, or we're gonna partner with somebody that provides rental assistance or somebody who provides a food bank. We're going to partner with outside organizations, and we're going to actually support them financially and send people to work in those organizations. And then we're gonna refer all similar requests that we receive to that organization for it to make the final decision on how the help is provided. And you can also do some of this with a combination through small groups where you can say that we're gonna originate the the request for benevolence assistance through small groups, so we're gonna cycle it through our deacons, or through our task force, or through our committee. And then we're going to then allow the whatever is distributed to be distributed by the small group and with the small group's knowledge and information, so that small group has a sense that it's helping to participate in this need.

Jeff Iorg: 26:19

There are ways to combine these three approaches, but I just want you to identify that there are at least 3 different big buckets you can use for approaches to meeting benevolence needs in your community. Well, let me close fairly quickly now with some best practices no matter how, you decide to do this. First of all, you need to decide what kinds

Jeff Iorg: 26:39

of needs you will meet. You can't meet all the needs. There's just too many of them.

Jeff Iorg: 26:44

So identify the kinds of needs that your church family can meet and then commit to doing so. 2nd, it's okay to decide to set limits on the amount of, assistance you can provide. You're under no obligation to pay everyone's bills or all the bills or a total summation of everything that's owed. You're not obligated to provide someone's food for months or, or or for weeks. You can do an you can do something.

Jeff Iorg: 27:09

And when you set those limits, set them reasonably and then hold to them, and just simply say, that's all we can do per family or per person as we try to meet needs across a wide community. 3rd, you're gonna need some kind of simple, application or record keeping process. You need to keep up with who you've helped and when and why. This helps you to establish patterns of what you're going to do for people. It helps you to justify the limits you've had to set based on the resources you have available.

Jeff Iorg: 27:37

It gives you a sense of history of who you've helped and why, and it also helps prevent serial abusers. Now you don't need 40 page documentation on every food basket you hand out, but you do need some simplified record keeping system that says the date, the time, the person, and the amount of how you helped them with their situation. And then next, you need to decide who's going to receive and distribute the help. Now, pastors, you're gonna be overwhelmed by this if you try to do it all. I really strongly advise that you get someone else assigned this responsibility, whether it's a committee or your deacons or whether you get it assigned to a staff person who then interfaces with outside agencies.

Jeff Iorg: 28:19

But someone has to be in charge of running the benevolence ministry, meaning who's gonna how the funds will be received, how they're gonna be dispersed, how their relationships will be established with these outside organizations, how the internal organization will be structured and how it will function, how needs will flow out of small groups or out of others into the larger system. Someone has to manage this, and it may be small enough that it can be managed by a competent volunteer. No problem with that. Maybe in a larger church or part of a larger missions program or community outreach program that

Jeff Iorg: 28:48

has to be managed by a staff person. And then number 5, another best practice is I would strongly advise you never to give cash to anyone. Do not hand out money, ever.

Jeff Iorg: 29:03

It is too easy for people to go and use that for things other than what you intended. So if you are going to give someone what would be a cash equivalent, arrange a way to pay their bill. So for example, in a church where I served, we sometimes assisted people, especially in the winter, with electric bills or gas bills so that they could maintain the heating of their home. When we did this, we never gave them a check to go pay their gas bill. We would pay the bill for them.

Jeff Iorg: 29:34

Back in those days, we would actually write the bill write the check and mail it on their behalf to the company. Today, we could do it electronically, but nevertheless, no money was handed out.

Jeff Iorg: 29:46

Same thing with food, clothing, rental assistance, medical bills, anything

Jeff Iorg: 29:52

like that, no money given directly. Instead, given directly, to the person or party that needed it in order to help the person who was in need. Now you may say, well, yeah. Well, how does that line up with these modern things like GoFundMe and other things like that? Well, you can participate in

Jeff Iorg: 30:07

those if you want to, but I'm very reluctant to ever give anyone money unaccounted for.

Jeff Iorg: 30:14

If if they've got a need, I'll help pay off that need rather than give them cash to do it. Now if they're a very high trustworthy person, a member of my church, someone that I've known for years, maybe so. But I'm now talking about the community or people who come to us asking for outside assistance. And then last of all, and I've alluded to this a few times on the podcast, you have to balance the accountability and the compassion issues. Look, we have a compassionate responsibility to meet the needs of hurting people, and I believe that and I practice it.

Jeff Iorg: 30:43

My wife and I give what we call almsgiving, which is money that we just give away to help the poor and people that are in need. We do that on a regular and consistent basis. It's a part of our lifestyle. But when I'm giving that money away, I want the people who are using it to balance that compassion with some accountability, Which means that you simply ask questions about why do you have this need, how can we best need it, and how can we meet this need in a way that really is accountable to the donors in ways that's meaningful and significant. I want to balance compassion and accountability as a part of Benevolence Ministry in a local church context.

Jeff Iorg: 31:16

Well, as I said, during the winter time and during holiday seasons, Benevolence needs seem to rise in church ministry context. We have a responsibility to meet the practical needs of people and to alleviate physical pain, emotional suffering, and other life difficulty that comes along. We have to do that with balance, and I appreciate that. But, we have to do it, ministering in the name of Jesus in a benevolent way in our communities. Today, we've talked about some different models of how to do this, some key questions you have to ask and answer to set up a good program through your church, and then ways to do this, best practices to really make it work.

Jeff Iorg: 31:52

Put this into practice, demonstrate compassion, maintain accountability, do Benevolence Ministries as you lead on.