{"id":548,"date":"2015-05-12T01:00:42","date_gmt":"2015-05-12T05:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/?p=548"},"modified":"2026-04-01T16:21:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T16:21:14","slug":"investment-not-an-expense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/2015\/05\/12\/investment-not-an-expense\/","title":{"rendered":"Investment Not an Expense"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s scary to spend money in ministry. The fear is that if we spend what little we might have, there won&#8217;t be enough for later. But this is the wrong way to think of spending money. As a church, ultimately, everything we spend money on is to make disciples. And in this sense, whatever we&#8217;re spending money on\u00a0isn&#8217;t an expense, rather an investment in people&#8217;s eternity. And here&#8217;s how it works: <strong>The return on investment is always greater than the initial investment.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A church is about <em>destinies<\/em>, not <em>dollars<\/em>, but let me explain this from a financial point of view. If you spend $500 to promote a cool new high felt needs teaching series at your church, this is not an expense, rather an investment. You may spend $500 but think about what will happen if even two people throughout the course of the series <em>get<\/em> <em>saved<\/em>, <em>get discipled<\/em> and\u00a0<em>start\u00a0tithing<\/em>. If the average person in your community makes $50,000 and tithes on it, that&#8217;s $5,000. If two families are now tithing that&#8217;s $10,000 added to your bottom line each year. So follow me on the math:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You invest $500.<\/li>\n<li>The return on investment is two souls saved (priceless) and $10,000 a year of giving (possibly for years and years to come).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Friends &#8211; that&#8217;s called a great investment! Stop thinking of evangelism as an expense and start viewing it for what it really is &#8211; an investment that will result in a greater return than what was initially invested.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s scary to spend money in ministry. The fear is that if we spend what little we might have, there won&#8217;t be enough for later. But this is the wrong way to think of spending money. As a church, ultimately, everything we spend money on is to make disciples. And in this sense, whatever we&#8217;re [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-548","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-finances","7":"entry"},"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Mike","author_link":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/author\/mike\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1252,"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions\/1252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/withskillfulhands.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}