Develop a Discipleship System
Creating a Narrative Budget: The Story Behind the Numbers
By Ken Sloane
Update: Registration for this course is now closed. Please check back later for more details about future course offerings.
Discipleship Ministries is excited to announce the return of a popular online course for local church leaders: Creating a Narrative Budget – The Story Behind the Numbers.
The course is written and hosted by the Rev. Dr. Ken Sloane, Director of Stewardship & Generosity, who introduces the course and sets up each of the sessions in videos. Ken also serves as instructor for the course, interacting with participants through their responses to questions throughout the course, and answering questions that might arise.
"It’s not the numbers, but the stories that inspire us to give generously."
Dive Deeper:
Along with the course content, students will download a Narrative Budget Workbook in versions that will open in either Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. With the workbook, participants will enter their local church’s budget (and a few other bits of information), and the workbook will organize those line items into broad ministry areas – a key tool in presenting a narrative budget!
Through eight self-paced sessions, participants will learn generosity theory as well as the practical nuts and bolts of constructing a narrative budget, including:
- What moves people to give?
- Different roles for line-item & narrative budgets
- Naming your buckets (ministry areas)
- Fitting apportionments/mission shares into ministry areas
- Choosing a format for sharing your narrative budget
- Tips for designing an attractive and effective narrative budget
Here’s what previous participants had to say about the course:
- “Thank you for the opportunity to learn to create a Narrative Budget and visually present the positive impact of generous giving. I will be sharing what I’ve learned with our church leaders and exploring ways that we might incorporate the narrative budget into our master plan.”
- “I must say the course you created made making a narrative budget much easier for me than when I tried (and failed) to do one several years ago. I really appreciate the organization of the course, and the workbook simplified the process that I tried to do manually. This was an excellent course, and I would recommend it highly to others.”
- “…you created a great course!!! It was easy to follow with detailed instructions. The technical resources were very helpful, and probably prevent some from quitting. Offering personal material reviews placed the course over the top. I look forward to other courses.”
The course will offer 0.5 CEUs at completion and will be available for just $25.
Note: Registration for this course will end on Friday, December 13, 2024. The course content will be archived on Wednesday, January 15, 2025.
Ken Sloane is the Director of Stewardship & Generosity for Discipleship Ministries of The United Methodist Church.
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