Disclaimer: The following post is my interpretation of a very fuzzy topic. I am not an attorney and I don’t work for the IRS. I’m not a CPA and don’t claim that what I write will hold up in a court of law. However, when I was doing my research, this is what I wish someone would have told me.

I am a concrete black and white guy who struggles sometimes with the grey. Housing allowances are something that fall into that grey category. The more people you ask and the more you research, the more confused you get. This is my attempt to explain what I’ve found in the most recent court cases.

First of all, let me define the Housing Allowance (HA). This is a portion of income that an ordained and/or licensed minister can elect to receive federal and state income tax free to cover the costs of living. You are required to pay FICA (Medicare and Social Security) on the HA at the end of the year and I’ve got several friends who can painfully vouch for this.

The HA is legally between the ordained minister (this sounds way too formal so I’ll just call them staff) and the IRS. By law, the staff member is to figure their own HA possibly with the help of a CPA and present it to the church. From there, the Board of Directors of the church (non-profit corporation) simply votes to approve the amount. So when the IRS comes a knockin’, it’s between the staff member and the government. The church is out of the loop.

On to the more confusing piece. How do you set the dollar amount of your HA?

This is where you get multiple answers but I’ll do my best job to summarize my findings. And the reason I’m posting this is because of the “grey� nature of HA, most people set them too low and aren’t getting the full tax advantage they should.

Here is a breakdown: When figuring your HA, the IRS requires you to use the lesser of the 2 following scenarios. (Whichever of the following is lower)

1. The fair market rental value of your home fully furnished. Now how do you define this? Ask a realtor, this varies by region. One rule of thumb is to figure that a furnished house would rent for the value of your home divided by 100. So if it’s worth 200K then it may rent for $2,000/month rented. This scenario would present an annual 24K HA.

2. The actual costs of daily living. This is how much it actually costs you to live in your home. So add the mortgage/rent, ins, bills, and lawn care along with projecting what you typically spend on maintenance on your home and furnishings for your house. I’ve even read that for the year of a house purchase your can include your down payment as part of your HA.

Again, this is “grey� but I hope this will help you get a better grasp on what portion of your income as an ordained minister you can take federal and state income tax free. There is a lot more. I could go into the Rick Warren court cases, excessive HA, and how to change the HA legally but it will have to wait. Just make sure you take full advantage of the tax breaks available to you. I don’t think any of us went into the ministry to strike it rich.

Chunks Corbett, Executive Pastor

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When we launched our second campus, Elevation Union, this past
Easter Sunday we approached it as an extension of our main campus, another
worship experience across town. That was great in theory, but something was
missing in practice. After the first four weeks we evaluated the systems
and realized we had made a few incorrect assumptions. Because we treated it
as though we were adding another worship experience we borrowed the
practices that were being utilized at our Central campus.

The problem was this; our Central campus was 14 months old with an
attendance of 1,400 people. It has developed into an established community.
The systems in place relating to assimilation had been the product of where
we were and evolved as the church has grown and matured. It was perfect for
the stage of development for the Central campus, but did not translate to
the Union campus. What we did in the early days is drastically different
than what we currently utilize. We were trying to take an infant and turn
them into a 14 month old. Even though the Union campus launched with 500
people they were still an infant developmentally.

The practices we implemented at Union were great practices, but
inappropriate for their stage of development. So we went back to the
beginning, we examined the principles and practices that were used in the
early days of Elevation. From there we developed an assimilation strategy
for the Union campus based upon their stage of development. And what
happened is what we hoped would occur, the second four weeks of assimilation
were drastically different than the first four. People were moved along in
the process and jumped into the life of the church.

As you examine what other churches are doing it is great to borrow
practices, but are they appropriate for your stage of development? Go and
learn what NewSpring and North Point is doing, but do the practices
translate to your stage of development. It’s a fatal flaw to think you can
just take what someone else is doing, implement it and expect the same
results. There are so many factors that determine if a strategy is
appropriate. For your church to advance the vision that God has given you
requires you to strategize, implement and evaluate.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be following up with a series of blogs that
highlight principles of assimilation and how the practices have changed
based upon our stage of development. A great place for you to start is by
examining your assimilation strategy. What are you currently doing and most
importantly where do you want people to go? What does a fully committed
person in your church do and what are the steps to get there?

Larry Brey - Assimilation Pastor

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Last week we had a number of questions from church planters asking how we plan our worship experience. Because of our 3 service format we have to plan down to the minute. We also believe that it is important to not only start on time, but to end on time, so that guests have a consistent experience. Every Tuesday we plan out the details of our service in a production meeting that consists of our Pastor, Production Director, Assimilation Pastor, Union Campus Director and our Graphic designer. In that meeting we plan the order of our songs, who is doing announcements, and other creative elements. We generally only do four songs each week.

Our first order of business in our production meetings is to understand what Pastor needs for his sermon. Some weeks Pastor wants a specific song or type of song leading into or out of his message. Some weeks Pastor wants as much time as possible to preach his sermon. After that we usually stick to a format that includes starting the worship experience with two songs, then leads into announcements, then two more songs and into the sermon. After the sermon, Pastor sometimes makes a few announcements and then calls for the offering. While the offering is being passed the band repeats one of the four songs from earlier and then the worship leader dismisses everyone as the band continues to play. If Pastor needs more time, we do three songs before the sermon and one after the sermon. The remainder of our production meeting is spent discussing future creative and song ideas. We always have songs selected two weeks in advance, so the band can prepare and we are beginning to structure the worship experience for that week. Length of our service is always our enemy, our priority is giving Pastor as much time as he needs, which is usually between 47 - 51 minutes. Our total service time is an hour and fifteen minutes. We want to create a unique and creative worship experience, the formats I mentioned above are what most of our worship experiences look like, however we occasionally do a very different format to keep things fresh.

As far as song selection goes, we are open to using secular songs in our worship experience. We try to pick a song that ties into the sermon but not always. We do secular songs to be relevant and derive a spiritual message from the song. Our praise and worship songs are energetic, passionate, and upbeat. We try hard to create an atmosphere of excitement and anticipation of what God is going to do each Sunday.

I am attaching an excel file of the cue sheet we use each Sunday morning. This sheet guides the entire worship experience. Only what is on this sheet happens. The entire band gets one, the sound engineer, the lighting tech, and all the presentation techs. Having a cue sheet in front of these people helps us all stay on the same page and provide a distraction free worship experience.

Damion Pirolli - Production Director

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In Good to Great, Jim Collins writes that a great company doesn’t use
technology to create momentum. However, when used properly,
technology can accelerate momentum. We believe this to be
true in the local church. Cool software programs don’t grow a church but
they can definitely help accelerate that growth by detailing objective
information to help make big decisions.

Lately we’ve adopted some new software programs from some great mentor
churches. Here are some of the programs we use for various applications:

1. Crystal Xcelsius
If you are like us you’ve become extremely good with excel. It has been
great to organize and maintain our data, but when it comes to making
decisions we wanted a little more detail than excel can provide. Following
a trip to LifeChurch we were turned on to software they use called
Crystal Xcelsius. It is a business application that takes your static
excel files and turns them into dynamic displays of your information,
greatly enhancing your ability to see any information you want
to follow. We currently utilize it to follow goals, attendance and giving
trends. The upside of the software is that it is completely customizable
allowing the user total freedom to create their own dashboards to display
their information any way they wish; the only limitation is the imagination.
The downside of the software is the amount of trial and error required to
develop the project. Starting with the end goal in mind is a must when
designing the application. If you are not afraid of the learning curve and
are looking for a way to enhance your information synthesis, Crystal
Xcelsius is definitely worth the investment.

2. MapPoint
We’ve been searching for applications to display on a map the people that
have visited Elevation Church. There are several free packages available
but many had limitations on the number of addresses that you could plot or
were extremely difficult to import the data. We came across MapPoint after a
meeting at NorthPoint in Alpharetta and we have been very pleased. It is an
extremely user friendly application. Excel files are a breeze to import and
the software is easy to navigate. One of the best features is the drive
time application. You simply identify location on your map and click on the
drive time button, type in the number of minutes you want and it will draw a
corresponding boundary line around your location. It has been extremely
helpful when looking at where people are coming from and how many are within
a 10 or a 15 minute drive. One drawback on the software is it does not
contain addresses for new developments within the past few years. In the
Charlotte area where new homes are popping up all over some maps will not be
able to plot up to 20% of the addresses. But the benefits far outweigh the
drawbacks and if you are an aggressive church wanting to keep up with your
people MapPoint is a must.

3. Pro Presenter
We have tried many presentation software programs and have landed on Pro Presenter. We love the ease of use and the reliability. This program was a major shift for us, it meant investing in Apple Computers. We have not had a single program crash for the last 8 months since switching to Pro Presenter. Between both campuses and all of our children ministries we have 8 Macs running each Sunday morning. During the week these Macs are used by all of our creative and tech teams.

4. Central Desktop
Our production department utilizes a web based program call Central Desktop. It is a project management application that allows us to track all tasks and projects that need to be completed by the creative and production teams. I’ve tested over 20 web based systems and found Central Desktop to be the best system for under $100 per month. This program allows us to track a task from start to finish and also allows the production director to assign tasks and to others. It keeps us on schedule and organized.

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