Towards an Effective Financial Management of Funds Generated from Offerings in the Church: A Study of some Selected Classical Pentecostal Churches in the Ashanti Region of Ghana.

Abstract

This paper looks at how some selected classical Pentecostal churches^[1] in the Ashanti Region of Ghana could be proactive in managing their funds generated from their offerings above reproach^[2]. This has been done using both primary and secondary sources. With respect to the primary sources, the purposive sampling and the lottery system were used. Whiles the first method was used to sample the church leaders for interview, the other was used to sample a total of one hundred and seventy-one respondents from the congregations of churches 1, 2 and 3. Besides the researcher made several visits to these churches to observe most of their activities.

It came to light that these churches have a lay down routine procedures that have been put in place to help their accounts clerks to prudently manage their funds. In spite of these routine procedures, the accounts clerks are not leaving above reproach and this is due to some challenges confronting these selected churches with respect to the management of their offerings. However, this issue can be minimized or perhaps over-come when the churches appoint qualified accounts clerks as full-time employees. The churches also need to go further by providing adequate office spaces equipped with the necessary machinery that would enable their accounts clerks to operate efficiently and effectively.

[1] For the purpose of anonymity, a mechanism of identifying informants and the selected churches was adopted and this is based on the work of Labov (1966). Thus, the selected churches would be referred to as Church 1, Church 2 and Church 3 and their respective heads as Rev. Yiadom, Pastor Kyei and Rev. Boafo.

[2] This article is an extract of the researcher’s unpublished M’Phil dissertation submitted to the dept. of Religion and Human Values, University of Cape Coast-Ghana