What is the purpose of a Church?

Money is not central to the purpose of a Church, but is important insofar as money is needed to 'keep the doors open'. A typical accounting for the performance of a Church has financial accounts as the central anchor, and this is needed so that decisions can be made in the context of available money.

But it would be good if the activities central to the purpose of the Church could be accounted for with the same rigor as money is accounted for. It would be good if the 'value' of what a Church does could be put in the record, in the same way that money transactions are in the record.

In the corporate world, money profit accounting is a powerful management tool. Up to now there has been no equally powerful management tool to account for the performance of an organization with respect to value and impact on people, place and planet, the impact on society.

TrueValueMetrics (TVM) is an emerging accounting framework that combines accounting for money flows with accounting for value flows. The goal is to provide a way to account for and report not only the money performance, but to account for and report on the 'valuadd' that contributes to society and the impact this has on the balance sheet of people, place and planet ... all of society.

The first step is to understand the specific impact that a Church has on its community ... and apply value concepts to the activities of the Church.