Community Risk News

I work primarily off a laptop with a desktop I use at home to work on presentation graphics and the like when I need a little more power. In the last 3 days or so, both of them went down hard for seemingly unrelated reasons. Repairs are underway, but both copies of the work I’ve been doing could have been lost for a little while or forever.

Luckily, I use a remote backup service and have been able to sync everything up to the new laptop and carry on with little delay and no data loss.

What about your church’s critical data? If a power surge or bad luck takes out one or more of your computers, do you have backup copies located elsewhere that you can get to quickly? And do you have someone on staff or a go-to volunteer who can help quickly in the event of system failure?

I generally try not to endorse any one group or product, but Lifehacker has a list of 5 good File Syncing tools with reviews that might help get you started. http://lifehacker.com/398696/five-best-file-syncing-tools

Last night, my home church had its quarterly meeting for partners & regular attendees. The church is in the process of planning a multi-site expansion as well as leasing some additional space nearby to have more children/flexible-use areas. Toward the end, our pastor shared that some of these moves have kept him up at night, knowing that there is substantial risk involved- if God does not meet us in these endeavors, they will fail miserably, which could be costly for the church.

This left me thinking about what we do here at Community Risk Management. I’d like to make it clear that the kind of risks the pastor talked about last night are NOT what I’m trying to get you to avoid. In fact, my goal is to make sure that your ministry is funded and supported as well as it can be, so you CAN take those kinds of risks. In other words, I don’t want to see your church miss opportunities to do something bold for the kingdom simply because your people and your money are tied up dealing with accidents, staffing challenges, or a cash flow problem.

In the corporate world, they are all the same. Faith doesn’t play into it, so an expansion or major investment might get shot down for sound business reasons. But as a result, we don’t have much of a term for the risks you take every day on faith. For now, I’m calling them ‘Ministry Risks,’ but if you’ve got a better term I’d love to hear it.

The bottom line: by all means, please pray, lead, and take the bold risks that your ministry is called to. In the meantime, keep reading, watch for our seminars, and we’ll work together to make sure you aren’t sidetracked by needless interruptions. May God bless everything that you do in his name.

The season for violent summer weather is upon us. On Friday, thunderstorms swept across Kansas, and in the process destroyed a church and claimed a life (elsewhere, not at the church).

The goal of Community Risk Management, including this blog, is to help your organization reduce as many risks as possible and be prepared for the ones that aren’t entirely avoidable. In the case of dangerous storms, tornadoes, or hurricanes (20 days to Hurricane Season for my east coast readers), there are only so many preventative measures that you can put into place. That being said, here are a few questions to ask when it comes to the severe weather:

• Where are the safe points for staff to gather if a storm threatens during the week?
• If students or the congregation are in the building, what is our strategy?
• Where will we turn for weather, road, or curfew updates?  (Curfews are common in areas threatened by hurricane paths)
• Under what circumstances will we cancel events or services?  How will we communicate that to the church?
• Is contact information for your leadership team stored off-site so that you can check in once the storm passes?
• Does your leadership know where to find your insurance information if there are damages or injuries?

As with everything we cover here, this isn’t about fear or worry- in fact, if your bases are covered, fear never has to be a factor- you can put your plan in place and spend your time praying for the safety of your community instead.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090508/ap_on_re_us/severe_weather

Arson is tough to prevent, although it’s important to take any threat against your church seriously.  However, the second half of the article has good information about how tough it can be to fight church fires- all the more reason to make sure your fire safety systems are up to date, and have the fire marshal in as often as reasonably possible to check things over.

Yankton church fire ruled arson | argusleader.com | Argus Leader.

Lots of visitors in churches all over the world this weekend.  Keep them safe and secure so that the Easter story is the only thing in the news next week.  Have a safe and happy holiday weekend.

Sadly, stealing money from churches seems to be a common theme lately, and even more disheartening is the frequency that it’s church leaders and staff with their hand in the till.  Here we have an executive assistant who’d been stealing for 6 years, and a priest who used church funds for Botox, among other things.

These kinds of things are so easy to prevent or catch in the early going.  If each expenditure from church funds is simply eyeballed by 2 or 3 people, these things should be stopped.  If not each individual check, then a regular review should be scheduled and followed through on.

Church Worked to Repay Stolen Funds

Pastor Accused of Tapping Church Funds