A CHURCH’S FIDUCIARY RESPONSIBILITY

A CHURCH’S FIDUCIARY RESPONSIBILITY

There may be some who come from a banking or accounting background who will already be familiar with one aspect of how this mysterious word fiduciary is used. But when used of a local church, it has a much broader application than its application to banking or accounting. For those who have a slight grasp of Latin it will be obvious to them that this word’s first syllable, fid, comes from the Latin fidere which means ‘to trust’. Technically, it is a Latin word – fiduciarius, from fiducia ‘trust’ which has been anglicised (translated into English) as fiduciary. For a banker or an accountant it means that someone is trusting them with their finances. But for a church it means much, much more because it involves being trusted with things worth much more than finances.

“LET’S MAKE THE MOST OF IT!”

Earlier this week, the Australian Federal Government announced that they had downgraded their projected 2019 budget surplus by two billion dollars. And with the Tasmanian government’s announcement that they are considering spending $40,000,000 on upgrading the Derwent Entertainment Centre to be able to host a Tasmanian based NBL team, there were some locals who claimed that this was a waste of tax-payers’ dollars. These two news items got me thinking. What would our economy look like if our governments ran their operations like not-for-profit organisations have to run theirs? If you’re not familiar with how we not-for-profits have to run our organisations, let me enlighten you.