These are the days and times of a heightened sense of Risk.
Sometimes it seems that there are many more dangers than in past years and past eras. This is despite the apparent progress, development and prosperity of our times.
These are also the days of liability awareness and susceptibility to litigation.
We read and see that there are so many dangers we face with many risks, personally and as churches and organisations. The world situations, our country, our region and our towns and cities – no one and nowhere is immune or isolated anymore.
Intentional incidents, accidents, “wars and rumours of wars”, droughts and floods, earthquakes and weather storms all have an impact on us. There are also the soft dangers of theft, embezzlement, identity hacking, cyber issues and so many more forms. Each one has possible Risks for us and our churches.
Some risks seem to be minor whilst other risks will have serious consequences when the unwanted risk plays out. Whatever the case the risks can be serious for a local church.
The outcomes are sometimes immediate, whilst sometimes the outcomes are not discovered for awhile afterwards. No matter the timing of the outcome, Risks must be addressed ahead of their occurrence.
During this Series on Risk our Benkorp Team aims to lead you and your church and organisation through the processes of assessing and dealing with risks from a financial point of view. We are not insurance or legal experts or property and facility managers. We are accountants and bookkeepers with a view on the financial implications of facing and dealing with Risk.
Benkorp has been working with churches, not for profit organisations and businesses for 25 years and the directors have been in financial management for a combined 96 years and so we have seen many sides and aspects of Risk – managed, chanced, under estimated, rarely overestimated and even ignored. Always there are financial outcomes that have affected people and churches in many different ways.
From our experience as well as the research of many others we will share with you some of the stories and insights from the stories so that there are principles and tips which we hope you will find helpful for you and your church.
The place to start is to consider what we think about Risk:
- what is Risk and what forms does Risk take for a church?
- what are “Red Flags” for Risk – how can we spot them and deal with them?
- what place has Risk in the church – for the congregations and for those charged with responsibility to manage Risk?
- what are the implications of Risk when we are supposed to be people of faith in God?
- how do we assess and manage Risk?
- how do we account for Risk in our financial management and in the financial reporting?
We will be addressing these and more questions during the series. Please send us any other questions you may have so that we can work on them with you. You will find a link below .
Topics will be addressed over the next few weeks, in an order that takes in current priorities for churches
People and churches tend to think of Risk as only something that happens to them, however Risk is also something that we engage in. In either circumstance our underlying tendency is to want to mitigate our Risk – either to guard against things happening to us or take precautions to minimise the effect of Risk situations we intentionally go into.
We invite you to follow this series with us as we explore the many aspects of Risk and especially the financial implications and outcomes.
Read the first instalment , “Red Flags in the church for Fraud”
You can send any further questions to [email protected]
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