Jr. A fter completing the long process of preparing an annual church budget, you may wonder how your congregation compares to others. Here's one way. This report, based on that study, is the first of a series on churches and money. Churches, large and small, dedicate about the same percentage of their budgets to paying off, maintaining, and protecting their property. On average, churches allocate 8 percent of their budget to debt retirement.
Large churches are twice as likely to carry building debt than smaller churches.
They also designate twice as much of their budget to debt retirement when they do borrow. Only a third of smaller churches carry a building loan. When they do borrow, debt repayment totals 5 percent of their budget. Either way, cause and effect are probably related. Property and liability insurance eats up 2 percent of the normal budget.