As the final part of this series, this is where the rubber meets the road. It’s time for your church to create a plan for using Bitcoin, and there are quite a few factors to consider as you go through the process — including your church’s age, size, demographics, financial situation, geography, and goals.
The factors to weigh
On age, how established is your church? Are you just getting started with limited funds, or have you been around for decades with a long track record of budget surpluses?
On size, how large is your church, and do you have growing or declining attendance trends?
On demographics, what type of people make up your congregation in terms of age, education, family size, and tech savviness?
On financial situation, does your church already have a lot of saved-up capital, or is it operating month to month?
On geography, is your church urban or rural, and are you in a developed or developing country that is pro-Bitcoin?
And finally, on goals, is your church focused on growing larger and becoming a resource for other missions, or is it more focused on planting churches and staying small?
The answers to these questions should make it clear how best to approach Bitcoin, but when in doubt — or when there’s a lack of conviction — it’s always better to go slower.
Rule number 3 of Michael Saylor’s 21 Rules of Bitcoin says: you’ll never be done learning about Bitcoin. Saylor also makes the point that you spend about 40,000 hours of your life trying to make money, so you might want to spend just 100 hours figuring out how to keep it. In other words, you have to put in the time. Unlike Neo in the Matrix, we can’t just download knowledge of kung fu into our brains. Bitcoin relies on proof of work, and so does your conviction about Bitcoin — you have to put in the effort.
Two example churches
So let’s talk through a few examples. If you attend a church plant that’s just getting started with a small number of young families in an expensive urban area, you may have little to no extra funds in any given month to put toward savings, much less Bitcoin. In this case, it might be best to simply create an account on an exchange where you can hold small donations, or set up a modest, monthly recurring buy order to slowly accumulate a fund for planting future churches.
On the other hand, if you go to a resource church with stable or growing attendance and large cash balances in building, missions, or benevolence funds, you might be able to justify large, up-front, one-time purchases — and even moving the Bitcoin to self-custody or collaborative custody.
Of course, it may also be more wise to avoid the one-time purchases and instead gradually move into Bitcoin over a set period of time, which could be months or even years. This could depend on several factors, including the market cycle and your liquidity needs. A benevolence fund may need more directly accessible operating capital, while a building fund can accumulate for years, or even decades, so each fund may require a different target Bitcoin percentage.
Over time, if the price of Bitcoin continues to go up, you may need to rebalance some of the Bitcoin back into cash — but be wary of doing this too much, as it can also severely impede growth. As your church develops more conviction, you’ll probably want to update your policy for each fund to allow for a higher percentage of Bitcoin, in order to avoid rebalancing too often and to capitalize on growth as much as possible.
Announcing the plan
You will need to be very careful and deliberate about how you announce the new Bitcoin plan, and expect to encounter resistance — or even some angry feedback — especially if you intend to convert existing balances into Bitcoin. Much of this feedback will probably come in the form of one of the questions we’ve covered in this series, and if our answers aren’t enough, we’re happy to provide more details for your specific situation.
If the negative feedback is coming from an existing financial planner or wealth advisor, you may have to consider finding a person or company that is more aligned with your new vision and goals.
The key components of your plan
The key components of your plan should include:
- How you intend to receive and hold the Bitcoin
- Which funds will include Bitcoin
- What the initial allocations will be, and how these may change over time
- How you envision using the Bitcoin for God’s kingdom
For example, if your goal is to bolster missions in developing countries that have difficulty receiving dollars, your plan might be to receive donations in dollars, convert those into Bitcoin at your exchange, and then send Bitcoin directly to specific missionaries as needed from the exchange account.
If your goal is to build a new building or update your current facilities, your plan may be to convert part of your existing building fund into Bitcoin up front at an exchange, then convert a portion of it on a monthly basis until a certain allocation percentage is reached. When the dollar value exceeds a certain amount, the plan may be to transfer the Bitcoin to collaborative custody, or cold storage, until a property is found during a market up-cycle.
In either case, your plan should include a level of detail that will put people at ease, but not so much that it overwhelms them — especially from a technical perspective. Details might include information about the exchange you are choosing, how the cold storage will work and who will have signing authority, how donations will be handled if they are received in fiat versus Bitcoin, and how rebalancing will be carried out if you intend to stick to specific targets.
You should set the expectation that you intend to review the plan on a regular basis. As the church grows or the goals change, the plan will be amended and improved, and any changes will be communicated as clearly as possible, with plenty of notice.
A recap of the series
So as this series comes to a close, let’s do a quick recap.
- The church is to be concerned with both the spiritual and the physical well-being of our brothers and sisters in Christ. This means we should take care to avoid things that prevent us from doing this well, and we should be diligent in looking for new ideas and technologies that will help us better serve the kingdom and bring even more glory to God in the process. As a technology, Bitcoin is great, but it’s obviously not our savior, and it certainly won’t solve all of your church’s problems. Having said that, if your church is struggling financially, or if you’re looking to grow and make a bigger impact for the kingdom, you owe it to yourself and your church to honestly and openly consider Bitcoin — even if you think you already know everything about it.
- Monetary debasement is too great a temptation for a centralized authority, and every government does it. Bitcoin solves this problem through the combination of a decentralized ledger, known as the blockchain, and a technical innovation called proof of work.
- Bitcoin can and does have value. It isn’t a scam, a ponzi scheme, a waste of energy, or unethical or evil.
- Bitcoin is technically sound. It doesn’t undermine the authority of the government, nor is it particularly at risk from the government.
- Bitcoin isn’t an investment, but rather a return to prudent saving — a practice that can help your church work toward having a lower time preference, both to prepare for a rainy day in the short run and to do greater things for God’s kingdom in the long run.
- Our hope is that when a church thrives on a Bitcoin standard for decades, it will unlock a generational mindset that harkens back to the church of centuries past. We think it’s good and right to strive to use monetary systems that promote more justice and peaceful cooperation in the world, and we believe using money that aligns with Christian ethics and morals is an important part of living faithfully as citizens of God’s kingdom.
- Like every other matter under heaven, Bitcoin has its own seasons — and sometimes those seasons can swing wildly between positive and negative extremes, especially when comparing it to other financial instruments.
- Bitcoin is the next Bitcoin, and there is no second best.
- Bitcoin custody can be confusing and even daunting for the uninitiated. In summary: use ETFs if you must, but otherwise use exchanges for holding relatively small balances and for receiving and spending, and use self-custody or collaborative custody for holding larger balances. Also, be aware that the Bitcoin custody landscape improves all the time, so it’s important to regularly review your setup and make tweaks or changes as better options become available, as your knowledge and conviction increase, as your leadership changes, or as your assets under management go up.
- There are quite a few factors to consider as you create a Bitcoin plan — and if you need help, feel free to reach out and we’ll be happy to advise. Again, Magnalia is a non-profit, so we don’t charge for these services. We’re a mission organization, and our goal is to help the church understand and use Bitcoin — this is our passion.
So that’s the recap. Now I’ll leave you with one more final word of encouragement, from 2 Corinthians 9:11–13, which says:
You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others.
2 Corinthians 9:11–13
Here, Paul shows us how financial generosity and blessings can be used as a means for God to magnify his glory and increase the number of people offering thanksgiving to him. Our hope and prayer is that God will use Bitcoin to bless your church and enable you to do great things for his kingdom. So get to it, glorify God, and may your heart overflow with joy and gratitude for his faithfulness.