Drew Jones is the executive pastor of ChristChurch Presbyterian, a church that exists to gather and grow a community of disciples who live for the glory of Christ and the good of the city.
ChristChurch Presbyterian was founded in 1993 in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia.
Since its founding, ChristChurch has had the vision to be in the city, for the city, calling men and women to faith in Jesus and to seek the welfare of the city of Atlanta.
The Challenge
“We first reached out to BELAY almost a year ago,” Drew remembers. “We had an in-house accountant who was working with us, and she let us know that she was going to move on.
“We were exploring other options and were wanting to go to something that was going to be a little bit more cloud-based. Particularly BELAY’s partnership with Bill.com, being able to handle our payables was attractive.
“Finding just the right solution for where we were as a church, and we weren't afraid of doing something remote, BELAY checked a lot of the boxes that we were looking for.”
Our talented team was about to step right in and find a solution for Drew.
“I appreciate that BELAY took time just to listen to our needs,” Drew adds. “I never felt like they were trying to force a template upon us, but they were very frank on what they did well and what they might not be able to do.”
“One of the things I appreciated is, unlike most churches, we do have an external audit that we do every year. We are held to a GAAP standard, so generally accepted accounting principles, which is not something that most churches do.
“BELAY was upfront about whether they'd be able to find the right bookkeeper for us, but they went out of their way to find somebody who was not already in their network. So, they actually recruited somebody [who] had the right skill set and the right accounting knowledge to serve us well.
“Instead of kind of asking us to change our processes; they were adaptable to make it work for us, and that was great.”
And then there was BELAY Bookkeeper Lori Londagin.
The Solution
“Thankfully, BELAY’s infrastructure made [it] easy just to be able to do Zoom meetings and cloud-based [software] with QuickBooks and with Bill. And so really quickly we're all able to meet together [and] figure out what small changes need to be made.
“I think Lori and I started off meeting on a weekly basis, and then she has a separate meeting every week with our office administrator where they kind of talk nitty gritty. We've gotten to a great rhythm.
“I'm only really meeting regularly with Lori on a monthly basis [now] because, frankly, I don't have any concerns. Anything that she needs or we need is able to be handled at a lower level.
“As the executive pastor, I've got a lot of different plates [that are] responsible to keep spinning. It's nice knowing that the accounting is not a source of tension.“
Each day, Lori is handling standard bookkeeping responsibilities — ”using QuickBooks to its fullest capacity.”
“Our ministry leaders get email reports once a month automatically on where they're standing with their budget, so we can catch things early,” Drew says. “And so she makes sure that the right people are getting the right information, and that's beyond just the normal day in, day out debits and credits and making sure people get paid.”
The Result
“Lori is a great accountant,” Drew says. “In fact, our volunteer treasurer is a partner at a Big Four firm, and so he does big-time corporate accounting for a living, and as a CPA, in his professional opinion, he said, ‘Lori is excellent; she's an excellent accountant.’
“Again, I didn't need to worry about trust issues or competence issues. Lori is awesome at what she does, and she's happy to support our ministry. I think from a personal standpoint and also from a professional standpoint.”
“Lori [doesn’t] hesitate to ask questions, and that's key for making this relationship work because, without that proactive communication, you're not seeing one another on a daily basis.
“You're not bumping into them at the coffee pot. And so for Lori to know she can either call Lisa or call me directly when she has a question, it just made things work smoothly. Without that positive attitude and that proactive spirit, I'm not sure it would've worked as well, but she's done a great job.
“I have a professional background in accounting and business. I'm comfortable with that, but I'm not going to serve my congregation best if I'm focused on accounting. The accounting needs to support the ministry and BELAY allows me to do that.”
Meet the Specialist
LORI LONDAGIN
Virtual Bookkeeper