Scripture notes the Ox Principle specifically and directly. It comes from both New Testament and Hebrew Scriptures. How we treat people in relationship to stewarding money is an important part of excellent Christian school leadership resulting in sustainably excellent education.
1 Timothy 6:17
“Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.”
Numbers 18:21 (NIV)
“I give to the Levites all the tithes in Israel as their inheritance in return for the work they do while serving at the tent of meeting.”
1 Timothy 5:8
“Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”
Proverbs 22:7
“The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.”
Exodus 41:33-36
“And now let Pharaoh look for a discerning and wise man and put him in charge of the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh appoint commissioners over the land to take a fifth of the harvest of Egypt during the seven years of abundance. They should collect all the food of these good years that are coming and store up the grain under the authority of Pharaoh, to be kept in the cities for food. This food should be held in reserve for the country, to be used during the seven years of famine that will come upon Egypt, so that the country may not be ruined by the famine.”
The Christian school thinks about money a lot. It enjoys the thought that God provides richly for His people. It wants to have the best resources it can to serve its children. It is neither embarrassed nor ashamed to talk about God’s gift of money. The school has an obligation to:
Let’s start with the last item first: maintain an operations reserve. The Minnesota Council of Non-Profits discovered that “nonprofits with minimal or no reserves were more likely to have cut budgets, eliminated staff positions, reduced wages and benefits. They were also less likely to have been able to increase services to respond to growing demand.” That is, if your school has no cash reserves, it is in a constantly unstable situation, whether it needs to deal with economic hard times in a healthy way or to respond to economic good times by being able to take advantage of opportunities. Each Christian school needs a cash operations reserve equivalent to three months of operating expenses.
And there is no justification in the Christian school for taking the attitude that the Lord will provide. Certainly, there are times when the widow’s jar of oil stays miraculously full. And we rejoice in the goodness of our God. At the same time, it is clear that trust can often (often!) be a misnomer for poor management, with the result that our schools go out of business because they lacked the cardinal virtue of prudence. Aristotle defined prudence as recta ratio agibilium, “right reason applied to practice.” And St. Thomas Aquinas considered it the first of the virtues. Our schools have never gone out of business because they charged too much. Reserves are one of the ways in which the Christian school exercises prudence and foresight in order to ensure that the school will still be here for the next generation. Whether used or not in “my” time of service, they will provide Joseph’s sustenance in the time of famine.
With that in mind, we can turn to the issue of the school’s budget. The Ox Principle and the Kingdom Principle overlap here. The budget’s first task is a Kingdom task: to support excellence in mission delivery. The school’s end is the budget’s mission: extending God’s Kingdom here on earth as in heaven. The Board and Principal / Head of School have first a Kingdom obligation – budget is not merely about being balanced. It is first about ensuring that the art teacher can deliver her program with excellence. And the science teacher, hers. And the athletic director, hers. Etcetera.
The Board’s second task is to ensure that the budget is a moral document. Let there be no error here. Budget for many Christian schools means eking out a painful existence on the backs of poorly paid workers. We don’t have to go to the prosperity preachers to know that this is bad economics of body, mind, and spirit. There is no Christian character in being paid below the poverty level or having no retirement benefits to assist a dignified old age. The budget is a moral document before it is a balanced document.
The Board’s third task is arithmetic. The budget must balance. But note that a balanced budget does not presuppose Kingdom / mission excellence. A balanced budget can ‘support’ mission mediocrity and be highly immoral in how it treats its people. Balance is third. After Kingdom. After moral. And then balance.
We are called to excellence, and we witness that to our own people / community as well as to those who are watching us from the outside. “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). Witnessing to excellence means exemplifying excellence in our own financial practices.
There are then very clear steps to take in thinking about the budget:
A note about philanthropy: CSM believes that the school’s operational expenses must be paid for through tuition and fees. Philanthropy is the gift of the heart that invests in the future of the school and to the direct benefit of the children. God has made us generous people. It is part of the way in which we are created. The school should joyfully ask its supporters for their gifts, given because of God’s generosity to us (cf. the CSM Mary Principle).
We are committed to being great stewards of the riches that God gives to us. We need to think of God as generous and thus that He will meet our needs. We have a responsibility to express those needs in such a way that we exemplify excellence in our mission delivery, professionally pay and provide benefits to our people, maintain prudence in our reserves and debt management, and meet the Kingdom/moral/arithmetic needs of the budget. That is the Ox Principle.
