Fernando, tell me a bit about his work at Igreja do Recreio.
We started out very small, with 20-30 members. Thank God over the course of those 29 years we managed to have approximately 6 thousand members and we recently made the transition to the cell-group model. We have 12 pastors and a social action area.
I have been with the church for 23 years, of which 16 years I worked on the church's finance committee, in the finance ministry, which is a ministry that is always supporting the pastor in all his decisions. In the last 4 years my role has been as a financial administrative manager.
The church is also a company, after all, it has a CNPJ. How do you work in this area?
The legislation says that the church is a not-for-profit company, but it's a business. Then it is subject at any time to inspections and intervention by the competent bodies.
We have very strict criteria, a very secure administration, and all of this creates transparency for every membership. And that transparency creates security so that everyone can deliver their offerings and tithes.
Since the church is an institution that lives specifically on tithes and offerings, the more rigorous or safer or more transparent this process is, it creates certainty in all the members who make up the membership records, a certainty that they are contributing to a serious work, that the resources are being directed correctly. Our role in management is to manage these resources, always seeking the best for the kingdom.
Do you have a cadre of tithing workers in the church?
We've never worked that way. We understand that giving tithes is personal and everyone will be aware of themselves. What we do is the financial control of the church. We always have the right information for when people need it.
We have a system that accounts for all tithes and offerings and specifies the person's name. That is, a church financial report, it is a report that we can generate if the brother wants to prove it in any way. But it's a specific focus.
We don't bother to say who does it or who made it or who didn't offer it.
Regarding investment and assets. Can the church legally work with investments and if so, how is this done?
We started by accounting for resources, inflows, and ended with accounting for outflows, that is, a church financial budget. Obviously, this financial control of the church has a cashier and he must be remunerated.
That cashier is in a bank, so we invest our money. We apply to remunerate the money while I am preparing my payments within the agreed deadlines.
We have no intention or interest in making a monstrous cashier to say that we have money saved. The cell-based church is a church in motion, so the money that comes in will actually be used in some activity, be it social, or in improving the quality of sound, light, whatever.
We have monthly events, in the best possible ways, all in order to show the member that the Igreja do Recreio has affection and attention with him in this process and has been a blessing.
So, the investment there is not for the purpose of making money, the application is to remunerate your standing capital.
Do you believe that this zealous stance in the financial area, in the administrative area, generates any perceptible impact?
I have no doubt, I guarantee that this makes the person feel useful and safe in the process and makes their offer with praise, with pleasure.
In a transparent church, a person feels safe to contribute knowing that their resource will be used in the best possible way and in the most correct way.
Does the church pay taxes? What is the difference between taxes paid by a church and a traditional company?
The church is committed to social issues. When you have a payroll, all the taxes associated with it, the church pays taxes, whether it's the INSS, income tax, or FGTS. The church is not exempt from these taxes, this is a commitment to the employee.
The church has tax immunity from some taxes, for example, when you have your church duly regulated you may be exempt from the property tax, you may be exempt from property taxes, there is a tax on the electricity bill and on the water bill.
Igreja do Recreio uses immunity as much as possible. But in the general aspect of the company you have to pay your taxes.
Is the pastor an employee of the church?
Pastor is not a recognized profession, he is self-employed. Then some churches, some denominations, because they did not treat this issue seriously, started to have some questions, even about legal action on the account of a pastor going to court seeking benefits, wanting proof because of the time he worked in the church.
So, we started to worry about that and the way we found it was to create the pastor's bond with the church through the legal entity. Today our pastors are all hired in this way.
And can't this employment relationship be interpreted as an employment relationship?
No, not at first. The hiring of this company (pastor as a legal entity) that we do has been studied and this is authorized by the Internal Revenue Service and this is authorized by the city hall.
We were able to find a CNAE that says they can open a company for the pastor as a religious education, so in the religious teaching bias, you open up every possibility of him being the preacher, doing the preaching like that...
This provides security for the pastor because he has his legal entity and everywhere. If he is going to preach, if he goes to a conference and if he wants to issue the invoice, he will issue the note with legal support. This CNAE, this revenue is considered a tax rescission in income tax.
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