Churches supporting missionaries: Your liabilities under SORP

Churches have real insight into the work of missionaries, and therefore have a crucial role to play in supporting them: spiritually, emotionally, relationally, and financially. This paper focuses on the financial support of missionaries and how this should be accounted for in churches and Christian charities that produce 'accruals' accounts under SORP.

Topics covered:

• What the charity SORP says about future commitments to grant funding or 'constructive obligations';
• The issue: what constitutes a constructive obligation under the charity SORP?
• Imposing conditions on future support;
• Possible approaches for churches to consider to avoid inadvertently creating a constructive obligation.