In my first post, I asked this question.
Who should take the responsible role in this situation, the church or the member?
I have always taken the position that the FIRST responsibility belongs to the church. However since Christianity first, and foremost, is an individual call to purity the churches usually focus on the person. To me this is both true, and the wrong place to start. People are going to be sinful. Organizations should have certain aspects about them that are above moral dilemmas. While I don't think you could remove all sin and struggles that occur with church money, I believe you could remove some of the common ones.
Open the books. Open them wide (in this day and age there is no reason why something like this couldn't end up on the web). Not just a pie chart here, I'm talking detailed monthly statements. We spent $10 on toilet paper last month. We pay pastor Bill $2000 a week. The common argument here is that it will create many issues where people nit pick small items here and there. Can you really ever agree on a fair salary for a minister? To me, in time the church would rise above this. Doing it initially would be a pain because its new. But over time, you'd see the issues around it disappear, but the benefits to it last. Plus, its clear that the current system isn't working.
Lets say that brother Joe sees that we are spending $5000 a month on heating. Brother Joe knows a thing or two about insulation and small tips to save 25% off of a bill. He comes to the church with a solution, it is implemented and now you have $1000 more per month. This process could be repeated over and over again, the amount of savings could be enormous. Another benefit would be that the financial scandals that engross many churches would become largely impossible. No longer could a rouge leader skim thousands of dollars off the top. People would know exactly where there money is going. I could go on about the benefits of this.
By doing this simple step you put the church above reproach. The leaders would be so confident in their spending habits that anybody can see them. Will there be disagreements? Yes. But that is life, there are disagreements now with closed books. When you are above reproach you can now call the members to be above reproach themselves.
I think its a bit unfair to ask people to give thousands of dollars a year to an organization that isn't giving that person much power to see that they are being a good steward with their money.