Church Leadership
How I Overcame My Dread Of Talking About Money From The Pulpit
Why should our approach to meeting financial challenges be any different than our approach to meeting every other challenge?

Pastors fall into one of three groups when it comes to money.

  • Pastors who hate talking about money at all
  • Pastors who talk about money obsessively
  • Pastors who have discovered a biblical balance

Most pastors I’ve met, maybe two out of three, are in the first group. We want to avoid any appearance of greed because we’ve seen how that can undermine the cause of Christ. But we back off too far.

The second group of pastors may get a lot of press for their excesses, but they make up a very small subsection of pastors. Easily less than five percent of us talk about money obsessively. Maybe less than one percent.

The final group of pastors, maybe one-third of the total, have found a healthy balance. They know that we need to talk about money in the same biblical way that we talk about prayer, ethics, compassion, and every other part of Christian life.

We need to talk about money in the same biblical way that we talk about prayer, ethics, compassion, and every other part of Christian life.

I used to be in the first group of pastors. I hated talking about money. So I did it seldom, poorly and apologetically. Not exactly a recipe for a financially healthy church.

In the last few years I have been able to turn a corner on that. Since I no longer dread teaching on finances, I’m able to do it in a more healthy, balanced, biblical way. It’s become a far more joyful experience, both for me and for the congregation.

So, how did this change come about? How did I move from the majority who dread the “money talk” to the minority who treat it like any other aspect of our lives?

(This post is part of an ongoing series on Money And The Small Church.)

Assume The Best, Get The Best

In the last few years, our church has experienced what a whole lot of churches are going through lately. Money is getting tighter. In a recent five-year stretch we saw our church giving fall every year, until our annual income was barely two-thirds of what it had been, even though every other indicator of health is on the rise.

We have more people, more leaders, and more volunteers involved in more passionate worship, stronger ministry and deeper discipleship than ever. But we have a lot of young people, and they don’t make as much money as the older generation.

So I pulled the trigger and announced a stewardship series. As I was preparing for it through study and prayer, I paused to think about some of the other recent challenges our church had faced. Why I was able to address other challenges with a motivating sense of urgency, but talking about a financial need was filling me with dread?

Why I was able to address other challenges with a motivating sense of urgency, but talking about a financial need was filling me with dread?

Then it hit me. In each of the previous challenges, I assumed that the people in our church wanted the need to be met, wanted to help out, and wanted to know what the plan was to get us there. And they proved that my assumptions were true every time. They stepped up, pitched in and we got the job done – no matter how hard it was.

But with finances, I was assuming the opposite. That these same people who trusted me and worked together in other areas of life and faith were suddenly going to assign bad motivations to me when the challenge was monetary. Even though there was no evidence to believe that.

Generous People Want To Give

From that day on, whenever I talk about finances with our congregation I assume the best of them – just like I do with everything else.

I start with the premise that they want to meet the need. They want to be as generous with their finances as they are with their time, energy and skills.

They want to give. But they might not know how to give. After all, they came to church voluntarily, so they’ve already indicated a desire to participate.

Why should our approach to meeting financial challenges be any different than our approach to meeting every other challenge?

(Obviously, this applies to an otherwise healthy church. If you’re pastoring a broken, toxic or hurting church, those issues will need to be fixed first. Trust will need to be established. For more about this, check out my previous article, 4 Proven Strategies for the Care and Treatment of an Unhealthy Church.)

Most problems with giving are not about a lack of desire, and many times they’re not due to a lack of ability. A lack of monetary giving from otherwise generous people usually comes down to one of two factors: they don’t know there’s a need, or they don’t know how to give as much as they want to give.

So we need to help them in two ways: let them know about the need, and show them a doable way to participate in meeting the need.

We need to teach a well-rounded approach to biblical stewardship. We can’t just teach it to get money out of people. That’s not stewardship, it’s greed. People need to know what the Bible has to say about how to spend wisely, save well, plan for the future and more.

It’s About Generosity, Not Money

We need to assume that people who are mature, cooperative and helpful in meeting other areas of need will be mature, cooperative and helpful in meeting financial needs.

A healthy church is a generous church. We need to assume that people who are mature, cooperative and helpful in meeting other areas of need will be mature, cooperative and helpful in meeting financial needs.

They want the need to be met and they want to help out. But, just like every other area of their Christian lives, they’re coming to church to learn how to do it better.

We don’t need to dread teaching about generosity any more than we need to dread teaching about prayer. When we do it with an open heart, people will be blessed, the church will grow stronger, needs will be met, and God will be honored.

(This is one of a series of articles on “Money and the Small Church”. To read more, click here.)

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April 13, 2018 at 12:16 PM

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