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Your Church, Sep/Oct 1999
Let's Talk
Money
Advice from the pros on stewardship training
If your church
charged an admission fee to cover its expenses, how much would it cost each
person on a Sunday morning? A dollar? As much as $10? In 1994, the actual
amount needed to operate most Protestant churches was $16-$21 per person.
"Churches have costly operations that require money," says Loren Mead, author
of Financial Meltdown in the Mainline and founder of the Alban Institute,
a national think tank on church issues. "The way we have learned to do church
requires money for staff and buildings. We also spend a lot of money on
outreach."
Building maintenance, construction, insurance, legal fees, and salaries are
all increasing, especially as churches add private schools, daycare centers,
and recreational facilities. Mead says most churches aren't prepared
for the inevitable money crunch. "Serious issues are coming down the pike,
and many churches aren't paying attention to the dilemma," he says.
Some of the issues:
• Dependence on old money. Too many churches depend on income
from aging contributors. As donors die and their heirs take over the assets,
churches may get less up-front. "Many church planners pin their hopes on
the alleged $6 trillion transfer that will take place from parents to children
over the next 20 years. This is a pipe dream," says Robert Wuthnow, director
of the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University and author
of Crisis in the Churches: Spiritual Malaise, Fiscal Woe. "Parents
are living longer, health-care costs and expenses for assisted living are
skyrocketing, and most assets will simply go directly to children."
• Fewer donors. There may not be enough donors to replace aging
donors, partly because churches aren't doing a good job of teaching
future generations about money. "We need to be committed to indoctrinating
a whole generation of people who haven't been taught how to be stewards,"
says Bruce Anderson, president of Donné Corporation, a national church
development and consulting firm. "Gen-Xers are quick to pull out their credit
card but not so quick to give."
• Not enough money. According to Mead, approximately half of
churches today exist on a subsistence budget. That's hardly enough to
survive, much less to fund repairs, new construction, staff, and programs.
"Someone has to pay for all of that, yet only 3 percent of Christians give
10 percent or more," he says.
Giving Stats
The actual dollar amount donated to churches has increased slightly. But
while the actual giving per person is increasing faster than inflation, there
is a decline in the number of people who give. Furthermore, the church's
market share of that discretionary income is shrinking. According to Sylvia
and John Ronsvalle, authors of Behind the Stained Glass Windows and
founders of Empty Tomb, a Christian research and services organization, giving
as a percentage of total household income has decreased from 3.12 percent
to 2.58 percent.
To the local church, fewer donations could mean future cutbacks in people,
programs, and facilities. Will the youth pastor or secretary have to go?
How about the music program or daycare center? What about the new classroom
addition?
Turn It Around
Giving is a spiritual issue, says Gary Arnold, owner of Church Fundraising
Services in Longmont, Colorado. "The business of the church is spiritual
growth," he says. "If people are giving less of what they have to give, even
if it is more in terms of dollars, it shows that there is no spiritual growth."
To cultivate a generous spirit, churches must disciple people in stewardship,
fundraising experts say. Bruce Anderson of Donné Corporation, for
example, helps churches with fundraising by teaching them first how to
communicate their vision, then how to teach stewardship through sermons,
Bible studies, Sunday school classes, newsletters, and seminars.
One of the biggest
mistakes
church leaders make is assuming that
people are negative about giving.
Some specific things that churches can do to increase donations:
1. Talk about money. Research shows that stewardship education can
increase giving regardless of a church's denomination. "The Bible is
the roadmap for life. We use it to teach us how to have better marriages
and how to raise our kids," Anderson says. "Well, money touches everything
we do, so we should also teach what the Bible says about that."
Kluth recommends that churches regularly communicate their financial condition
to members. "Tell people quarterly what is happening. Include financial
information in the statements, such as missions giving, and show the relationship
between giving and ministry," he says. "Make it clear that ministry happens
when people give."
2. Teach money management. "Stewardship isn't just about giving;
it's about getting out of debt, accumulating wealth, using money, and
finding joy in one's financial condition," says Anderson. Such lessons
should be an integral part of a church's education program. "A good
curriculum can have a huge impact," says Kluth. He recommends that churches
look at Crown Ministries or Christian Financial Concepts for biblically based
studies.
3. Preach about money. According to Kluth, the Bible contains 30 verses
on baptism, 225 on prayer, 300 on faith, and 700 on love, but at least 2,350
on money, finances, and material possessions. If preachers were covering
the whole counsel of God, they'd be addressing such specifics as reducing
debt, paying bills on time, managing credit cards, living within one's
means, and giving to the church.
4. Bring in the pros. Church leaders who do not feel comfortable with
counseling people in the specifics of money management might bring in
professionals who can answer questions, such as "How can I tithe from my
life insurance money?" or "How can I give more when I'm saddled with
a car loan with 31 percent interest?"
Anderson founded Family Life Resources to deal with such questions. For example,
his response to the car-loan question might be: "Interest rates are dropping.
Here's how to pay your debt off in three years to free you up to give
more to the church."
5. Motivate by love. One of the biggest mistakes church leaders make
is assuming that people are negative about giving, says Doug Brendel, author
of The Seven Deadly Diseases of Ministry Marketing: Confessions of a Christian
Fundraiser. Brendel advises pastors to view donors as people who want
to learn how to give. Avoid words such as guilt or obligation, he says, and
never use the fair-share idea of dividing the budget evenly among all the
households in the church. "Negative motivations do not work!" says Dean Hoge,
author of Plain Talk About Money and Churches.
Love is the best motivator, Hoge says. People fall in love with their church
gradually. "When they do, they believe in what is going on, feel that it's
right, and are convinced that God is present." Hoge encourages pastors to
build on that love by encouraging people to give. Doing so will almost certainly
bring forth additional gifts, he says.
Better Ways to Give
Once church leaders create an atmosphere of generosity, they should make
it easy for people to give, Kluth says. For example, they might suggest that
donations be electronically deducted from a parishioner's bank account
at a defined time and transferred to the church's account. "Electronic
Funds Transfer is not for everybody," says Kluth, "but approximately 10-15
percent of your members already handle all of their money that way, so why
force them to write a check for you when they don't do it for anything
else in their life?"
Since more giving options encourage more donations, why not have lists of
projects available so donors can fund what's meaningful to them? For
example, when it's time to buy a new piano, see who helped to pay for
the choir robes and target them for donations.
Finally, don't forget to thank donors. A call from the music minister,
a card from the building committee, or a plaque on the stained-glass window
can do wonders for ongoing support.
Jennifer Schuchmann is a management consultant from Marietta,
Georgia.
Case Study: How One Church Upped
Donations
Like most churches, Harvest Community Church in Oak Creek, Wisconsin preached
on money once or twice a year. Recently, church leaders stepped up the pace.
They started with a five-week sermon series on stewardship issues called
"God's Secrets for Financial Freedom—Breaking Free from the Bond of
Money and Materialism."
They also started a Crown Ministries Bible study with a small group of handpicked
members. "Since you were selected to be in it, it was very desirable to be
a part of the group," said Mary Kraft, church treasurer. The study was so
successful that 10 more groups followed. Currently about 100 people, or 1/6th
of the people who attend Harvest Community, have taken the financial seminar.
The church is also doing a better job of informing members about its financial
condition. It sends out quarterly statements as well as a newsletter on faith
and finances. One newsletter focused on 10 financial principles of the church,
answering questions such as: Where does the church get its money? Where do
we spend it? And where do we give it?
Harvest Church provides a variety of ways to give. People can designate which
projects they would like to support. The church also offers people a money-back
guarantee. If someone gives to the church for 90 days, then decides they
want their money back, they get a full refund. "This is not a marketing gimmick,"
Kraft says. "It is a way to help people step over the line from occasional
to regular giving." The church has only returned money two or three times
in eight years of doing this.
Between January and April, tithes and offerings went up 41 percent.
Resource List:
• Behind the Stained Glass Windows ($25), Baker Books:
800-877-2665
• Christian Financial Concepts, 800-722-1976
• Crisis in the Churches ($30), Oxford University Press:
800-451-7556
• Crown Ministries: 407-331-6000 or
www.crown.org
• Donnè Corporation: 888-465-5502
• Empty Tomb:
www.emptytomb.org
• Family Life Resources: 800-553-8621
• 54 Best Church Practices to Advance Financial Teaching and
Generosity ($4.50), Christian Stewardship Association: 414-425-9444
• Financial Meltdown in the Mainline ($14), Alban Institute:
800-486-1318
• Money Matters: Personal Giving in American Churches ($30),
Westminster John Knox Press: 800-227-2872
• Philanthro Corp: 800-876-7958
• Plain Talk About Money and Churches ($16), Alban Institute:
800-486-1318
• Seven Deadly Diseases of Ministry Marketing ($20), International
Christian Publishing:
www.servantheart.com |
Copyright © 1999 by the author or Christianity Today International/Your
Church Magazine. Click here
for reprint information on Your Church.
September/October 1999, Vol. 45, No. 5, Page 68
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