I never preach on giving or ask for money,” I once told a fellow pastor. “I just leave it up to the people.”
“Do you teach your people to study the Bible?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said.
“Do you teach them to pray?”
“Certainly.”
“If you taught your people to give in a biblical manner, would they receive more or less blessing from God?”
I sat in silence. I realized I was hurting my people, not helping them. In addition, our church was in severe financial stress.
When I went home, I committed myself to teach all of God’s Word, including giving. In the years since, I have seen God work in our church in amazing ways, and he has brought our people to new levels of maturity.
Here are 12 principles I’ve learned about growing givers.
A Full-Orbed Approach
Often church leaders work countless hours planning how to limit spending, but they focus little attention on how to increase giving. We succeed where we focus our time and energy.
1. Plan ahead. To be effective, we must prepare for our resource development strategy as carefully as we do for our music program.
The biggest reason capital stewardship campaigns increase offerings by more than 50 percent is not the new building, but the church’s thoughtful strategy. Churches can attain similar results every year without a building project. In my first church, when I implemented a thorough plan, offerings increased by more than 20 percent in one year.
A good plan includes:
- a specific strategy to communicate positive stewardship all year long;
- an annual stewardship emphasis;
- instruction on finances in new-members classes;
- continual communication of a compassionate vision;
- biblical teaching on giving;
- personal testimonies;
- an annual church-wide resource development emphasis;
- annual commitment cards;
- specific giving projects;
- practical help in how to fulfill commitments;
- keeping healthy relationships in the church.
2. Emphasize discipleship. God has supplied three resources necessary for fruitful ministry: (a) human resources, (b) divine resources such as prayer, and (c) physical resources such as buildings and money. How we develop each of these determines the success of our ministries.
Effective resource development is not a money grab. It has a spiritual foundation that makes discipleship its primary goal. The key to resource development is growth in people.
3. Bathe in prayer. Without prayer a financial program loses its spiritual foundation. We begin our stewardship focus with a call to prayer. We hold special prayer times and conduct a 24-hour prayer service. When we pray, God softens hearts, cleans up attitudes, changes lives, clarifies priorities, and opens checkbooks.
4. Identify specific goals. People don’t like to spend more unless they get more. Therefore we wishlist new projects that increased giving will buy. This builds ownership.
Early in the budget process, we ask all leaders to make a wish list of new ministries or purchases for their area. Our leadership team then determines approximate costs for each request and develops a priority wish list. Because different things motivate different people, our wish list includes both staffing, such as adding a part-time children’s director, and property, like new video equipment.
We do not allow people to designate their giving to these projects, though, because that would undermine giving to our general budget. Instead we say if our total offerings exceed the budget, we will undertake wish-list items. Then they know their increased giving will make a difference. Because people don’t want to give to something as uneventful as the general fund, we changed its name to the ministry fund, which shows that its purpose is people oriented.
5. Get commitments. If I don’t get a specific commitment from people, my Bible teaching has little effect. The first year we had a stewardship emphasis, I taught God’s financial principles for four straight weeks, and then I sat back and waited for the offerings to go up. The line on our offering graph remained horizontal. I couldn’t figure out what went wrong until I talked about it with another pastor. “How much increase did the people indicate on their commitment cards?” he asked.
“What commitment cards?” I replied.
“You have to help people clarify and cement their decision,” he said. “The only way I know to do that is by having them write down their giving commitment for the next year.”
The following year I used commitment cards, and giving went up 20 percent. A similar result has followed commitment Sunday every year in the churches I have pastored.
I have learned several things about receiving financial commitments:
Prepare people. Tell them weeks in advance about the coming commitment day. That helps prevent the feeling of pressure or manipulation.
Ask people to think in terms of their weekly giving rather than an annual amount. This helps them break it down into manageable amounts.
Ask them to specify their weekly increase. We encourage people to grow every year in every area of discipleship, including stewardship. A figure of $200 per week may sound generous, but if someone’s income has increased and they write zero on the increase line, he will realize his commitment is not a sacrifice of faith. Asking people to calculate the increase in their giving encourages them to consider something more sacrificial.
Assure people their commitments will be kept confidential. Promise that no one will contact or pressure them if they are unable to meet their commitment.
6. Involve more people. Seventy percent of offerings will come from those who serve in the church. That means one of the best ways to increase giving is to increase the number who serve. They are the ones who see the vision, develop a passion for greater ministry, and increase their giving to make it happen.
During our stewardship emphasis, we teach the stewardship of time and talents. We conclude by asking everyone to fill out a ministry service commitment for the coming year. We help those who aren’t already serving to find a ministry that fits their gifts and passion.
The Pastor’s Central Role
Several of the principles are particularly dependent on the pastor’s efforts.
7. Build trust. One pastor told me of his vision for quick growth in his new church. He had persuaded the hundred, mostly older, members to use the $60,000 saved over a five-year period to jump start their church. He planned for a media blitz, a direct-mail campaign, and a string of guest musicians.
A year later the money was gone and so was the pastor. The only thing he jump started was his departure.
Trust is earned by how we spend the church’s money. I must be frugal and spend wisely. People are more generous when they see they can trust me not to overspend and to get maximum ministry value out of the budget. They will also be more supportive of my ideas.
One church leader put it to me this way: “Pastors come and go, but we have to stay here and pay the bills, so if you love us, keep us out of debt.” Many church members don’t comprehend ministry philosophy, but they all understand numbers that have dollar signs in front of them.
Trust also comes from successful fund-raising. To be respected as a leader, I must assume primary responsibility for securing financial resources. When my leadership produced increased offerings, in the congregation’s eyes I had proven myself as a leader. After that people quickly rallied behind many of my ministry suggestions.
8. Build relationships. Most do not give to the greatest need but to the closest relationship. Many children live on my street, but I give generously to only two of them—my own. Churches usually choose to support missionaries not on the basis of their potential effectiveness but on their closeness to the congregation. Likewise the people who feel closest to the church—the leaders—give the most. Those who feel involved and appreciated give significantly. Those on the fringes or who feel estranged give virtually nothing. That’s why a church in turmoil will have falling offerings. You can measure the breadth of your church by your attendance and the depth of your church by your offerings.
Before we teach on stewardship and ask for giving commitments, we make sure our relationships are current. We recruit people to go out in pairs and call on five families during a two-week period. We instruct our visitation teams not to talk about money. Our visitation workers ask four questions:
What do you like about Sunrise Church?
How can our church help you and your family?
How can we pray for you?
Is there an area of ministry where you might be interested in serving?
9. Model generosity. Even when financial records are confidential, people somehow discern a pastor’s level of giving. One man told me when his pastor talked about giving, the money counters smirked in disbelief because they knew what he gave. Others noticed and soon got the picture.
The church will not rise above the pastor’s example. More importantly, the less-than-generous pastor cannot teach stewardship with passion or share personal examples of financial sacrifice. Because the pastor’s words ring hollow, people remain unmoved.
Themes to Re-emphasize
Certain elements you’ll want to revisit regularly.
10. Be positive. We follow our prayer emphasis and home visitation with four weeks of positive biblical teaching on stewardship. Only one sermon focuses primarily on financial giving.
Years ago I made the mistake of emphasizing God’s judgment on those who were not generous givers. I found negative messages produce far more irritation than maturation. Now I teach the benefits of giving. Giving is an appropriate response to God’s sacrificial love for us. It is an act of love toward people who come to Jesus through our church’s ministry. And it brings multiplied reward to us in heaven.
Most do not give to the greatest need but to the closest relationship.
I don’t promise financial wealth or immediate rewards from giving. If God rewarded every giver with abundant financial return, generous Christians would be the wealthiest people on earth and stingy people would be the poorest. I say God usually rewards our giving with better things than money—like love, joy, peace, good friends, and families. The timing of God’s reward is not always immediate. It might come next week, years from now, or maybe not until eternity.
11. Spell out sacrifice. Instead of calling our stewardship emphasis “faith promise giving” as I used to do, I now refer to it as “faith sacrifice investment.”
Faith communicates that all giving requires us to give up something now based on our faith in God’s love and our future reward from him.
I use sacrifice instead of promise because God desires loving sacrifice more than verbal promises. In addition, the only way most people will be able to fulfill their giving promises is by sacrificing a current expense. When people fail to fulfill the faith promise they made to God, it is usually because they tried to increase their giving without having increased income.
Many need practical guidance in how to fulfill their commitments. We ask people to review their current expenses by evaluating their check book, and then decide which expenses they will sacrifice so they can give that amount to God.
We also ask members to share their spiritual journeys toward sacrificial giving and how God has blessed them. The testimonies are the most powerful part of our stewardship emphasis.
Many tell what sacrifices they intend to make. One couple said, “We decided to drive our five-year-old car an extra year to increase our offering by the amount our monthly car payment would be.” A single mother said, “I prayed that if God would bring me one more child to my day care service, I would increase my giving by that amount. The next week another parent enrolled their daughter.”
When people identify specific sacrifices in this manner, it enables them to fulfill their commitment, but more importantly, it adds depth to their relationship with God.
One of the worst ways to promote giving is to say, “We have 100 families and a $100,000 project, so we want each family to give another $1,000.” The wealthy family might think, “I could give $10,000, but since they only need $1,000 from us, that’s what we’ll do.” They will not be challenged. On the other hand, the poor family will likely be overwhelmed. It’s far better to emphasize equal sacrifice rather than equal amounts.
12. Point out the reward. Most people would quit their jobs in a minute if they did not receive a paycheck. Jesus talked often about rewards. We use the term investment rather than giving because our offerings are an eternal investment in people who will be with God forever, and they are an investment that will bring us eternal reward far beyond our sacrifice.
I emphasize that every dollar we earn will be invested somewhere—food, entertainment, the stock market. What better investment is there than the returns that come from giving to God?
Untapped energy
Last year schedule problems pushed our stewardship emphasis back to the unlikely month of May. Although our faith sacrifice commitments turned out to be strong, I was apprehensive about the large budget increase we had planned and the coming summer slump. Amazingly, June offerings increased 50 percent, and we finished the fiscal year with offerings exceeding a budget that had seemed like a huge leap of faith. The increased offerings enabled us to enlarge staff, ministries, and outreach. That in turn resulted in attendance growth and decisions for Christ.
Church finances have as much to do with church success as does preaching. In many churches, finances are the untapped energy source of church health.
Jay Pankratz is pastor of Sunrise Church in Rialto, California.
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