By Bryce Collman

When Fellowship of the Parks Church in Keller, TX, provided online giving to their members “we improved our overall annual giving by 104 percent during a time when our congregation only grew by 65 percent. In 2007 we began accepting ACH transactions and added credit and debit cards in 2010. Electronic giving has increased a total of 575 percent since we first started our program,” reports Doug Curlee, executive pastor.

Online giving has also stabilized the church’s weekly giving trends when experiencing reduced attendance during holiday weekends “This year July 4 fell on a Sunday which impacted our weekly attendance. We would have experienced a greater decrease in our tithes had our members not established recurrent electronic giving,” says Doug Walker, senior pastor.

Be responsible
While Fellowship of the Parks accepts all forms of online giving they ask their members to use their credit cards responsibly to eliminate the risk of debt accumulation. This is true for many who use cautionary language on their websites to encourage responsible giving. Other churches prefer to eliminate that risk altogether. In doing so are they also eliminating the benefits associated with online giving? A statement from Gateway Church in Southlake, TX, says: “Because Gateway Church firmly believes that people should not go into debt in order to give to the Kingdom, we do not accept credit card donations.”

When a church decides not to accept credit cards for online giving they are echoing the trend currently experienced in American households. According to NACHA (last April) and Nilson Reports (last February), there were 75.16 billion non-cash transactions placed in the U.S. during 2009. The breakdown of this total shows 24.96 percent ACH, 26.876 percent credit card and an overwhelming 48.164 percent debit and pre-paid card transactions.

This trend is further illustrated when looking at the online giving patterns at Cross Timbers Community Church in Argyle, TX, which receives “28.4 percent of our overall giving electronically and continue to increase this percentage annually,” says Todd Helgesen, stewardship pastor. While all forms of giving are  accepted “12.7 percent of funds are ACH, 33 percent credit cards and 54.3 percent debit cards,” Helgesen says.

Most merchant services companies offer ACH (electronic check) services which allow members to establish one-time or recurrent transactions online. Ardent Giving Solutions recently introduced an additional debt-free option: “Debit Card Only Giving” for online transactions. “Debit Card Only Giving” blocks credit card transactions when giving online, via kiosk and wireless solutions. When a member attempts to give using their credit card they will receive an error 
message.

Error messages can be personalized by the church and displayed in donor management software. Giving reports can be automatically downloaded into compatible software solutions or manually imported into others. Ardent Giving Solutions developed “Debit Card Only Giving” to help churches who embrace a debt-free philosophy but who want to provide their members the opportunity to give using a debit card without having to accept credit cards as well.

By choosing to accept ACH or debit cards only, a church not only establishes a debt-free culture but experiences the added benefit of lowering transactional costs.

ACH transactions costs vary from a transaction fee only to transaction fee plus a percentage. When researching rates, the highest transactional cost quoted per $100 tithe was $1.50.

Lower transaction rates
Debit card transaction rates are lower than credit card rates. Visa and MasterCard charge “interchange rates” based on transaction type and card type. Visa and MasterCard services are provided to churches through merchant service companies who charge an additional “mark-up” to the interchange rate. While wholesale cost is not the final expense due to the “mark-up,” it serves to provide a baseline to uncover your potential partner’s profit margin on each transaction. Since pricing on debit card processing has a lower interchange rate, a church should expect to experience lower overall cost when accepting debit cards only.

Every company has different fee structures for all forms of processing. It is best to compare companies by factoring both transactional costs with any other fees associated to understand total overall expense. It is also important to note that though your software company may partner with a specific merchant services company, you may find cheaper costs elsewhere while still enjoying the benefits of automated reporting.

When establishing an online giving program, the goal is to choose services that would be most used by your members and match your church values at the lowest cost and provide tools that will help your ministry thrive.

Bryce Collman is founder and CEO of Ardent Giving Solutions, Cincinnati, OH.  www.ardentgivingsolutions.com

Building costs decline as much as 23 percent over three years ago, while major gifts are ‘back in play.’

Is this the time for a church to be building? Jobs are being lost and families are rethinking their pledges to their church’s budget. Even as many are having difficulty with their own home mortgage much less be financing their church’s new home, one person in the building trades says the present time is “an incredible opportunity for the faith-based building sector.”

David Hatton of Churchworx sees it from the point of view of a dedicated churchman and one who’s worked many years in the building trades, focusing on church construction.

“Building a church project in these ‘uncertain’ economic times is both a very smart use of God’s money,” he says, but — and here’s the clinker  — “requires an extraordinary vision, faith and leadership from the church’s pastor, staff and members.”

Value for the dollar

Hatton, who is based in Texas, says that projects in Dallas and Houston are experiencing a “total project delivered” cost decline of 19 to 23 percent today against 2007. “That translates into the fact that for every dollar spent, a church will realize $1.30 worth of total project in-place value,” he says.

That’s the dollar number that First Baptist Church of Dallas is using as they begin a capital campaign this spring and look to breaking ground in July on a $130 million project that is the largest, by far, church project in this country if not the world.

The $6 million overall project cost for Crossroads United Methodist Church in Oakdale, PA, near Pittsburgh, is small by comparison, but no less challenging for the congregation in these times. Senior Pastor Steve Cordell says that “obviously, the economic climate was on everyone’s mind. We knew that people’s assets had been deeply impacted by the falling stock market and uncertainty over jobs.”

The church of 1,100 has five live services and two video venues and the facility has reached capacity. But they have a vision of having 10 campuses “and the congregational excitement about our opportunities in Mozambique was growing,” Cordell says.

He admits that the $6 million cost was “rather daunting for a church with a $1.25 million general budget.” Working with Generis campaign experts, they took their project in two phases, and the first phase was a huge success. “We surpassed our goal of $750,000 over one year by receiving pledges of $1.2 million, with 90 percent of the church participating,” Cordell says.

Several things made the difference for this church’s success, says Cordell: obvious facility need, communication of the need over a year, strong buy-in to the overall vision, a momentum and unity in the congregation — and God’s grace.

Brad Leeper of Generis says that the phasing in of plans makes sense for some churches. “Because most churches will be unable to secure lending for a larger project in the short-term, some of these churches are using a smaller giving season in a campaign to tackle a portion of the project to prepare for the larger project hopefully in the next year.”

Taking first step

Crossroads, for example, decided on the two-stage Mission Expansion Project that allowed them to make progress toward their goal without incurring any debt — in fact, reducing the debt. They bought the property, started a new campus, covered soft cost preparatory work, furthered their work in Mozambique, and did some debt retirement.

Not moving ahead on the project, and not phasing in the work, has another impact, says Brad Leeper. “The other option is to remain silent before the church and that silence will get a church no further down the road with their mission.”

Lifepoint Church in Fredericksburg, VA is just five years old with 650 people, including children, attending in school facilities, where the school district is raising their rental rates a flat 10 percent for every 12 months they occupy the school, meaning that before long the church has to move.

Executive Pastor Jeremy Pickwell says “we knew what God wanted to do in the Fredericksburg area, and we simply used deductive reasoning to reach a timeline.” But, he notes, “The timeline just happened to fall in the middle of one of the worst recessions on record.”

Still, Pickwell says they saw the “opportunity cost.” Interest rates were historically low, “and with input from Cogun and Bank of the West, we quickly realized that commercial real estate loans are beginning to reset and vacant ‘big box’ buildings are becoming more prevalent and affordable.”

No doubt on timing

In the end, he says, when the decision was made there was zero doubt about the timing. “Our goal was $1.5 million,” he says. “God’s economy allowed us to see commitments of more than $2.4 million. Obey what God says, he is in control.” Says Generis’ Brad Leeper, “Rather than purchasing land, paying it off, then building — a five-year course perhaps — they are purchasing empty retail space at a discounted rate and then raising funds for the renovation. They can secure greater square footage and get into the building much sooner and without the expense of the infrastructure that raw land requires.”

While Pickwell says that God is doing something special, he affirms that “there is a difference between faith and foolishness.” The church is looking now for a new space. “We needed to be in a financial position to be a real candidate to purchase a building” and have begun their Accelerate campaign, he says.

When it comes to running capital campaigns, Leeper believes that “major gifts are back in play.”

“I have seen six gifts greater than $1,000,000 and several greater than $250,000. High capacity donors, while having a very high bar for the project credibility, have an increased interest in standing in the gap in this season.

“Not all people are losing money in the recession. Some are making good money and have surplus to share. The standards for giving are more demanding and the church leadership must be very well prepared to have a series of conversations with a higher capacity donor.

“Two years ago, a pastor could have one conversation about a gift and be done. One and done. Now plan on multiple conversations with a much more detailed plan for their gift,” Leeper says, “The higher capacity donor conversations are much more complex,” he says.

On the financing side too, banks are more careful than ever, with new formulas to determine loan options. “Increased cash reserves, lower debt ratios, smaller percentages of expenses in the human resources category, and other factors are much more demanding,” Leeper says.

“I often have a church brag that they are debt free, and while debt free is good, banks look more carefully at excess cash flow. Does a church have the cash flow margin to provide debt service? This factor is much more in play than ever before,” he says.

Marianne Berlan of Bank of the West says it a little differently. Her own institution has not changed its lending criteria, nor curtailed its lending activity, she says. “We continue to evaluate loan requesters based on a church’s historical cash flow, including recently implemented or ongoing capital stewardship campaigns,” she says. BOTW has “never found it appropriate for a church to rely on growth to meet their debt service requirements.”

She notes that the institution has nearly $1.2 billion in loans outstanding and has no delinquencies.

So a good time to build? While some churches may choose to postpone building plans, Stephen McSwain, senior vice president at Cargill Associates, says, “A church that can postpone its building plans is probably not the church that should be building when the economy is in better shape. What should drive any building plan is, first, the call of God, and second, the need itself.

“A church that follows those two criteria will not only be able to build but will be able to manage any residual debt and, ultimately, pay for the new facility.”

The right question McSwain says is not should a church build, but “What is God calling us to do and is there any way we can do what God is calling us to do and avoid building?”

Ronald E. Keener

By David Holland

Nestled in South Florida’s sun-drenched Fort Lauderdale area, Church by the Glades had two problems as it headed into the year 2008. One of the challenges was the kind of issue most pastors would love to face. The other problem was much less desirable.

The happy challenge facing Pastor David Hughes and his congregation was space-related. The young church was growing wildly and seemingly couldn’t add services fast enough to accommodate all the new families and individuals that were choosing to call the church “home.”

Significantly, this boom wasn’t a result of “transfer-growth” in which mature Christian families move to a more appealing church. The vision of the church was to reach unreached and unchurched people, and that was precisely the type of individual that was fueling this church’s membership explosion.

Best way to grow

By the spring of 2008, the church was holding five main services in its 900-seat ministry facility on the weekend and wrestling with a decision about the best way to accommodate the growth and touch more lives. The traditional approach was to simply build a bigger auditorium and expand the educational space for children and youth accordingly. An alternative some media-savvy churches have pursued in recent years is to establish satellite campuses in locations away from the main church and push overflow growth toward those sites.

Ultimately, after much prayer and deliberation, the leadership of Church by the Glades decided to do some of both. They settled on a hybrid approach that called for building a new 2,000-seat worship center and expanding their preschool area, while also funding the establishment of the first of the church’s many anticipated satellite campuses.

Such bold plans tend to come with hefty price tags. In this case, once the architects, planners and builders had their say, the projected need was $16 million. That’s where the other challenge emerges.

By early 2008, the booming South Florida housing market had gone bust. A staggering number of homeowners suddenly found themselves “underwater” where their mortgages were concerned as a massive wave of foreclosures swept over the area. Furthermore, by April, Florida was facing its highest levels of unemployment since 1976. This ethnically diverse church found itself in the heart of one of the hardest hit areas in the entire nation — right along with Detroit, Las Vegas and sections of California.

Daily headlines shouted of economic gloom and consistently predicted additional financial hardships on the horizon. Each evening’s newscast seemed little more than a long litany of dark stories about mortgage defaults, business closings and layoffs.

The leadership of Church by the Glades confronted an obvious question: “Did it make any sense to push forward with a capital campaign in the midst of such widespread economic turmoil and pervasive uneasiness?”

Abundant fruit

Again, after much prayerful deliberation, the consensus answer was “yes.” The need was too great; the fruit being produced among the people of the congregation too abundant, the God they served too powerful to be deterred by fear. The church engaged fundraising consultant The Gage Group for its capital campaign.

Still, for the leaders of Church by the Glades and the team they had assembled, the question became, “In the middle of this crazy environment of fear and scarcity, how can we help move people into a spirit of generosity and trust?”

The church initiated what some call a “reverse offering.” As one local newspaper headline described it after the fact, “Local Church ‘Passes the Plate’ to Give Away the Offering.”

In the weekend services of May 10-11, the church passed out envelopes containing cash to each individual in attendance. Those envelopes contained varying amounts ranging from $5 up to $1,000. The rules of the exercise were that each person was on their honor not to spend the money on themselves. Nor were they allowed to simply give the money back to the church. They were to pray for guidance and use it to meet a need in the life of another person.

The resulting effect on the congregation was nothing short of phenomenal. The church created a special Web site (www.MyGoBigStory.com) in which members could post their thoughts and experiences about the exercise.

When the capital campaign officially launched in the autumn of that year, even as the national recession was intensifying, the response from the congregation was remarkable.

The church has received more than $11 million in pledges from the church body. And an initial offering raised more than a half million in cash.

As a result, the church is moving quickly and confidently forward with its plans for expansion. And not a moment too soon. Church by the Glades recently added a seventh service to its weekend schedule!

David Holland is a freelance writer in Dallas, TX. [www.DavidAHolland.com] [www.churchbytheglades.com]

When Crossroads Christian Church in Corona, CA, accumulated $500,000 in debt — in addition to falling behind on their mortgage payments — financial ruin and foreclosure seemed imminent.

“Our loan was delinquent and the pastor at the time was avoiding communication with our credit union,” says current Senior Pastor Chuck Booher. “We were weeks away from forcing Evangelical Christian Credit Union to take action.”

The church hit a new low when funds designated for an orphanage in India were instead used to bring the checking account back into the black. They were behind in every payment and utility companies were threatening to shut off water and electricity.

Financial management lacking

According to Booher, Crossroads found themselves in this position largely because of a lack of good financial management. “There wasn’t a budget,” says Booher, “The church just spent money — sometimes up to $50,000 more a week than what was brought in.” And then tithes dipped.

Worst of all, the financial situation was kept a secret from both the church body and the elders. Booher is convinced that, if the pastor had come clean, the church would have rallied around him and they wouldn’t have gotten in so deep. “At any point,” he says, “honesty and transparency would have pulled the church out of it.”

In spite of the financial downward spiral, Crossroads came back from the brink of disaster and is now a beacon in its multicultural community. Recovery began when Booher — pastoring another church at the time — was asked to step in as pastor at Crossroads. He declined initially, then asked for financials to pray over when summoned again.

When Booher learned that there weren’t any financials available, he began to understand the seriousness of the situation. He accepted the position, and his first act as pastor was to disclose the truth of the financial crisis to his congregation.

Then he worked relentlessly to get the church out of debt. “We took out a third mortgage on our mortgage to pay off debts and to guarantee our mortgage payments for the immediate future,” says Booher. “Then we rallied the church. The amazing thing is, in 40 days $550,000 of past due debt was paid off.” It was even more amazing when one considers that the average age of the church community is only 35.

Three steps to rescue

Booher explains how the new leadership at Crossroads closely followed three critical steps to guide the church through the process of getting out of debt:

“First, we got the key leaders together and explained everything in writing and verbally. We were ready to answer any questions and instituted a spirit of transparency.

“Second, we created a higher level of accountability. Our executive pastor now meets monthly with three elders and goes through all of our expenses. An outside CPA also comes in monthly and goes over financials with the elder board. And I meet with the head of the accounting department monthly to see if they are concerned about anything questionable.

“Third, we told our church family, ‘Don’t give to the problem. Give to the Lord.’ Out of love for God, our congregation brought in $600,000 over their regular tithes in a 40-day period. We paid off our debt and instituted a strict budget,” Booher says.

Today, Crossroads ministers to more than 6,000 people every week — an increase of 2,000 people from a year and a half ago. They hold six different services, including three in the Worship Center, a chapel service, a satellite service in Lake Elsinore, and a service in Spanish.

Booher attributes the growth of the church to a spirit of truth embodied by the leadership. “God is honored by truth. That means having transparency within the body of believers. Great leaders communicate — and people will trust you enough to give,” he says.

Bethany Plumb has a background in banking and marketing and has been writing for more than 10 years for Evangelical Christian Credit Union (ECCU), Brea, CA. [www.eccu.org]

In this video (www.eccu.org/resources/videos/2009/crossroads-christian-church), Pastor Booher shares how God brought Crossroads Christian Church from death’s door to a vibrant, flourishing ministry.

By William G. Enright and Richard Klopp

People of faith are renowned for their charitable generosity. Amidst what economists are calling the “Great Recession,” giving to religion is the one subsector of charitable giving that grew in 2008. While charitable giving as a whole decreased from 2007 to 2008 by 2 percent (-5.7 percent when adjusted for inflation) and individual giving dropped 2.7 percent (-6.3 percent when adjusted for inflation) contributions to religion increased by 5.5 percent (+1.5 percent when adjusted for inflation).

This good news regarding religious giving comes as no surprise. In the 12 recessions since 1967, religion is the one subsector least affected by the economy with religious giving — when adjusted for inflation  — declining but 0.1 percent. It is estimated that about 50 percent of all household giving goes to religion with most of that money going to local congregations and parachurch organizations. In times of economic crisis the local congregation remains the primary recipient of household giving reflecting what sociologist Robert Wuthnow calls “the local focus of American religion” as the local church is viewed as an extension of one’s home and family.

Amidst the good news there are storm clouds building on the horizon demanding our attention. The landscape of religious giving has changed significantly in the last 15 to 20 years. While religion continues to receive the largest amount of charitable dollars, religion’s piece of the charitable pie has shrunk from nearly 50 percent in 1995 to 33 percent in 2007. Between 1987 and 2004 giving to religion as a share of household income fell on average 30 percent for faith groups from the Mormons to Evangelicals to Mainline Protestants to Catholics.

Despite significant growth in real per capita income over the 20th century, the average percentage share of income given by Christians to religion declined from 1.2 percent in 1963 to 0.9 percent in 2000 with one in five American Christians giving nothing to church, parachurch or nonreligious charities. The upshot is that while the dollars given to congregations may increase each year, most congregations do not appear to be keeping pace with inflation.

Reasons for shift

What sits behind this seismic shift in religious giving? From both our research and our conversations with hundreds of clergy and congregations, three observations emerge.

First, the demographics of American religious practice are changing with fewer people claiming a religious home and church attendance waning. Ironically in all our studies on giving it is people who attend church once a month or more who are two to three times more generous in all their charitable giving than those who attend less frequently or not at all. The correlation between regular church attendance and generous giving cannot be underestimated.

Second, the generational shifts relative to religious giving and religious practice are significant. When we compare the Silent Generation (those born from 1929-1945) with the Boomers (those born from 1946-1964) and Generation X (those born from 1964-1981) there is a 37 percent  decline in the number of people who give to religion and a 42 percent decline in the number of those who attend church regularly. Ironically, among those who do give to religion and attend church with regularity, there is an increase in the religious giving of the Boomers and Generations X compared to the Silent Generation. In short, while the generosity of those committed to religion remains, high the numbers of those who are religiously inclined is declining.

The charitable giving of Boomers and Generation X is also more entrepreneurial, which means that they are less inclined to give to help congregations meet an institutional budget and more energized by causes that invite their participation with measurable benchmarks and a focus on effectiveness while addressing real human need. Traditional religious organizations and congregations appear to be challenged and ill at ease with the entrepreneurial giver.

No longer can congregations and religious organizations expect all donors to slide their feet into a prescribed institutional shoe. When it comes to fundraising, one size shoe no longer fits all donors. Rather, it is the congregation and religious organization that must discover how it can slide its foot into the donor’s shoe it if is capture the generosity of the entrepreneurial donor.

Third, the silence of the pulpit on money matters actually discourages generous giving. The taboo of money talk leaves clergy shy when it comes to talking about money, and laity squeamish about money talk in the church as our consumerist culture dupes many into equating self-worth with financial-worth. When clergy do talk about money and the faithful use of possessions, studies show that it is but once a year during the annual financial drive or when the church is asking for money; which means that all too often money talk comes across as a scold.

The moral issues

Meantime, people in the pews yearn for pastors and priests who will help them wrestle with the moral quandary of money: how much is enough? How much is too much? How do we balance needs with wants? At what point does the acquisition of life’s comforts cross the intersection into the accumulation of luxurious stuff? How does one integrate work into their faith?

Amidst the altered landscape of religious giving, how then might we talk about money and go about fundraising? The answer is not found in the newest stewardship campaign fad or fundraising gimmick.  The annual stewardship campaign and the periodic capital campaign, while necessary, are ultimately little more than icing on the cake. If congregations are to address the financial challenges they face they must learn how to bake the cake by creating a congregational culture of generosity.

Three ingredients are essential for a congregation intent on baking the cake of cultural generosity.

1. Clergy must learn how to talk about money matters and the faithful use of possessions with theological integrity and personal ease apart from any attempt to raise money.

2. Clergy and lay financial leaders must extend the practice of the fine art of pastoral care to the individual donor as they nurture discerning and thoughtful giving.

3. The creation of a culture of generosity begins with leadership: laity and clergy, and a governing board committed to fiscal transparency and institutional accountability as they provide the congregation with the leadership it deserves  while affirming the worthiness of the congregation to receive the gifts and goodwill it desires.

William G. Enright is director and Richard Klopp is associate director of the Lake Institute on Faith & Giving at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. [www.philanthropy.iupui.edu]

By Eric Spacek

Bad weather, vacations and illnesses can cause parishioners to miss church services during the year. While some people will make up their missed donations, many won’t. That’s where electronic giving, or e-giving, can help.

E-giving enables church members to “set it and forget it.”  This allows contributions to continue automatically, regardless of members’ weekly attendance.

For church members, e-giving is all about convenience. As more and more of the population pay their bills online, they become used to the with-a-click simplicity of electronic payments. It’s only natural that parishioners want to extend this convenience to their tithing.

Church staff also benefit from e-giving. Electronic contributions mean fewer envelopes to open, less manual accounting and reduced chances for errors, and yes, even fraud.

How does it work?

E-giving is very simple for both church members and staff, particularly as more and more people get used to the process. Here’s an overview:

Through a simple form, a church member pre-authorizes the church to have his or her contribution automatically debited from a checking or savings account. The church member can typically choose to have the contribution deducted weekly, semi-monthly, monthly or even annually.

Once the church receives authorization for an electronic funds transfer (EFT), it sends the payment, via electronic file, through the automated clearing house (ACH) network with instructions to move it from one bank account to another. The church’s bank account is credited, and the parishioner’s account is debited the same amount.

The first step to setting up an e-giving program is selecting a reputable, quality EFT service provider. While many banks provide EFT services, there are specialized EFT processing companies in the market as well. [See sidebar below.] Regardless, you’ll want to consider the following two main factors when making your decision:

Security — Before signing up for electronic giving with any institution, make sure the program offered is safe and secure. Have the bank or EFT provider supply detailed information on the security measures in place to prevent fraud or other unauthorized use.

Also, discuss the number of EFT transactions they process in a given day or week, and find out the error rate. Ask about any previous breaches in security.

Cost — Ask for detailed information in advance about any and all fees. Fees for EFT programs vary widely, so your church should get information in writing about any start-up fees, monthly access fees, per batch or per transaction fees and so on.

The best services will have minimal (or no) start-up fees and low transaction fees. While many church management software packages already include ACH capability, find out if you’ll need to buy additional software to begin your e-giving program.

Before selecting an EFT provider, do your homework. Check with the Better Business Bureau in the state in which they are domiciled. Churches have been involved with electronic giving for several years now, so the EFT provider should be able to supply a list of other churches that have utilized their service. Follow through and contact those churches as references.

Seek indemnity

Once your church has chosen its EFT provider, the provider typically sends a service agreement for the church to sign. Read this document carefully. One protection your church may want to consider is a clause in which the provider agrees to indemnify the church (hold it harmless) for any losses stemming from the use of the provider’s EFT system.

It’s not uncommon for EFT processors to turn this language around and require the church to indemnify the provider.

While EFT systems are secure and incidents of breaches to the system rare, no system is entirely fail-safe. Consider having your church’s attorney review the agreement if you have any questions.

The best practice is to require that all authorizations to start, stop or change a person’s electronic giving be put in writing and signed by that person. This will help avoid any misunderstandings or disputes with church members down the road.

Because parishioners may not think to increase the amount of their electronic tithe from year-to-year, you may even want to consider automatically sending out a new authorization form to each electronic giver at the start of the fiscal year.

Include a note requesting that they sign and return the authorization change form if they would like to change their tithe for the new church year.

Policies and procedures

Be sure to establish clear policies and procedures about your program, but keep them simple. A concise authorization form, along with a one or two page policy statement, should be all you need.

One important item to include is how your church will handle a member’s request to terminate electronic giving. After speaking with your EFT processor about terminations, ensure that your policy leaves the church enough time between a termination request and when it will take effect.

For example, what if a member who is upset with the church calls to cancel an electronic tithe scheduled to take place the next day? Without a policy dictating that it may take up to three business days to cancel an authorization, the dispute with that member could turn ugly when the debit takes place as scheduled.

With this new form of financial transaction taking place at your church, make sure its financial policies and procedures are up-to-date, especially your internal controls. A second person should review the electronic giving program, and it should be included in your church’s annual audit or financial review.

Finally, review your church’s insurance policy to ensure appropriate employee dishonesty coverage is in place. It’s better to be safe than sorry.

Ready to provide your parishioners with another stewardship tool? An e-giving program may be for you. Do the research and make sure proper safeguards are in place, and you’ll be able to provide your congregation and staff with a time-saving convenience everyone will appreciate.

Eric Spacek is senior church risk manager at GuideOne Insurance, West Des Moines, IA. [wwww.GuideOne.com]

• www.achdirect.com
• www.churchwerks.com
• www.egive-usa.com
• www.egivingsystems.org
• www.e-tithes.com
• www.etransfer.com
• www.paysimple.com
• www.smartpaymentsolutions.com
• www.vancoservices.com

• Convenience for parishioners
• The possibility of increased contributions
• Timely contributions
• The ability of the church to forecast future contributions
• Less work for office staff and/or volunteers

By Lauren Hunter

Puget Sound Christian Center in the greater Seattle area has undergone significant technology updating in its 30 years in order to meet the congregation’s needs and desires to connect and communicate with one another. A component of these changes in the past six months alone includes taking donations in a way that helped to streamline the church’s accounting and records management, on top of providing simple ways for the congregation to worship through giving.

“Accessibility was huge for us,” says Justin Isenhart, pastor at Puget Sound. “We have a culture of people who are open to new things, and we knew that it was time for the church to make some changes in order to increase accessibility — both in community and in giving.”

Although the church already had implemented online giving, it was looking for a way to integrate all online activity into one system. The church staff thought it was best to have one seamlessly integrated approach to membership management, financial records, and online community for both the church staff and members.

After using one provider for a few years, they began their search for a church management solution that incorporated aspects of web-based management together with all the functionality they needed. “We went with Church Community Builder (CCB) because of the way each function tied together so well in one simple-to-use system,” Isenhart says.

Online giving options

Some providers require creating a full profile in order to give, even though the individual might not want to see their history or give again in the future. “One of the reasons why I liked CCB is that people can give without a login, or if they want to see their giving history or set up recurring giving, they can create a login or interact with other CCB functions, if they wish,” notes Isenhart. “Some people just want to click and give, but not set up a profile.”

In CCB setting up a profile is how people become a part of the church community; it is the first step necessary to update contact information, connect to volunteer opportunities, and engage with the online church community.

With online giving, users have the option of giving without setting up a profile, or setting up a full profile first, then giving. Puget Sound Church has branded CCB as “MyPSCC.” Because each church gets its own landing page, the church can make it appear totally integrated.

“If a person logs in to MyPSCC first, then the system auto-populates the giving form and goes through the process to confirm and approve all profile data that’s in the system. This helps keep our records accurate,” Isenhart notes.

Currently one-third of attenders at the church give online. The church also provides envelopes during the in-service offering for those who want to give using a debit or credit card, which the church enters into the giving system manually.

Setting records straight

When gifts come in online, they are easily matched with the profile in the church database. If a person isn’t in the database, adding a new record is fast and straightforward. The matching process helps to prevent duplicate records.

“If a person is logged in when they give, it’s an automatic match, but if the person isn’t logged in, the church can quickly determine whether they are already in the database so that you don’t create duplicate records,” Isenhart says.

In fact, CCB includes a complete and dynamic contribution, pledge tracking and reporting system. It allows givers to divide a contribution into several categories and also set up recurring giving. An individual can securely see their giving record and at the end of the year print out their own giving statement. Church administration can call up batches for deposits, reports and graphs for staff meetings and print out giving statements for those who do not have Internet access in their homes.

CCB uses BluePay Payment Gateway as its merchant and gateway service for processing payments. BluePay is Payment Card Industry Compliant, which means that all transactions are totally secure and your church is completely protected from potential fraud or identity theft.

Summarizing the benefits

Online giving offers a variety of benefits for the church as well as those who support it. Many people today prefer not to carry checkbooks and therefore appreciate the convenience of giving online. Various studies over the years have also shown that people will often give more online than they do offline. Furthermore, when people miss a service because of vacations or other commitments, they can still participate in the weekly offering.

When this benefit is integrated with your overall church management strategy, there are some additional advantages: Members are able to access their own giving records and print out giving statements at the end of the year, thus cutting down on mailing/printing costs. Churches can track and report on giving trends for regular offerings, a building campaign, ministry drive pledges, or to reach other goals.

If recurring gift functionality is made available, congregants can create personalized giving schedules for their tithe as well as other funds that they wish to support, such as missions and benevolences. This in turn helps create more stable and predictable income flow for the church. Bottom line: Today’s churchgoer probably already manages much of his or her personal finances electronically via the Internet. Adding online giving as an option on your church Web site simply meets their expectations. Not providing it simply makes them wonder.

“I’ve talked to many other pastors about implementing online giving, and I always tell them that the consistency outweighs the cost in the end. It’s really worth it,” Isenhart says.

Lauren Hunter is a freelance writer, blogger and church technology public relations consultant in Roseville, CA [www.laurenhunter.net; www.churchtechtoday.com].

Puget Sound Christian Center
www.pscc.net

Church Community Builder
www.churchcommunitybuilder.com

MyPSCC branded site
www.mypscc.net

BluePay Payment Gateway
www.nationstransactionservices.com/ccb372/NationsWelcomeCCB.htm

Payment Card Industry Security Standards
www.pcisecuritystandards.org

• Ease of operation for the user — simple and clear, yet thorough
• Availability for people to give whenever and wherever
• Encourages consistency because it’s automated and highly flexible

By Jim Kuykendall

Cross Timbers Community Church decided to take some exciting steps to respond to this current economic season.  A few weeks back, Senior Pastor Toby Slough told the church during our giving time that if anyone that day had a need — because being laid off or other financial challenges — that they were welcome to take out of the plate as it passed by rather than give that week.

Evidently that touched a lot of people because we had the largest offering of the year that week.  In response to the generosity, the next week we bought $5,000 dollars of Visa gift cards and during the ministry time of our service invited anyone in the church who had lost their job to come to the front for prayer and after they were prayed for we gave them a $50 gift card to help in a small way.

The following week the church stepped up again and gave the largest regular weekly offering we had received in several months. Again in response to the generosity the next week we invited anyone who had lost their job or were under-employed due to the economic challenges to bring their utility bills to the church that week and we would pay them all.  We had almost 60 families bring their utility bills and we paid off around $35,000 in bills.

Used the cash reserve

We had worked hard last year to save up a cash reserve that would be used for a cushion in case the economy continued to worsen.  Toby believes that we are to give that entire reserve away.  We began that process by giving our entire Easter offering away.  We gave away $200,000 to six different organizations who are already focused on helping the unemployed and poor.

One of those organizations had just been told that the building they were in had come under new ownership and they had to move in just a few months.  Our gift was the seed money for them to begin the process of finding a new home. We found it interesting that an organization that helps the homeless was soon to be homeless as well. It was a real blessing to be part of this very timely gift for them.

We also challenged the church to invite someone they know who is unemployed or financially challenged and does not have a church home to church on Easter. We set up a website so we would know who is bringing these people and how many are coming.  On Easter the members who brought these guests went to the welcome desk and received a gift to give to these families.  We gave each of these families $500.

200 families benefitted

The invited families did not know about this gift and the inviting members did not know the amount of the gift. We had more than 200 families sign up. We ended up giving away more than $125,000. The church then blew us away by giving the largest Easter offering we have ever had in our 10-year history!

Our job seekers effort called Crossroads continues to build momentum. We are connecting jobless people with volunteers in our church and in the community to help with skills to seek employment. We help with resume writing, interview skills, social networking as well as providing donated suits and dresses for those who don’t have interview clothes. We gave haircuts and hair styling to top off the presentation for potential interviews. About 50 people are going through this process with the help of many volunteers.

We are not sure what is next for us but we are definitely enjoying riding the wave of what God is doing as we look for ways to try and help others. It has been described as a “giving throw down with God and we know we are going to lose.”

Jim Kuykendall is senior associate pastor of Cross Timbers Community Church in Argyle, Denton and Keller, TX. [www.crosstimberschurch.org]

Five stories follow that shed light and hope on these recessionary times.

1. Giving back to those in need
2. Hiring in a non-hiring economy
3. What’s so good about bad times?
4. One church increases giving 46 percent
5. How being debt free works for the church

The hard decisions of firing five staffers while not worrying about “looking weak.”

By Eric Rojas

These days, you can’t read or view the media without the dreaded words screaming at you —“cut backs.” Major parachurch ministries are cutting back 15 to 25 percent of their staff, on average. Churches, historically known as the organizational type that holds on to employees too long, are making cuts at unprecedented rates. And from forecasters, it doesn’t appear that this New Normal is going to end any time soon. What’s a church to do? Maybe the answer is to hire.

Ministries of all kinds still want to make an impact for Christ. Churches still want to make advancements in changing lives for Christ. I am a big fan of being a great steward of God’s resources. I am also a big fan of knowing God’s plan for one’s future. I am not a big fan of arbitrary salary cuts or hiring freezes.

Remember a few years ago when you finally landed that awesome kids’ director? The good news is that he’s not in ministry for the money. The bad news is that he is just getting by financially — there’s not much margin.

Making ends meet

When you make a 10 percent arbitrary across the board salary cut, that puts him under the “ends are meeting” line and before long, he’s gone. Was that worth it? Was that being a good steward? You saved some part-time support staff help and lost a key player in a position that took three years to fill.

What’s the answer? I submit that the answer is asking God for wisdom and being as strategic in support of your vision as possible.

• That means re-visiting your mission, values, three-year plan, etc.
• That means evaluating every task and role for every staff person.
• That means reducing staff in the areas that are overstaffed and under utilized — and there are areas like that in most churches.
• It means looking at what staff positions can be handed back over to  key volunteer leaders like you had before the budget began to expand three to five years ago.

As you reduce those staff or staff positions that can be reduced or given to volunteers, you will be amazed that there will again be margin. All of a sudden you are re-visiting the key advancement that you felt called to. All of a sudden you can give modest raises, even in this economy, that will allow those key staff members to stay on board. All of a sudden that staff member who failed the “Jim Collins test” (if you had to hire this person again, would you?), is now gone. And, low and behold, you are hiring someone new again.

OK, I can hear your complaints already. Don’t bother sending the e-mails — I’ve got them covered.

Working it out

We just let go of 11 positions — 6 were vacant and 5 had people in them. One of them was a 23-year-employee. As I went through this in our church, I wanted to fix everything. I said no to staff cuts, no to specific people and, in the process, no to God.

One morning at 4:00 am, God woke me up and took me to the elliptical machine at my local gym. Over the next 45 minutes I was listening to a Christian radio station and praying. It was like I was having a conversation with God. Even the some times silly things that DJs say in between songs were being used by God to speak to me.

At the end of that time, God said this, “You did your job, now let me do mine.” Ok, God, you win, I said. I will let go and let God. I am a big believer in God’s sovereignty and His calling on our lives. I believe strongly that if he is calling us as a church to a new season, he’s probably calling some people to that new calling.

In the process, he’s probably calling some people away from that new thing. But, guess what? he has something new planned for them, too. It’s a season like this that we must trust in him with all that we have been entrusted to.

Brandon, Mike, Kristen, James, Elizabeth — names of staff who have been let go — have bills to pay, children to feed, and families to support. I get that. God has a plan. Our job is to pray, seek, research, pray, ask, discuss, pray, re-visit, pray and then decide. If God is leading, then let him be God and you be you.

In making these reductions in force I received counsel from key church leaders to not show emotion, not give information about why we’re doing this, and the like. One prominent exec told me across a breakfast table “you’ll look weak” when I shared that I was going to share my heart through the process.

God’s in control

Praise God I looked weak, because God is doing incredible things. I have had to fire scores of people in the past. I’m okay with that. I always share my heart in that process. I looked at our lobby a few weeks ago and saw five former employees who were fired here serving whole-heartedly in the church. Why? God’s spirit is working, not weakness. One fired administrative director is now going to be an elder. Praise God.

So, if you are to hire in this tumultuous season, what are the keys? I don’t think they’re unlike hiring in a prosperous season. It’s just that for many in ministry, we don’t have a solid plan and process that is reproducible. He works in systems in all of life and I believe He calls us to use our brains and the counsel of many, so that a new hire will have the greatest opportunity possible to have great success.

Eric Rojas is executive pastor of Christ Community Church in St. Charles, DeKalb and Blackberry Creek, IL. [www.ccclife.org]

We believe falsely that money is a source of security, putting consumerism ahead of biblical stewardship.

By Rick Dunham

The economic implosion that has rocked our world may be one of the greatest gifts that church leaders could ever receive. It has thrown a spotlight on one of the most significant issues facing the church today — financial stewardship.

The uncertainty of these days presents a great opportunity to reframe the way Christians think about this issue that is so vital to the spiritual life of every believer. For the most part, Jesus’ teaching about money has failed to seep into the fabric of churches as members have a view of money that is more culturally informed than biblically informed.

Most churches don’t view how money is handled as a central part of spiritual growth and a key to a personal relationship with Christ. It’s trumped by things like Bible reading, prayer, accountability to others, worship, mission trips and attending small groups.

Although all of these are important, your church members can’t fully mature as Christians if they do not view money from a biblical perspective. But in the Western world, many people serve and worship money. Living in capitalistic societies that are driven by money and consumerism shapes how people, including most Christians, handle their money.

People keep their money

A recent study by the Center on Philanthropy shows that giving within Christian denominations ranges from about 1.6 percent of household income to a high of 3.5 percent. The U.S. average of all households — Christian or not — is 2.3 percent. So it’s fair to say that Christians have bought into the world’s view of finances and are holding on to their money rather than sharing it as generously as they should. They have bought into the consumerism of capitalism.

I’m not against capitalism; it has helped build great nations. But it has at its roots a humanistic view of God’s world. It lives for the here and now and builds capital for self-serving purposes. As a result, it is the modern day Baal — the god that the masses worship — believing that this god will bring security and good fortune.

We should have learned a hard lesson, however, with the meltdown of the world economy and the resulting financial struggles of nations, markets, economies and households. This god of capitalism promises a security it can never deliver. Many hearts have been ensnared by the promise of good fortune, when in fact, this worship of money has only turned hearts away from fully following God.

This financial hardship is a clear and vibrant wake-up call to Christians everywhere. It challenges our view of money and our consumerism. It tests where we have placed our faith and trust. And it calls into question to what degree we have succumbed to the hypnotizing trance induced by money.

Bigger portfolio not the end

God knows that money has the power to turn the hearts of his people away from him because the human heart is inclined to put its “hope” in money, to find its security there. So if the priority of Christians in handling money is building a bigger and bigger portfolio, or accumulating possessions, or acquiring material things to the point that they are deeply in debt, then their hearts cannot fully follow God.

This is the danger in our churches today, even for serious followers of Christ. Subtly the hearts of God’s people have been given to money above God in the belief that money is a source of security, with the result that the lives of our people are driven more by consumerism than by genuine, biblical stewardship.

What should church leaders, do? Let me give just a few 
suggestions.

• Understand that how church members view and handle money is crucial to their spiritual well-being. They cannot be fully devoted to Christ and become mature in their faith if they are not investing as they should in God’s Kingdom.
• Preach the whole counsel of God, including the central role that money plays in a person’s spiritual walk. This doesn’t mean putting congregants on a guilt trip, but helping them understand that the natural inclination of the heart is for money to be the source of security rather than God. If people’s hearts are given to the things of this world, God’s Kingdom work will lack the resources needed to fulfill God’s call.
• Challenge your members to take time to step back and give serious consideration to their financial priorities, especially those with eternal consequences. Is funding God’s Kingdom work here on earth really a priority or not?
• Finally, inspire Christians to understand that they are in the midst of an epic spiritual battle against the forces of darkness for the hearts and souls of men and women, and that they have a crucial role to play in prosecuting this battle through their financial support of God’s work, especially through His Church.
• God expects us to use the resources He has put in our trust to fund the advancement of His Kingdom against those forces. As we make that investment, God also ends up with what He really wants — our hearts.

Rick Dunham is president and CEO of Dunham+Company, Addison, TX, and author of If God Will Provide, Why Do We Have to Ask for Money? [www.dunhamandcompany.com]

An Illinois church saw giving to their budget increase by 46 percent, their donor base by 50 percent.

By Mark Brooks

What? Increase giving during a recession? Some claim giving’s off 20 percent while others say its 10 percent. Mostly we have no clue how giving has been affected. Isolating a few examples here and there does not make a scientific study.

As with the rest of this recession my feel is that a few years from now we will realize while there was a decline, it was not as bad as we thought. We tend to have short-term historical memories. We survived other recessions, we will survive this one. I am not naive enough to say that it is not a challenge and that some ministries are not suffering. I am simply saying that not everyone is seeing such a decline in giving.

Christ United Methodist Church in Fairview Heights, IL a suburb of St. Louis, last year saw giving to their budget increase by 46 percent! In addition to that increase in the first nine months of their capital campaign $750,000 came in. They increased their true giving donor base by 50 percent. How were they able to do that and more importantly what can we learn from them?

Here are what I believe are the keys.

Compelling vision. People give to a compelling vision. Christ UMC, through the leadership of Pastor Shane Bishop, has a vision of reaching the lost and unchurched of their area. They have a vision to help connect people more closely to Christ. They are about doing exciting things and it is exciting to be a member there. Good vision trumps bad economy.

Kingdom accomplishment. People give where they believe their money is accomplishing something for the Kingdom. Christ UMC tells its story of reaching people. In turn, celebrating those Kingdom “wins” produces stewardship funding.

Have you ever wondered why the top colleges in football regularly get the best athletes to sign with them? If you have a chance of playing for a national championship or playing at a small school, where would you go? Winning teams draw winning players. Show people you are a winner and they will want to join your team.

Pastoral involvement. Pastor Bishop does not relegate stewardship responsibility to another staff member or lay person. He keeps his pulse on what is happening with giving in his church. In my experience churches that do better in the stewardship arena are churches where the senior pastor is engaged. Good stewardship takes good leadership.

A stewardship plan. Churches have mission plans, evangelism plans and discipleship plans. Why do so few have a stewardship plan? Christ UMC has a stewardship plan that they work regularly. The success is obvious.

Stewardship plans must be multifaceted. It begins from the pulpit with positive preaching. It is carried out through stewardship education and even direct mail. What works for one church might not work for yours but you need to develop a working plan of action for success. Without a plan you are planning to fail.

Positive atmosphere. We tend to think of stewardship as tiresome and negative. If you approach it with chagrin don’t be surprised if your members don’t view it the same way. This past fall I happened to attend a neighbor’s church the Sunday they kicked off their annual campaign. I felt like I was at a funeral. The lay leader giving the stewardship sermon talked about how bad the economy was. The staff member assigned to preach that day talked about how they dreaded approaching the subject. In the end I dreaded I had attended.

At Christ UMC the leadership does not shy away from talking about the responsibility of stewardship. They have simply found a way to make the message positive instead of negative. It helps that the health of the church is positive, giving them a base to communicate from. Be positive in your approach and you will produce cheerful givers. Cheerful givers become repeat givers.

Consistency. To maintain and even increase giving during a recession takes hard consistent work. You can not make this a one-time sermon or a one-time letter. You have to regularly stay in tune with what is happening in your ministry. Too many leaders put stewardship on the back burner until they realize they are in a crisis. Christ UMC works regularly throughout the year on stewardship.

Study after study has shown that donors are willing to continue giving despite this current recession. The willingness is there. They are just looking for a reason to give. Develop your vision, create a plan to communicate that vision and work your plan.

Mark Brooks is founder and president of The Charis Group, Atlanta, GA. [www.TheCharisGroup.org]

There is a freedom of starting a church year with no financial obligations.

By Jim Fair

Despite the unsettling economy, 2009 is off to a great start for Trinity Evangelical Free Church. Two reasons —2009 marks the 40th anniversary of this middle class suburban church; and perhaps more significantly, it marks the first time in her history that she starts a year debt free.

In 1998 the church added the third and final phase of her long envisioned master plan —a gymnasium, state of the art kitchen and extra Christian education space. The church took out a $2.5 million dollar mortgage to finance the addition over a 20-year period. At the time, average attendance was around 600 in two Sunday services.

Between 1998 and 2003 the church faithfully made her required mortgage payments but paid off just $500,000 of the loan. That wasn’t good enough for our forward looking leadership, so they challenged our congregation with the question, “What could we accomplish for God’s kingdom if we had no debt?”

Our church began to dream and pray and came up with expanded ministries that could be implemented when our mortgage was paid off. With the guidance of a local stewardship organization, we made a three-year commitment in 2004 to pay off our mortgage as soon as possible. In those three years, Trinity paid another $1.5 million on our mortgage leaving just under $500,000 left as we began 2007.

Even though we formally ended our campaign pledge period, our congregation’s corporate will was to continue paying off our mortgage as quickly as possible. Finally, on December 1, 2008, we made our last mortgage payment and celebrated with our church family on Sunday January 11 with a mortgage burning ceremony.

While working to pay off our debt, our leadership became more deliberate in teaching the biblical principles of stewardship to our church family. We offered Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University to our congregation and more than 100 people have graduated. These have been tremendous motivators for our people in addition to the $850,000 we saved in interest expenses to the bank by accelerating our mortgage payments.

A remarkable testimony to our church family’s sacrifice and generosity was evidenced last September when, in the homestretch of our mortgage elimination, God led Trinity to substantially reach out with our resources and time to a family in our church that was struggling with catastrophic and long-term medical needs.

Their home needed major renovation in order to accommodate multiple wheelchairs and they needed a large van to transport wheelchair-bound members of the family. Our church sacrificially gave close to $45,000 to help with the renovation, van purchase and wheelchair lift purchase/installation, and then donated time and talents to do the actual home renovation, all while not missing a beat in the quest for debt elimination.

What was our vision for expanded ministries at Trinity without debt?

• Our attendance has increased over that time by about 20 to 25 percent.
• We hired a family ministries pastor to bolster our ministry to our growing families and youth.
• We increased our global missions funding by 10 percent and will continue to grow it.
• We are positioned from a benevolence standpoint to take better care of folks in our church who have been hit hard by the economic downturn.

All in all, it’s a wonderful feeling, especially in these times, to be able to wake up in the morning and realize that our church is debt free and that we are now more able to focus on ministry opportunities that God presents to us.

Jim Fair is director of administration, Trinity Evangelical Free Church, South Bend, IN. [www.tefs.org]

By Brian Kluth

Across America churches are beginning to feel the recession’s squeeze on the offering dollars that people place in the plate. While some congregants are struggling financially, we also need to be reminded that there are many with stable incomes or a surplus of financial resources and assets.

So many churches only focus on the weekly collection of current dollars and never have any plans in place to encourage giving from people’s surplus dollars, financial assets or estate gifts. While capital campaigns will always generate larger gifts and pledges, here are 10 additional ideas to help you jump start some ways to get larger gifts on an ongoing basis to fulfill your church’s mission and vision for the future.

1. Start a Legacy Club

Churches are ideal recipients of estate gifts. Unfortunately, it is estimated that only three out of 10 Christians currently have a will, trust or estate plan and many people do not remember to include their church in their will. This is in part because lawyer’s documents do not normally ask people to identify their Christian and charitable interests in their will and estate planning forms.

It’s up to churches to help encourage people to remember the Lord’s work in their estate plans by leaving a percentage of their estate or a specific amount to the church. One way to do this is to start a Legacy Club and invite people that have included the church in their estate plans to let the church know. Some churches make a public list to encourage others to also include the church in their plans.

2. Offer seminars

Many denominations have planned giving departments that can help provide seminars and personal consultations to the church’s older members or anyone in the church interested in developing a well-grounded estate plan. If you are not connected to a denomination that can provide this service, you may be able to retain the help of an experienced estate planning professional, financial professional, estate planning firm or an attorney who specializes in estate planning to assist you in putting on seminars or meal events for people in your congregation.

3. Send generosity brochures with giving statements

Most churches send one or more giving statements each year to their church members. Use this special mailing to include pamphlets and brochures that encourage people to give generously through their regular income, surplus resources or estate plans.

4. Give referrals to Kingdom advisor-trained financial professionals

There is a growing movement in America called Kingdom Advisors (kingdomadvisors.org). This national network of financial professionals meets for biblical and professional training in chapter meetings across America. The goal of this group is to help provide wise, competent and biblical counsel to their clients.

Underlying much of their work is a desire to help clients become more generous to God’s work at their church and ministries they care about. A trained financial professional can be a great asset to a Christian couple, family or individual as they are making giving decisions related to their current income, assets or estate gifts. Pastors and churches would benefit if they found a counselor in their church or community that they can refer people to on an as needed basis.

5. Give out a family organizer gift

As a pastor I have discovered that very few families have their “house in order” when it comes to their faith, finances, estate plans, family history, asset/estate distribution, end-of-life medical wishes and funeral plans. I have sat with many families after the death of a loved one and experienced their grief, but also the hurt and confusion they feel because they really had very little understanding of the person’s final wishes.

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I was so burdened by this “information gap” among families that I spent two years researching, writing and speaking on the subject of families getting their house in order. The result has been a self-published full-color 52-page manual with fill-in-the-blank forms that is called the Because I Love You Family Organizer (MyFamilyForms.org).

6. Send targeted mailings

Planned giving professionals have learned that when people are in their 50s they begin to more actively think about how to both preserve and distribute the wealth they have been accumulating. Any helpful resources a church can provide to the people in their congregation that are nearing retirement and who are already retired will be greatly appreciated.

7. Put estate planning tools on your website

More and more people regularly search the Internet for helpful financial information to assist them in their decision making process. Churches are beginning to see the value of serving their members through helpful resources on their Web site. One church that provides its members with comprehensive information and tools to assist them in the estate planning process is North Point Baptist Church, Weaverville, NC (northpointbaptist.org).

8. Encourage gifts-in-kind of current assets

While Americans are beginning to feel “cash poor,” many people are “stuff rich.” Members of your congregation own houses, investments, land, vehicles, recreational equipment, business inventory, jewelry, artwork and more. In the past, it has been difficult for a church to receive these types of “in-kind” gifts because they had no easy way to turn these resources into cash.

But there are a growing number of Christian community foundations across the country that can help Christians and churches transfer these assets “into” their donor advised fund for the maximum tax benefit and then have the foundation turn around and liquidate the asset for cash. One Web site to handle in-kind transactions is idonate.com. But churches can also use eBay and other auctions to liquidate donated assets.

9. Offer memorial giving opportunities

When a loved one passes away, families are often looking for ways to honor his or her memory. By allowing or encouraging special memorial gifts, you can often generate long-term dollars for scholarships, specific church ministries, building projects, endowments and more. A simple flyer talking about memorial opportunities put in the bulletin, mailing or lobby literature rack has the potential to generate thousands of dollars in special gifts.

10. Preach a message on “Getting Your House in Order”

The reality is that for all of us a time will come when we will not recover and we will breathe our last breath. As pastors we have a spiritual obligation to help encourage people to get things in order before they die. This includes challenging them from the Scripture to get their faith in order, their finances in order, their family in order, their final medical wishes in order and their funeral wishes in order.

By helping people face and prepare for the inevitable, we are being good servants. And a number of these people will choose to honor God with the wealth he has entrusted to them over their lifetime to help advance the Kingdom.

Brian Kluth, Colorado Springs, CO, is a pastor, author and speaker. [GenerousLife.info] 
[MAXIMUMgenerosity.org]

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CHURCHES STEP UP IN A DOWN ECONOMY

A majority of churches (71 percent) saw giving increase or stay steady in 2008, says a survey of more than 1,000 churches in February. MAXIMUMgenerosity.org reports that 47 percent of churches actually saw their giving increase in 2008.

But the survey also showed that 29 percent of churches experienced a decline in giving this past year. In response to the growing economic concerns, 46 percent of churches are holding the line on their budgets and spending for 2009.

Fourteen percent of churches did cut staff positions or payroll costs in response to a decline in giving. A significant number of churches (85 percent) are planning at least two initiatives in 2009 to help the people in their congregations learn to manage their finances and giving according to Biblical principles.

Nearly one third of the churches surveyed indicated they would be increasing their dollars for benevolence ministries to help people in their church and/or communities weather difficult financial times.

By Ronald E. Keener

“Overseas missions are often used as a reason to give to the church. However, most churches and denominations have patterns in place that keep missions a small percent of actual total spending,” says Sylvia Ronsvalle.

“Members are not seriously challenged about increasing giving beyond maintenance levels for the church, because the fear exists that then only the larger mission vision and not the less-dramatic ongoing operation, will be fully funded. So stories about missions are used as flavoring to make everyone involved feel that present levels of activity can be viewed as significant.”

That’s the explanation that empty tomb inc.’s Sylvia Ronsvalle gives for the subtitle of the newest report The State of Church Giving through 2005: Abolition of the Institutional Enslavement of Overseas Missions.

The ministry, empty tomb, was founded in 1970 with the initial focus of organizing discipleship opportunities for Christians in the Champaign, IL area to serve local people in need. Almost immediately, the organization began researching church giving potential that could impact global and domestic need. By the mid-1980s, the research led to an exploration of practical ways to increase missions giving through congregations. The ministry now offers matching contributions through its Mission Match program to historically Christian congregations that want to increase their total spending directed to missions.

John and Sylvia Ronsvalle are president and CEO, and executive vice president, respectively, and their responses to questions from Church Executive represent them both:

What is the record of giving as a percentage of income?

The portion of income given to the church was 3.1 percent in 1968 and 2.6 percent in 2005. One might say that the church is losing market share in people’s spending patterns.

Of the two subcategories in total contributions, congregational finances, the amount spent within the congregation, began to increase in 1993, while benevolences continued to decline. On the one hand, that’s good news for congregational operations. On the other, it may point to an increasingly consumer attitude among members. People are paying their churches for services rendered. They are being satisfied rather than transformed. If that is the case, churches have begun to redefine charitable giving in a way that confuses benefits to self with caring about others.

How do you define benevolences, and have natural disasters and violent actions around the world increased benevolences?

Benevolences are defined as the portion of the congregation’s budget that goes beyond the congregation’s own operations. Support for the local soup kitchen, denomination, seminary and international  missions are all considered to be in the category of benevolences.

With the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma, and the Pakistani earthquake, benevolences did increase in 2005, both in the number of dollars given and as a percent of income. Depending on the numbers for 2006, one may be able to draw conclusions about whether the benevolences increase was disaster-related giving or if it represents a general improvement in commitment.

Our work with money dynamics in churches suggests that church members are trained toward crisis giving, rather than toward a steady response to grace in their lives. For most congregations, raising the budget is the standard of successful stewardship. There is little dreaming about what could happen if church members increased giving to 10 percent of income and then made sure the increased giving was spent to expand missions.

Until congregations are willing to dream big dreams that reflect God’s heart, the majority of church leaders will probably be content to challenge their members on a maintenance level, with an occasional crisis thrown in, rather than engaging the big picture.

What’s the trend in giving to churches over the recent decade, compared to other charitable support to education, hospitals, and the like?

Giving to religion is the largest single charitable category in every measure of philanthropy. A very interesting finding developed in our analysis of U.S. Department of Labor Consumer Expenditure Survey data. Consistently, those surveyed about charitable giving defined more than 70 percent of their giving as going to “church, religious organizations.” The other categories they could choose were “charities and other organizations” and “educational institutions.”

This high percentage focused on religion is larger than other measures of philanthropy. That suggests that when people are giving to organizations classified by some researchers as “human services” or “international agencies,” the donors perceive themselves as giving out of their religious convictions.

You separate out giving to evangelical Protestant denominations vs. mainline Protestant denominations. What are those data and trends?

Evangelical Christians gave a higher portion of income to their churches than mainline Protestants in data from 1968, 1985 and 2005. However the difference is narrowing. It may be that evangelicals maintained a strong barrier between their values and those of the larger society in the late 1960s. The more recent giving levels suggest an accommodation to the consumer society and a weakening of that barrier.

There seems to be a movement for encouraging “generous giving” or generosity — over and above tithing. Do you see any evidence of that in specific congregational giving?

The short answer, based on the data, is no. Such a movement might help us figure out how to redeem our role as the bad guys in Scripture. Affluence spread quickly through the general society after World War II. Suddenly pastors were looking out into congregations filled with the “rich” who were to be warned not to forget God (Deuteronomy 6:12) or trust in worldly wealth (1 Timothy 6:17 and James 5:1-3). Most pastors talked about abstract justice or avoided the topic of money — except the annual stewardship sermon. In general, post-World War II Christians have not been taught how to combine affluence, righteousness and personal discipleship.

Is there an inclination toward giving to local and national needs rather than to overseas missions?

By “local and national needs” we’re assuming you mean local congregations and national denominational offices. In the 1920s about seven cents of each dollar donated to the church was directed to denominational global missions. By 2005 the average was down to two cents. The decline is likely due to a change in priorities on the part of congregational and denominational leadership.

The fact that missions is not a great priority in the church in the U.S. can be seen from two numbers. An estimate of overseas mission’s income to Protestant agencies based in the U.S., including 700 denominational and para-denominational groups, is $5.2 billion in 2005. That figure compares to more than $60 billion Americans spent on soft drinks.

In our current report, we explore the dynamics that have transformed international missions into something like a trained elephant in a circus. It is trotted out to do the heavy lifting during annual stewardship campaigns as a good reason to support the church. However, a number of factors conspire to keep a lid on the portion of church budgets that is directed to global missions.

One factor is the perceived competition between the popularity of overseas missions and local and denominational operations. In the 1920s the unified budget was introduced in many denominations. That put overseas missions in direct tension with every other category of church service, with overseas missions receiving a percent of the total. Today denominational and congregational leaders may not be excited about freeing overseas missions to find its own level of funding. The fear is that other categories, whether denominational administration, local operations or seminaries, will receive less.

Where are the encouraging points in your 2007 report?

Religion continues to be the single largest charitable giving category. That means that there is still potential for Christians to integrate their confessions of Jesus Christ with their behavior patterns. However, it will take denominational and congregational leadership willing to put God’s values ahead of worldly success standards. Success may come, but it cannot be the goal.

What trends give you pause in the state of church giving today?

The charitable impulse in general seems to be weakening in the society. We are all familiar with great societies failing. The intellectual energy of Germany in the mid-1800s had been transformed into the Third Reich, with all its horrible consequences, within 100 years. Now here is the U.S., with a broad network of churches, freedom of religion and state-of-the-art communications. The U.S. economy is about $14 trillion a year, with the next largest being Japan at somewhat more than $4 trillion.

Are we the church acting like salt in this environment? Or is the whole stew becoming tasteless, and about to be thrown out, because the salt is missing? There are a growing number of church leaders who are worried about the lukewarm nature of the church in the U.S.

Megachurches are raising millions — one $105 million — for ministry and construction. Are members motivated more to bricks and mortar than missions?

Church members are generally only being offered the limited vision of institutional maintenance. We have no idea of how wealthy we really are. Even with all the building activity going on now, people in the 1960s were spending a larger portion of their incomes on religious buildings than they were in 2005. It is not really a choice between buildings or missions. It’s that the leadership is challenging people about buildings and staffing and not spending the same amount of energy — or more — to provide God-empowered leadership about missions.

What specific actions are needed for a healthier giving picture by Christians to their churches?

Denominational and interdenominational leaders could agree to mobilize overseas word and deed missions by announcing a goal that 60 cents of each dollar donated to the congregation be directed to overseas word and deed mission. This goal could only be met through increased giving.

To support this goal, denominations and other national leaders could develop a country-by-country analysis of need in a format that could be used by congregations. The focus could be on child deaths (estimated cost is $5 billion per year), unreached peoples (estimated cost of $1 billion per year), and primary education for children in all countries (estimated cost at $7 billion per year).

Third, denominations and congregations could promote or call pastors by heavily weighting the success of the pastor in moving church members to increase missions giving toward the 60 percent of congregation spending goal.

Denominations could also develop good feedback systems for church members to know what happens to their money when it is sent overseas.

Finally, denominations and congregations could agree to focus on the geographical areas of the globe with the greatest needs for word and/or deed witness.

If church members reached a congregation-wide average of 10 percent giving, what dollars could be available to local and global neighbors in need?

Ephesians 3:20-21 says that God can do more than we ask or imagine. Current leadership in the church in the U.S. has not presented a challenge to American Christians on a scale with what God is able to do. If Christians in the U.S. increased giving to an average of 10 percent of income, there would be at least an additional $168 billion a year going through churches. Given the world’s best estimate that $5 billion a year could stop over two-thirds of the more than nine million under-five child deaths happening each year around the globe, that money could accomplish a lot of good.

The gold standard is Antioch Presbyterian Church in South Korea that started in 1983 with 90 adult attenders, and committed to directing at least 60 cents of each dollar received to overseas missions. In 2005, with 4,000 adult attenders, they gave more than 70 cents to overseas missions.

Here in the U.S., the additional portion of the tithe is not going to come into churches for more building and staff. Giving as a percent of income is shrinking, not growing, with the current internal emphasis of the church. It’s our opinion that those additional dollars will only be given if people are asked to do something great for the Kingdom of God, and are offered a broad vision that sparks people’s God-inspired imaginations.

On a more general level, courage on the part of denominational and congregational leadership is a key factor. In the past great social movements grew out of church initiative. One can look at general primary education, child labor laws, the women’s movement, abolition, and find strong church leadership that overflowed into society as a whole.

What’s the impact on society today?

Today, with a lot of religious activity going on, we find that teenage suicide increased 150 percent from the 1950s to the 1990s. A recent news report cited the fact that one out of four teenage girls is coping with a sexually transmitted disease. While Chinese university students were reading Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism as an introduction to Western business in the 1980s, today American business leaders are taking “perp walks” on the way to being tried for corruption.

If the church is not holding its own people accountable about their spending patterns, and if the church is not investing heavily in its primary purpose of missions, is it possible that the society is suffering as a side-effect?

We have to repent that we’ve been willing to allow missionaries on the front lines to cobble together their ministries while we add specialty staff in our congregations.

We have to repent that we put in elaborate computer, phone and video systems and yet aren’t making sure that every person in the world who wants a Bible can have one. We have to repent that while we sing “Jesus loves the little children of the world,” we’re content to let about 17,600 under-five kids die each day from causes that could be prevented.

After repenting, we need to open our imaginations to explore what could happen if we were to really take God’s heart seriously.

What actions should churches be taking to better encourage giving?

The congregation’s budget needs to come under scrutiny, the same way that individual budgets need review. How much does your congregation spend on global missions? Most congregations can’t answer that question. There’s a missions trip here, part of denominational funding there. Yet the leadership boards know exactly how much is spent on utilities and staff benefits. What does that say about our values?

Here’s an example of an approach that might work to attract more giving for overseas missions. A congregation could establish its base budget. This budget could account for all the operating needs, including salaries, utilities, capital allowance and denominational funding. Then church members could be told that this base budget would require a certain amount of money. The promise would be made that everything over that amount would go for missions. What would happen?

How data is collected and analyzed

The church member giving that empty tomb analyzes represents actual congregational reports that are submitted by the congregation to the denominational headquarters.

The national office aggregates the data and publishes it. Most of the data is published in the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches series. Some denominations take a full year in aggregating their data, and so there can be a two-year lag between the close of the data year and when the data is analyzed by empty tomb. Presently the most recent confirmed and analyzed data is 2005, published in October 2007.

Consult emptytomb.org for further giving trends and book sales. Private contributions provide 96 percent of the resources that underwrite both the local and national ministries.

Source: Antioch Presbyterian Church, Chonju, South Korea empty tomb, inc. 2008

The history of Antioch Presbyterian Church suggests that churches at any attendance level can achieve a goal of 60 percent of total church income to overseas missions through intentional increased giving.