Dear brothers,

Bishop Felix asked that I write to you from time to time on the topic of fundraising.

Most of you lead parishes where the degree of generous giving by your members can either make or break a parish budget. If that’s true, then why don’t more pastors and parish leaders in general make the planning around biblical stewardship more of a priority?

Reality #1: Here is a basic reality for all churches: Money is muscle for ministry.

You need funds. There’s no way around it. When budgets are stretched thin, not only can a pastor and his family struggle, but his ability to bring resources to bear to begin to build ministries and train people to lead new and expanding areas of ministry is constrained.

Reality #2: God wants to grow His people in maturity through their
sacrificial giving

The problem in almost all churches is not the economic status of its members, nor their ability to give. They can tithe. But many don’t. Or worse, they “tip” God by putting a few dollars in the plate. Your members have personal income. The issue is that they treat Christian stewardship as a personal finance issue and not a heart issue tied directly to what it means to be a Jesus-follower. They need to be taught about how to think about money as a Christian. It is an emotional issue for people that needs to be redirected biblically to trusting God and his promises for them in what he has said about giving and stewardship.

I will follow up later this summer with a few more thoughts but for now, here’s a couple of questions:

• Do you have a stewardship plan that you have shared with your leadership and if so, are you following it?
  • Early Pentecost is a great time to start planning for the Fall season. Don’t wait until September to start planning.

• Can you take the time to train a small group of 3-5 people on what Biblical stewardship is either as a one-off training, small group, or even when you get together for Vestry/leadership meetings?
  • If you do this, what you’ll find is that you’ll not only learn and remind yourself of the theology around biblical stewardship, but that the people you train will become willing candidates for your stewardship committee which you will need to form later anyway.

• Are you doing stewardship alone?
  • It should be a shared task. Let God’s people talk to God’s people in due season by giving them the opportunity to give a testimony to the ways God has used their generosity and faithfulness to bless the church and themselves. As you train your people on biblical stewardship these stories will begin to emerge and you can ask your people if they will share it in front of the church when you actually carry out your campaign. But teach them and train them first and then form a committee and get to work.

I will be sharing some resources for stewardship planning in the next communication, but in the meantime one of the resources I really like is Herb Miller’s New Consecration Sunday Program. There are other good ones out there. I’ve personally used the program over 5 different times in two different churches and we increased giving year over year by using this program.

I like it because 1) it’s a well-thought out program that you can easily adapt for your parish 2) each member of the committee gets a handbook and has to take on some level of responsibility for the campaign, but most importantly, 3) its starting point is not how much money the church needs for an operating budget, but instead it asks people to grow spiritually by trusting God and incrementally increasing their giving each year. It works. I’ve seen people who have never given to the church regularly start giving and people who habitually were giving 2-3% increase their giving over two years to the 8-10% range.

Every blessing in Christ,
Brendan+

Reverend Canon Brendan Kimbrough
Canon for Strategic Development.
Anglican Diocese of All Nations.