raise more resources module three © grow a healthy church ...€¦ · over the years of leading...


Module Three: Raising Money for Buildings, Missions and Special Projects

Next Steps from Module Two

1. What’s your courage level?

2. Stories of vision fulfilment

3. Are you providing enough options for people to give?

4. How can I get money to people?

5. Analysis of your expenditure and giving

Our Journey

Over the years of leading our church we have raised significant money for buildings and for missions.

We've raised money for a major building project. Our church had one acre of land with the facility on it that we outgrew. We sold that building and we borrowed fifty percent of the cost of the new project but we had big gap that we had to raise financially. We did that over a number of years and led our church through that challenging and inspiring process which gave amazing stories of faith and sacrifice.

We also made some significant changes in the way we raise money for missions. Our method included a quarterly missions offering and an allocation of ten percent of our regular Sunday giving. We would put all that into global missions. But after we moved in a new building, we thought, "You know what we need to shift gear here". Now, some people are a big fan of taking ten percent of your regular giving, you put it straight into missions, global or local. I'm probably not a huge fan of that but if you like it, that’s fine, go ahead and do it.


We decided to shift to a faith-promise pledge program. I wanted to connect people's giving to their heart so they would see the outcomes. So we shifted our church into a faith-promised pledge program which I'll explain in a little bit. We then saw significant growth in our mission’s giving.

Our mission’s program is called Beyond and includes local and global missions. Today it's approximately 50% of our annual giving again.

So what do I mean by 50%? If your church's annual Sunday tithes and offerings giving was $100,000 then if you are giving fifty percent of that again into a building, or a mission’s project, there would be $50,000.

When we talk to clients who have no or very minimal special fund raising for buildings or missions, we say, "Let's start you on a journey.” This will take a few years to get this into the culture of your church but in the first year you can expect, ten to fifteen percent of your annual Sunday giving. So if your Sunday giving is $100,000 you could expect $10,000 to $15,000 through the faith-promise program.

It will grow from there and generally should go up to the 25% to 40% mark. I've got a client church where they're giving into that faith-promised program is over 80%. It's remarkable. And quite unusual. If you can get it to 40%, you are doing really well. But it takes time to build culture and traditions given that time.

So let me talk you through a whole raft of practical strategies about raising money for buildings, missions and special projects.

1. Vision Builders

The first strategy is what I call, the Vision Builders concept. I call this one bucket with different streams of income and three funnels of distribution.

The three funnels of distribution are

1. Buildings, which can be mortgage, new buildings, raising equity for an investment property that you're going to utilize for a future building program, and repairs and maintenance.

2. Global mission 3. Local missions.

Your fund raising is coming from all the different families and people in your church.

I’ve found that some churches will have a building program but no missions program. Other churches will not have a building program, but will have a missions program. Other churches will have both elements while some have nothing.


It helps to simplify these different areas into one big bucket, Vision Builders, and thus build the vision that Christ has given to your church. As you give into that big vision builder bucket, you can distribute it into these three areas: Buildings, Global Mission, and Local Mission.

This keeps fundraising stream-lined and simple.

While I'm not a huge fan of targets for vision builder programs I think you can get specific about targets within the big bucket. It might be $5,000 for a local high school breakfast program, $8,000 for the missionaries in Indonesia to buy a motorbike. These individual targets can be part of the big bucket but I personally wouldn't go for an overall sum of money.

2. Faith promise pledge program

The second strategy, and this is related to the Vision Builder’s concept is a faith-promise pledge

program.

Over three giving Sundays, people make a pledge, a promise of an amount that they're going

to give. It may be a monthly amount or a cash amount on the giving Sunday or it may be an

annual sum, they're going to give once during the year.

It’s really important to understand this language, and also train your church in this language.

A faith-promise is not you thinking I would like to give a $1,000 so I'm just going to commit to

a $1,000 and now I'm going to believe for God to help me fulfil that promise. No, that's not a

faith-promise.

A faith-promise is where you promise to give that $1,000 and then you give it, and then you

use your faith to believe God to provide for every one of your needs.

Otherwise, people make wild promises which they can’t fulfil which is damaging to their own

walk with Christ but also makes it impossible for you to budget accurately on what has been

promised.

Also you're helping people think through their money, look at their budget and say, "You know

what, I got a faith gap here, but I'm committed to give my faith promise just as I've committed

to pay the power company or the gas company or my mortgage. I'm committed to pay those.

I'm going to believe God to fill that gap.” This helps people lift their level of faith.

As you launch a faith-promise pledge program as part of your Vision Builders concept make

sure you explain it fully to your people.


3. Build a team

The third strategy is build a team.

Don't try to do this by yourself and don't just hand it over to someone else to do. Build a small team of four to seven people.

You can give them different portfolios. Some for administrations, communications, marketing, prayer, and events.

You will want a team around you who will take on the burden of raising the resources that you need.

4. Prayer

Our fourth tactic is prayer. I believe the greatest spiritual welfare that happens in the life of the church is around evangelism, and the raising of resources.

Whenever you try to reach out to bring people to Christ, then you will find the devil at work to destroy your endeavours.

Anytime you try to raise finances, for buildings or for missions, for outreach, for special projects you will run into a brick wall of opposition.

The only way through this is prayer. So raise up a prayer team that you can handle your specific prayer requests.

Especially as you go into your three giving Sundays. Make sure that you have prayer cover. People praying and believing for break-through and change.

5. Communication

Number five strategy is communication.

Clear and open communication when you are raising money in a Vision Builder’s program is

absolutely critical.


Be specific about the projects and what the finance will achieve. Focus on the outcomes that

people can relate to. For instance, if it's $8,000 for a motorbike for missionaries, make sure you

state "This is the motorbike that we're going to buy and here's a picture of what the bike would

be like. It might be a different color but that's the make and the model we're going for."

The more specific you about the outcome, then the more people will connect to it and want to

give. Never be vague.

"People are down on what they're not up on." Rick Warren

Communicate in different ways. Video what you announce during your weekend services and

upload it to Youtube and Facebook. Just make sure they're short, ninety seconds to three

minutes. It can be raw footage. It doesn't have to be fancy.

Use email and social media while making extensive use of visual media.

Communicate, what you're achieving and be specific as you can.

6. Special events

The sixth tactic is special events.

Special events help build momentum through the three giving Sundays.

These include a whole church dinner or meals with specific groups. Especially if you've got a

guest speaker like a missionary or a chaplain coming in for a Sundays. Don't just put them in a

weekend service, put them into small groups. Put them into your small groups, business group,

prayer group, ladies' meeting or men's meeting.

Over the three giving Sundays you will build momentum.

Prayer meetings around the three giving Sundays, and even building up into it, are fantastic as

well.

Also you can use small group gatherings and prayer meetings during the month before your

three giving Sundays to warm people up to the vision. Sometimes it also works just to stack

these meetings around weekend service.

During these gatherings you're giving people specific outcomes, communicating the vision,

telling stories, and casting the vison prior to your call to give.


7. Ask

Eventually you have to ask people to give. How you will ask will depend upon the culture, theology and traditions of your church. However it’s vital to also start new traditions.

If our church had never raised money for buildings, we wouldn't have the building we've got now. If we didn't shift our focus for mission’s giving we would never have raised the amount of money that we have raised over the last fifteen years.

So don't be afraid, also to shift the way you ask, if you have a certain way of doing it.

Key factors in the ask:

1. Be specific

Outline the what and how and why of the projects. Help people decide by breaking down the annual giving amount, the bite size weekly. People think Jack can't give twenty four hundred dollars. Well, can you give fifty dollars a week? That will come up around the same, or you know couple of hundred a month. Help them by breaking it down.

2. Accentuate the quality of sacrifice not the quality of giving

I don't like programs that say, "We want 100 people to give $500 each so we can raise $50,000." It'll never happen. People don't think or work that way. I think you're putting a burden on people and you're not inspiring and challenging others. What do I mean by that? You should accentuate equality of sacrifice not equal giving. In other words, everyone step up to the plate and sacrifice. If a wealthy person gives $500 they wouldn't notice it gone out of their bank account. However, if a solo mom raising teenagers gave $500 then that is an overwhelming burden. Therefore, call on people to sacrifice but ask them to give the same amount.

3. Relate their giving to every day’s stories

Talk about people giving in terms of their lifestyle. If you buy one less coffee a day, it means you can give over a $1,000 in a year. If you reduce your family holiday, to one week instead of two it means you can give out a significant sum of money. Cut down on your take away

If you're chasing a bold vision, one

of the greatest gifts you can give

the people around you is to get in

front of them, eyeball to eyeball,

and ask them to step up and do

something great for God.

Do it well and you'll be bring glory

to God, esteem to the other person

and much-needed resources to

your ministry.

BILL HYBELS


meals and use that saving to increase your giving. Relate to everyday living, so people can say, “I can make a shift there.” Ask people to delay major expenditure for twelve months. Challenge people who are going to spend a large amount on a renovation of their house, "Hey, could you hold off on their for a year or two, so we can get the missionaries in Indonesia a motorbike, so the kids in the high school can have breakfast, so we can modernise our church building.”

4. Use stories

Personal stories from your church members will move others to respond generously. There's a strategic way to do this which I explain in the next section.

8. Three Sundays of Giving

I have been talking about this, and here it is, finally.

What I suggest with Three Sundays of Giving, is that you should warm your church up in the month before the three Sundays of giving.

“Hey we've got to have vision builders program coming up next month and we're going to be talking about some of their great projects, we're doing a motorbike in Indonesia for missionaries, we're doing breakfast for kids in the high school, we're renovating the floor and we'll tell you some more details in the weeks ahead.”

Then you come to your three Sundays of Giving and you preach on giving for the first two Sundays. You explain the faith-promise program. You outline in detail where the money is going and what you're going to do.

After you explain all the various aspects of the Vision Builder’s project, you then ask people to fill in a faith-promise card, making sure you get their name on the card. Tell people “the reason we need your name is we are going to use your faith-promise amount in our budget and so we need to make sure that it's a genuine gift.”

Otherwise you may have a fourteen year-old who thinks this is a huge joke to put in $5,000. When you budget on that $5,000 and it doesn't come in, you can get into a bit of strife.

So use your first two Sundays to get the faith-promised card handed in. Now I call the third Sunday the ‘mop-up’ Sunday when you catch people who have missed the first two Sundays.

During these Sundays I ask the people who are counting the faith-promise cards to give me the stage of life details of four or five people who are giving. I don’t know their names but I do their stage of life.


So that when I come to the church I'll say, there's a widow here who is giving two hundred dollars a month into our vision builders program.

There's an empty nest couple, people whose kids have left home, and they're giving a thousand dollars a month.

There's a business person who is giving ten thousand dollars and there's a teenager giving ten dollars a month.

We’ve got a child out there who's giving a dollar a month.

Make sure you cover a wide range of large and small amounts in different stages of life during your three Sundays of giving. Use the faith promise system like that and people will respond better to that.

9. Involvement of key leaders

Whenever you look, through the scriptures you'll see that the key leaders are giving and modelling giving in the projects.

So when you're raising money for a special project or a building program, communicate clearly to your board members, staff, and key leaders. Your expectation is that they should be in the program.

If you have a board member who’s not in your vision builders program, then the simple truth is they're not committed to the vision of the church and to your leadership and this becomes a moment of discipleship.

If I had a board member or a staff member not on the list of givers we would have a talk to them and see that as a moment of discipleship.

I never knew what everybody was giving but if they were doing nothing, I'll have a talk and say, "Hang On. You're a key leader in our church and this is a key part of extending the vision of our church. What's the deal?" Generally, what I would find is, that people had just missed those giving Sundays and forgotten. It takes courage but this is discipleship 101. You have to have leaders involved.

10. Set the pace

Pastor, if you are listening to this training package, you must set the pace. Lead others from a position of sacrificial, generous giving. Aim to be in that top ten percent of the givers in your church, relative to your income. It's part of your leadership role to set the pace.


11. Follow through

It's so vital to follow up with regular updates about the motorbike that is bought. Show a picture of the missionary on the motorbike as he visits different villages in Indonesia.

Send that out via email. Put that on social media. Get a video from the missionary.

Regularly communicate in all sort of different ways. Youtube, social media photos, emails, and verbal.

Remember, if you don't buy that motorbike in the next twelve months, then you're going to be in deep trouble when you try to raise more money.

Use the money for what you raised it for because that's a basic ethical point of integrity. Let people know, let them celebrate and enjoy the outcome of their sacrificial giving.

12. Appreciation

In relation to this, give appreciation. Thank people. Write lots of thank you note. Thank your church for being such a generous giving church. Don't take the giving for granted but always appreciate their sacrifice.

13. Giver development

An often neglected aspect of this topic is the development of those who have a gift to giving.

Some pastors can be fearful of being seen to be partial and don't want to pay special attention to those whose primarily gifting is accruing and contributing financial resources.

What can be even worse is when wealthy givers are deliberately shunned and sidelined. This neglect of givers can have the appearance of being Christ-like but it actually robs those with the gift of giving of an opportunity to grow and maximize their gift.

Let's face it. We don't treat musicians, youth leaders, kids’ leaders, small group leaders like this in our church. We disciple them in Christ's image we take every opportunity to assist their growth.

So pastors it's vital that you give space and time to develop and disciple those in your church. Work out who are your larger givers and begin to disciple them.


So how do you disciple givers?

You disciple them just like you disciple anyone else. Spend time with them, pray for them.

You appreciate them.

You resource them.

You give them books, you give them studies, you challenge them, you encourage them.

Take a personal interest in their world.

Be interested on what they're interested in.

Love them this way.

Treat your significant givers like you would treat other people you want to disciple to maximize who they are in Christ and it will reap you benefits.


I really hope this last module has been very helpful for you.

Your next steps are to either start a vision builders program or tweak what you've currently got.

I want to see you raise significant sums of finance to advance the kingdom and to build the church.

If you've got any questions out of this training package, any thoughts, please connect with me through growhealthychurch.com.

God bless you.

http://growahealthychurch.com/


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raise more resources module three © grow a healthy church ...€¦ · over the years of leading...

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