Inspiring your church members to be more generous with their time, talents, and treasure is one of the most difficult aspects of ministry, especially in today’s culture. Most voices in our society encourage people to live with clenched fists. Uncertainty in the economy, instability in global geopolitics, and people's tendency to spend all of what they earn (or more) has made cultivating generosity challenging at best.
But before you give up and chalk your church’s lack of generosity up to the fact that 'people just aren’t giving like they used to', let me encourage you.
Developing a generous culture to fund ministry can be complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. With good information, a strategic blueprint, and technology to support your efforts, cultivating generosity in each and every individual church member is more realistic than you might think.
How to create a blueprint for developing generosity in your church
Step #1: Commit to cultivating relationships with your givers.
The first step in creating a generosity game plan in your church is to know the difference between managing finances and managing donors. This is the foundation for any church leader who wants to cultivate more generosity within their church.
Step #2: Leverage technology to learn more about your church’s generosity.
Taking the time to create a 'tell all' giving report is the second step in creating a blueprint for developing generosity. If you’re looking for a way to leverage technology to increase generosity, our new financial service provider, MortarStone, can help you take donor analysis to a whole new level.
Step #3: Figure out how you’re going to act on the information.
You can run reports all day, but if you’re not doing anything with that information, what’s the point? Technology is great at providing you with the information you need, but at some point you have to act. If you’ve been discouraged by a decrease in generosity but haven’t figured out how to reverse the trend, here are a few action steps you can take based on information from your donor analysis.
Step #4: Cultivate generosity within the context of your entire ministry.
Don’t forget that giving is just as much a spiritual discipline as it is a financial one. As you look for ways to develop a generosity blueprint within your church, don’t forget to cultivate it within your church’s process for ministry engagement. Effectively motivating generous people in your church to give must happen in the entire context of your ministry, not just in the area of stewardship.
What could happen if you develop a generosity blueprint for your church?
A few weeks ago, Executive Pastor Kevin Stone shared how his church’s generosity blueprint was making a difference. After realizing the need to cultivate relationships with givers and leveraging technology to learn more about his church’s generosity, Kevin learned that his church had a lot to do when it came to donor development.
As Kevin mentioned, when you take the time to develop a blueprint for increasing generosity in your church, you’ll start to...
- Make better financial decisions for the future of your church.
- Take a proactive rather than reactive approach to increasing your church’s margin for ministry.
- Identify who is giving for the first time and who has stopped giving as a way to make sure people know you’re paying attention to the money they give.
- Accelerate giving by creating a plan and timeline to build sustained, passionate, loyal givers.
Does your church have a blueprint for developing generosity? How are you leveraging tools like MortarStone to make better financial decisions and increase generosity among your members?