A Christmas Tree Sale that Does More than Raise Funds
Five years ago, Vale United Methodist Church in Oakton, Virginia, began a Christmas tree sale to support the mission work that was so central to…
Browsing: Giving
Articles
Why Giving Matters and Clues for Improving It
To encourage the spiritual gift of giving, this eight-minute video by Lewis Center Director Lovett H. Weems, Jr., provides an overview of the importance of…
50 Ways to Encourage Faithful Giving
Helping people experience the joy of giving is more than a way of funding the church’s ministry. These 50 Ways of encouraging faithful giving will…
Picture Your Community Impact
I am averse to numbers. I switched from being an elementary education major during my junior year in college when I discovered that I had…
Connecting Generosity to Faith
Several of my family members have worked as restaurant servers. They give me a hard time about church people being terrible tippers. It seems that…
Quarterly Financial Statements Enhance Giving
Every year churches are required to send out an end-of-year giving statement for IRS purposes. Instead of doing it only once a year, consider doing…
A Dialogue about Stewardship and Personal Finances
Too often, pastors discuss money with their parishioners in ways that suggest that stewardship is only about donating money to support the church. Faithful stewardship,…
Online Giving Connects Ministry and Mission
Nearly three years ago our church began offering online giving through our website. We added a PayPal button and were curious to see how church…
Electronic Giving: A Matter of Vision, Not Just Convenience
In 2011, Pleasant Hope Baptist Church was experiencing a financial crunch. In addition to the turbulence associated with the national economic recession, our discomfort was…
Focus Can Help Christmas Mission Giving
Many churches confront a question of missional focus, especially as the holiday season approaches. One group proposes an angel tree project. Another wants to do…
Expanding Small Group Involvement in Your Commitment Campaign
Small groups are an important setting for conversation around the theme of a church’s annual commitment campaign. In churches with a consistent, coordinated small groups…
Reclaiming the Lost Art of Story Telling
How can we gather and tell the stories of our congregation? Born in an oral culture when stories and traditions were as important as written…
Teaching Children to Tithe
Teaching children to tithe is an important part of their faith education that we often overlook. Giving to God is a core value of our…
Christmas is Not Your Birthday
There was a time when churches were reluctant to take an offering at their Christmas Eve services. The reasoning was that many people at those…
Christmas Giving for Christ
Soon the seasons of Advent and Christmas will be with us, and we will be inundated with commercials and product advertisements on television, radio, and…
Being a Stewardship Leader Requires Clarity
What do you think about financial stewardship? While there are a host of resources for churches on developing giving, it’s important to clarify your own…
Mature Disciples Supporting New Givers
My mother became a Christian when I was four. From that day forward, we were in church every Sunday … almost. Stewardship Sunday was the…
From Fundraising to Stewardship
One of the simple realities of congregational life is that most churches are financially dependent on voluntary giving. Most pastors do not relish the annual…
Three New Financial Stewardship Books
Three established authors on the subject of congregational finances have new books to help congregations develop joyful and generous givers. Each author has important contributions…
Paperless Giving
More than ten years ago, I was introduced to “paperless giving” as a way to receive the offering in worship. A specified amount of money…
Reasons Why People Give
In our U.S. Congregational Life Survey, worshipers rated the extent to which ten factors influence their decision to give to their congregation. The most important…
New Ways of Viewing Faith and Money
Many Christians tend to oversimplify the essence of scripture’s teaching with regard to money in such statements as “Christians must tithe” or “the faithful will…
Yours for the Asking
Recently I talked with a pastor about how to fund a $6,000 need beyond the resources of the church budget. I felt he had an…
Is Your Church the Best Place to Give?
The other day I was visiting with a key donor of a church along with the pastor. The pastor was asking the donor if she…
Giving Up to Our Potential
The oft-repeated claim that churchgoers are the most generous of Americans was always a reassurance to me as I labored in the vineyard of stewardship…
Put Your Money Where You Want Your Heart to Be
If you want your heart to be with God, here’s a suggestion I’ve found to be very powerful in my own life. Put your money…
Helping Our Children Become Worshipful Givers
Children and youth are typically given little attention in relation to worship through giving. The reasons range from, “They are only children,” to “They don’t…
Paying Attention to Those Who Give and Those Who Don’t
I have come to see the importance of thinking about different segments within the congregation. There is tremendous diversity within any congregation when it comes…
Motivating Generous Giving
Scott Cormode writes that pastors need to provide the theological categories to make spiritual sense of money and the issues that it creates. There are…
The Gift
Ann Michel writes about the remarkable bequest given toward college education by Osceola McCarty, who completed sixth grade, as an example of selfless living and generosity. “What would stewardship season…
