Thursday, August 26, 2004
Annual Stewardship Campaign
8/25/2004
Dear Fellow Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord,
This is the first of an irregular e-news publication of useful information to help you grow your church and advance the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. My focus will be STEWARDSHIP but I will include other tid-bits to help you in your work.
Does your church need more money? God is not poor! There are long tested and proven ways to adequately finance the Lord's work in your situation. But you MUST be faithful! [1 Cor. 4:2]
First of all you must TEACH stewardship! as one wag has said, "God has plenty of money; it's just in the pockets of His people!" Some pastors are afraid to talk about money because they fear they will be seen as wanting it for themselves. "People, they say are 'turned off.'" Well, that is true IF your motives are wrong.
But (1) we are called to teach the whole counsel of God. You cheat your people if you don't instruct them in Biblical giving. And (2) actually people want to know what the Bible says about giving. There are a lot of false teachings out there.
Dealing maturely with the money issue is a matter of leadership. Jesus talked about it extensively. More than half of His parables delt with the subject. Paul also made giving a significant issue. Adequate finances is one of the essential element of church growth. D.L. Moody said, "When money is needed nothing else will do." Of course, before you can lead others, you must deal with your own attitudes and practices!
Over the years, churches have found that one of the most effective ways to teach Christian Stewardship is to have an annual Stewardship emphasis usually in the Fall. There are available many different packaged programs to help you do just that. In fact, I am ordering a new one entitled "Miracle of Expansion" from the Baptist Convention of Florida to have available to you in the state convention office later this Fall.
But you can have a quire effective campaign that you design yourself.
I. Plan! the old adage is still true: "To fail to plan is to plan to fail!"
II. Develop your church budget early. Use whatever procedure your church uses; the broader the participation the better. (Of course, we hope you will not forget to include the Cooperative Program and your local association offerings or increase them if they are not at the level they ought to be.)
III. It is nice to have a theme--one that will speak to your church--short and spiffy: Something like "Faith in Action," "Moving Forward," or "Growing in this Grace Also."
IV. Set aside three to four weeks to focus on the campaign. It takes a while to set in and of course some folks are there only half of the time. This also emphases the importance of the subject.
V. Have at least one stewardship testimony every Sunday. You may be surprised that there are actually lay people in the church that are even more concerned about stewardship than the Pastor.
VI. Develop a series of sermons on stewardship. We have a number of resourses in the State Office including sample sermons and a CD with all of the scripture in the Bible on stewardship. But I always liked to write my own sermons. You might follow an outline like this:
1. God owns everything; we are His managers.
2. Jesus Taught Generosity (to everyone, not just to the church)
3. Tithing for Dummies (Mal. 3)
4. Hilarious Giving. (2 Cor. 9:7)
(Of course, you might want to build one or more sermons around your theme, if you use one. )
VII. Use ample publicity. Put posters up around your meeting place. Put inserts in your weekly church bulletins (folders). Make a tasteful banner if your situation allows it. Send a weekly letter to all ATTENDERS from the pastor explaining the campaign and giving news about what is going on.
VIII. Give at least one Sunday School (or small group) session to lessons on stewardship for all ages.
IX. A system of personal commitments ("pledges") is very effective but it is a lot of work and must be well organized. But this can be done in a way that is not offensive and conforms to the style of your church. In any case, you need to provide some mechanism that causes your people to take the issue personally. But do not assume that the pledges must equal the budget. The budget should be a statement of what you believe God wants you to do and should not be controlled by how much people respond to the campaign. Actually "pledging" is just a teaching tool.
X. Climax with a celebration dinner. This could be a pledging event or a reporting event or even just a teaching event in which you invite a guest speaker. It should be upbeat and fun.
Follow-up this campaign with quarterly reports on giving and reminders of stewardship in the program and mentions in sermons.
We in the state office stand ready to help you in any way we can. We have many resources to help in stewardship. See WWW.BRNonline.info Go to the resources page, type Stewardship under "search." And from time to time there will be useful materials on my blog, "Digging Deeper" at bobbybaptist.blogspot.com.
Bob Tallent
Stewardship Consultant, BCPa/SJ
Dear Fellow Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord,
This is the first of an irregular e-news publication of useful information to help you grow your church and advance the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. My focus will be STEWARDSHIP but I will include other tid-bits to help you in your work.
Does your church need more money? God is not poor! There are long tested and proven ways to adequately finance the Lord's work in your situation. But you MUST be faithful! [1 Cor. 4:2]
First of all you must TEACH stewardship! as one wag has said, "God has plenty of money; it's just in the pockets of His people!" Some pastors are afraid to talk about money because they fear they will be seen as wanting it for themselves. "People, they say are 'turned off.'" Well, that is true IF your motives are wrong.
But (1) we are called to teach the whole counsel of God. You cheat your people if you don't instruct them in Biblical giving. And (2) actually people want to know what the Bible says about giving. There are a lot of false teachings out there.
Dealing maturely with the money issue is a matter of leadership. Jesus talked about it extensively. More than half of His parables delt with the subject. Paul also made giving a significant issue. Adequate finances is one of the essential element of church growth. D.L. Moody said, "When money is needed nothing else will do." Of course, before you can lead others, you must deal with your own attitudes and practices!
Over the years, churches have found that one of the most effective ways to teach Christian Stewardship is to have an annual Stewardship emphasis usually in the Fall. There are available many different packaged programs to help you do just that. In fact, I am ordering a new one entitled "Miracle of Expansion" from the Baptist Convention of Florida to have available to you in the state convention office later this Fall.
But you can have a quire effective campaign that you design yourself.
I. Plan! the old adage is still true: "To fail to plan is to plan to fail!"
II. Develop your church budget early. Use whatever procedure your church uses; the broader the participation the better. (Of course, we hope you will not forget to include the Cooperative Program and your local association offerings or increase them if they are not at the level they ought to be.)
III. It is nice to have a theme--one that will speak to your church--short and spiffy: Something like "Faith in Action," "Moving Forward," or "Growing in this Grace Also."
IV. Set aside three to four weeks to focus on the campaign. It takes a while to set in and of course some folks are there only half of the time. This also emphases the importance of the subject.
V. Have at least one stewardship testimony every Sunday. You may be surprised that there are actually lay people in the church that are even more concerned about stewardship than the Pastor.
VI. Develop a series of sermons on stewardship. We have a number of resourses in the State Office including sample sermons and a CD with all of the scripture in the Bible on stewardship. But I always liked to write my own sermons. You might follow an outline like this:
1. God owns everything; we are His managers.
2. Jesus Taught Generosity (to everyone, not just to the church)
3. Tithing for Dummies (Mal. 3)
4. Hilarious Giving. (2 Cor. 9:7)
(Of course, you might want to build one or more sermons around your theme, if you use one. )
VII. Use ample publicity. Put posters up around your meeting place. Put inserts in your weekly church bulletins (folders). Make a tasteful banner if your situation allows it. Send a weekly letter to all ATTENDERS from the pastor explaining the campaign and giving news about what is going on.
VIII. Give at least one Sunday School (or small group) session to lessons on stewardship for all ages.
IX. A system of personal commitments ("pledges") is very effective but it is a lot of work and must be well organized. But this can be done in a way that is not offensive and conforms to the style of your church. In any case, you need to provide some mechanism that causes your people to take the issue personally. But do not assume that the pledges must equal the budget. The budget should be a statement of what you believe God wants you to do and should not be controlled by how much people respond to the campaign. Actually "pledging" is just a teaching tool.
X. Climax with a celebration dinner. This could be a pledging event or a reporting event or even just a teaching event in which you invite a guest speaker. It should be upbeat and fun.
Follow-up this campaign with quarterly reports on giving and reminders of stewardship in the program and mentions in sermons.
We in the state office stand ready to help you in any way we can. We have many resources to help in stewardship. See WWW.BRNonline.info Go to the resources page, type Stewardship under "search." And from time to time there will be useful materials on my blog, "Digging Deeper" at bobbybaptist.blogspot.com.
Bob Tallent
Stewardship Consultant, BCPa/SJ
# posted by Bob @ 9:39 AM 
