Most ministry leaders we work with don’t have a clear strategy for what to do with high capacity givers.  Here are three of the most common strategies I see:

1. Ignore Them

Many people base this strategy off James 2 that talks about not showing favoritism and so they completely ignore the high capacity donor.  Most ministry leaders don’t know who gives and who doesn’t.  Ignoring these people is an option and you can choose to let God deal with people as he sees fit and you can completely remove yourself and leadership from the equation.  The ministry leader usually tells me they don’t want to treat these people any differently than people who give a small amount.

2.  Use Them

We use high capacity donors when we only ASK them for money when we need something.  This usually happens around capital campaigns and fund raising efforts.  We are coached that if we are going to “make” the goal we need to ask these people.  I have seen this work and I have seen it damage relationships.  This is a “means to an end” strategy.  I would rather you ignore them than use them.  That’s just my two cents.

3.  Develop Them

You develop high capacity donors when you build relational equity.  This means you have a strategy to add value consistently to their lives.  Granger Community Church just did a retreat with their high capacity donors to just love them well!  This one night retreat was to build equity and say thank you.  The best strategy is to consistently have times to build into these leaders in generosity.  I would suggest:

-Annual Retreat

-Quarterly (Kingdom Builder) Meetings

-Monthly Email Update

Here is the deal, I’m not against asking high capacity donors for money, I just think it should be done right!

Which strategy have you subscribed to in the past?

Okay, lets keep this short and sweet.  I talk with A LOT of different churches and I have found that Pastor’s and ministry leaders tend to round UP when talking about attendance.  What I have found is most churches don’t even really know exactly what their numbers are and kinda guess at it.  Let me confess.  When I was leading small group ministry I would round up all the time as well.  If we had 54 groups I would say, “We have ABOUT 60 groups.”  I was guilty of this and I have done my absolute best to quit “rounding up” or “exaggerating” stats!

Why do you think ministry leaders tend to do this?  Have you noticed this to be a trend among ministry leaders?

There are many types of people in your church and it is important to best understand how to leverage their strengths.  One type of person is an entrepreneur.  I am an entrepreneur – here are some things I have started in my life:

1. Started Weed Pulling Company – 7 yrs old

2. Started Car Washing/Grass Cutting Company – 12 yrs old

3. Started investing in stock market – 15 yrs old

4. Started “Church Away From Church” student ministry environment – 17 yrs old. (we grew to 200 kids in 4 weeks, then got shut down by the church.)

5. Started Fellowship of Christian Athletes at Pleasant Grove High School – 17 yrs old

6. Started College and Career ministry at Elkdale Baptist Church in Selma, AL – college

7. Started collegeloadout.com – Junior year of college. (company built around moving college students out of dorms and storing their stuff during summers)

8. Started a bunch of small groups at Mountain Lake Church and helped start the Connection Group ministry

9. Started the ReThink Money Ministry and wrote a financial curriculum from scratch

10. Started The Change Group, the organization that helps churches be Fully Funded and Financially Free!

So, what do you do with a person like me? What do you do with starters?

Most churches don’t know what to do with these type of people.  Here is what I would suggest:

1. Give them something unique to do

If you try to put this type of person in your current system, they will either blow it up or burn out.  Entrepreneurs have to start stuff.  Rarely are they good managers.

2. Ask them questions

Specifically ask them, “What opportunities do you see to reach more people in our church?”

3. Encourage them

Most entrepreneurs I know need encouragement because they give so much to others they lead.

How have you leveraged entrepreneurs in your church?

1. We have to help people take their next step toward being a fully devoted follower of Christ

2. Less is more – Narrow the options and more people will get connected

3. Your communication strategy effects your discipleship strategy.  If your website is too busy, it will paralyze people.

4. With many options, people don’t know what to do next.

Questions to ask yourself as a church:

–What event or program requires a major announcement for it to succeed?

If a ministry or event was adding value to people, you will not need to push stuff so hard all the time.  Friends will bring friends.

–What would you not participate in if you were not the pastor?

That is strong!

–Does this program reach people outside the church or just satisfy people inside the church?

Be careful not to focus all ministries internally. Create two lists: “inside” ministries and “outside” ministries.

–Where is the fruit happening?

5. We can’t confuse activity in our church with life change in people.

6. Steps to clear communication in the church:

–Clarify our mission, vision and values

–Develop a focused strategy

–Use consistency in your messages

Trust speeds up an organization’s effectiveness.  Insecurity slows it down.

Lack of trust is a silent killer of church funding.  Why?

Trust is the foundation through which generosity is birthed.  Think about it.  We give based on the level in which we trust God to fill in the gaps.  When there is a high level of trust, you will see extreme sacrifice from people with their time and money.  The more people trust their leadership, the more people trust God.  We see this example with TV preachers from the 80′s.  The more people lacked trust in the televangelist movement, the less people would give to them.

So what do we do?

Push trust down through every level of the organization and generosity will go up.

Assessment:

-Do you believe the best in your staff?

-Do you release control?

-Do you help people achieve their vision even if it doesn’t benefit your vision?

We could ask many other questions, but you get the point.  Trusting your staff, volunteers, small group leaders, and others will increase generosity in your church.

Now you have to be completely honest.  

Is your culture a culture of trust or insecurity?

Feel free to share some examples of where you have seen this play out.

This was a comment on my blog.  WOW!  Marti Thomas, I honor you and your church for this.

“We started the 1% add-on about 20 years ago & now allocate 30% of our general fund budget to mission – 20% global, 10% local. We’ve seen God do amazing things through these resources.”

Pete Wilson does this for his church as well!  Marti & Pete, great job!

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I like working with pastors but I hate seeing pastors worry about finances.  I promise you one thing.  If you live off the principles in this blog, you will not worry about your finances.  I’m not saying you will never think about finances but the pressure will be off.

Here is the principle: Pick Your Percentages AND LIVE OFF THEM!

There are four BIG PICTURE categories I would organize church finances around:

1.  Missions Giving

I would start with this category and figure out what percentage of donations you want to give away.  I would suggest a minimum of 10% of your operational income.  Pete Wilson, the pastor of Crosspoint Church in Nashville, TN started with 10% but has challenged their church to give away 1% More each year for the next 10 years.  If you aren’t giving now, I would fight as HARD as possible to start.  We can’t ask our people to do what we aren’t willing to do as an organization.

2. Staffing

I like what Chris Hodges, pastor of Church Of The Highlands, does for staffing.  They DO NOT go above 35% on staffing.  If I was starting a church, I would stick to this figure.  I KNOW it seems low, but check out Warren Birds study on lean staffing.

3.  Facilities & Administration

I like to live around the 35% number on this one.  Facilities are VERY important in reaching people in our culture and it just takes money to run a church.

4.  Ministries

I would put the rest to ministries, 20%.

I learned this way of church finances from ARC Churches and Church Of The Highlands.  Last thought: the churches that give away the most, worry the least.

I recently have been asked by many pastors how much people should get paid. This is a good question to be asking right now because dollars are tight. There are many schools of thought on staff pay. I’m not going to tell you how much you should pay people because there are so many factors. However, I want to talk about the philosophy behind pay. The question is this:

Should you pay staff what they need, or what they are worth?

Paying people what they need means that no matter the value they bring to the organization they will only be compensated on what it takes for them to live. This will work early on in a church plant, but as the organization grows, people that produce should be paid more money. Why?

It is much harder to find people that produce at high levels. We take a risk and go out to hire “big shots” that are supposed to produce. Later on in the organization these hires cost a lot more than if you just paid the people who produced the most.

Another learning lesson for me has been that people will gravitate to the place where people are valued the the most. If performance is praised but not paid, people will take the cue that the leader has “gotten them” for cheap and will always keep them at that level.

Hire less people and pay them better. One right person is worth more than two wrong people! Turnover in a church hurts the churches momentum. Value your team and quit looking for the “star”; you probably already have them.

What are your thoughts on paying people what they are worth more than what they need?

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I was with a client this week that said, “Casey, after reading this book it brought back a ton of vision and passion to reach this small town that USA Today declared as one of the top three most dying towns!”

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