Tornado Relief Slide/Images

Check these out! Use them tomorrow during your offering talk and donate a % of the fund to our fund to provide ON THE GROUND practical needs for family in Alabama.  Again, we are working in partnership with Crosspoint Church and Pastor Dave Anderson! We set out today to raise 10k and have raise 75k at this point!  We now want to get to 100k by tomorrow.

Churches, use this stuff and please email me: casey@givingrocket.com if you will give a percentage from tomorrow!

You can donate at THIS POST!!!

DOWNLOAD THE FILES USING ONE OF THE FOLLOWING LINKS:

1. 16x9Dimensions
- zip file of 5 images/slides (jpg) – Click Here To Download or use the following link:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/Tornado-Relief-Images/16×9.zip

2. 4×3 Dimensions
zip file of 5 images/slides (jpg) – Click Here To Download or use the following link:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/Tornado-Relief-Images/4×3.zip

ADDITIONAL IMAGES INCLUDED IN THE FILES ABOVE

Here is the deal… My home town is Pleasant Grove, Alabama.  It was completely leveled by the Tornado’s.

It seems like it’s such a “big” project to clean up everything and put the lives of thousands of people back together.  I was listening to my pastor Andy Stanley talk earlier this year and he said, “Do for one what you wish you could do for everyone.”

I know that I can’t personally fix the situation in Alabama for every person but I know we can make a difference in some lives.  I’m partnering with Dave Anderson and CrossPoint Church out of Decatur, Alabama to take in $10,000 this weekend to provide walmart gift cards to families that need immediate help with clothes, batteries, food, and shoes for people.

HERE IS THE PROBLEM!!!

Dave is on the ground talking to people and everyone is bringing them water and the same old stuff right now that is great BUT they DON’T HAVE CLOTHES!

Kids don’t have underwear, mom’s don’t have wipes for their babies when they soil their diaper, and families don’t have PRACTICAL usable stuff that they need TODAY!

THE SOLUTION: You getting your wallet out right now and being one of the people to give a $500, $400, $300, $200, $100 donation.

I KNOW it seems like your donation doesn’t matter but it does! Get your wallet out right now and join us. We are literally buying the Walmart gift cards in REAL time as the money comes in and handing them out TODAY!

Please help, please give up your money so someone else can have immediate help!

ALL GIFTS ARE TAX DEDUCTIBLE! Let’s do this… We have 24 hours!

P.S. – My best friends Louie & Lindsay Lovoy’s 84 year old Granddads home was destroyed.  We will give directly to them as well.  This is SO personal for me.  Please help now!

In this series of posts, we’re talking about five ways that you can be intentional about beating the summer giving slump that occurs in many churches.

#5 – Preach a mid-summer money message.

The beginning of the school year and the first part of the calendar year are great times to focus on reaching guests, since many people engage with church for the first time during these months. Many churches find that the summer is a great time to build up the body of Christ, focusing more on internal issues.

The summer is a great time to talk about money and challenge people to give their “first fruits” to God. Talk about what’s coming later in the fall and remind people that their generosity helps make it all possible.

In this series of posts, we’re talking about five ways that you can be intentional about beating the summer giving slump that occurs in many churches.

# 4 – Get creative with your offering times.

Maybe you tack on giving to the worship set, with the worship leaders saying something like this:  “Just like we’ve worshipped through singing, now it’s time to worship through giving.”  Sometimes, the offering comes at the end of the service.

While you spend hours and hours on sermon preparation, and the band carefully rehearses every song, you probably spent little time planning out what to say right before the offering. The reality is that you have fifty-two opportunities a year to cast vision for your church, and you should connect that vision to the time of giving.   Take some time to plan out how you’re going to emphasize the time of giving in your services.  Get intentional.

Giving Rocket members get a written-out offering talk EVERY SINGLE WEEK.  It’s done for you – ready to give to a staff member or even a volunteer!

In this series of posts, we’re talking about five ways that you can be intentional about beating the summer giving slump that occurs in many churches.

#3 – Put on a generosity retreat for high capacity givers and leaders.

Instead of ignoring big givers out of fear of having favorites, or using them to fund your ministry, why not intentionally develop high capacity people and their gifts? Many of the churches we work with find that the summer is a great time to accomplish this. Invite some key leaders to an overnight trip. It doesn’t have to be fancy, and you don’t have to bring in a high dollar band or speaker. Stay tuned for more blog posts about how to do this.

In this series of posts, we’re talking about five ways that you can be intentional about beating the summer giving slump that occurs in many churches.

#2 – Invite key leaders to your home.

The summer is about relationships, so get together with people in a casual, relaxed atmosphere. Invite some people to your home for a cookout or BBQ. Let people bring their families and just provide a time for everyone to talk. Take some time off from preaching and teaching and build into people’s lives. Play a little badminton or volleyball. Eat a little angel food cake covered in strawberries and blueberries. Have a good time with your people.

Before you eat, say a few words about what God is doing in your church and let them know that you’re excited about the rest of the year. You don’t need a PowerPoint presentation or handouts – just let people know that you’re glad to be going through life with them.

Have you ever done this type of event?  How did it go?  What other suggestions would you make?

Welcome to the summer.  Baseball.  Summer vacations.  The 4th of July.  And sporadic church attendance.  Fluctuations in attendance may be frustrating, but fluctuations in giving could be detrimental.  You may not be able to keep people from missing church in the summer, but you can be proactive in keeping them engaged in generosity.  In this series of posts, I want to give you five things you can do to beat the summer giving slump:

#1 – Help people Automate The Important.

What if you helped people automate what’s truly important, so that they could give to the ministry of your church even if they were out of town? What if your church could receive an offering 24 hours a day and seven days a week instead of three minutes during a weekend church service? What if you could engage new donors and see an overall increase in giving during the summer months?

I’m talking about engaging your congregation with an intentional, pre-summer, digital giving campaign that lasts several weeks.  I’m talking about a church-wide communication effort, not a one-time announcement in a service.  I’m talking about leading your people to give online, not just making it available.

We have an entire Automate The Important resource, complete with graphics, letters, cards and everything you need to run an automatic giving campaign.  If you’re a Giving Rocket member, you get it as a part of your membership, but you can also make a one-time purchase here.

Too many churches are financially strapped, which means they aren’t ready to respond when God drops an opportunity in their laps.  Here are three ways to be financially strapped, and what you can do about it:

1.  Leave yourself no financial margin. Too many churches operate week to week, deciding what bill to pay now and what can wait until next week.  It’s a miserable way to live because it’s reactive.

Solution:  Right now, open up a savings account and set a short term goal, which is exactly what Dave Ramsey would advise you to do in your personal financial life.

2.  Hire people in response to needs. I’ve seen it happen over and over again:  a church grows fast and they hire people to fill ministry positions.  Over time, the growth isn’t sustainable and people are downsized or let go.

Solution:  Create a healthy leadership development program and develop volunteer leaders.  Stop talking yourself into hiring someone to do every job in the church.  Take the time to invite, equip and appreciate volunteers, and you’ll have plenty of people to do ministry.  Take the long road, not the short-term bailout.  Then, when you’re ready and able to hire people, you can hire high quality leaders.

3.  Refuse to spend money on things that help people give generously.  Setting up a simple online giving system, rolling out a giving kiosk, and printing offering envelopes all cost money.

Solution:  Pick one thing and commit to using it over a year.  For example, don’t introduce offering envelopes and wonder why they didn’t work.  Teach people how to use them and commit to use them for the long haul.  It takes time to create a culture.

My desire is to see churches fully funded and church leaders free from financial worry.  I wake up thinking about how I can help more church leaders see increased giving so they are not strapped and living week to week through GivingRocket.com.  Our Easter Member Offer is going on and I’d love for you to test drive a GivingRocket.com membership FREE until Easter.  Check it out here.

Don’t buy into the lie that the only way you can make improvements in your church is to spend money.  There are a lot of things you can do that will make ministry more effective WHILE decreasing expenses.  Here are a few ideas.

1.  Outsourcing.  It’s probably cheaper for you to outsource things like graphic design and book keeping than it is for you to hire a designer or a bookkeeper, even part-time.  These 1099 employees often produce incredible work, and don’t burden your budget in the same way that a traditional staff member would.

2.  Dropbox. If you’re not familiar with Dropbox, then check it out.  It’s online file storage, and it’s a cheap way to share files between everyone on your team.  A 2-Gig account is absolutely free, and could serve the same function as an in-office network that’s far more expensive to set up.  If you want to spend a little bit of money, you can increase your storage space.

3.  Google Apps for Domains. If you’re a non-profit organization with a Federal Tax ID number, then you can get Google Apps, including email, for free. This could save your church hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

What are some of your money-saving and efficiency ideas?

You may or may not know this, but when I started helping churches years ago I drove around in my truck preaching at churches and teaching a personal financial curriculum that I wrote. (No, I don’t do this anymore because Joe Sangl is  1000% better at it than I am. Use him!)

When I started, to be honest, everything was all about me.  When I woke up in the morning I thought about how I could get churches to pay me something to do something for them.  To be fair I wasn’t “all bad”, but I had been trained in a lot of ways to finesse people more than truly love them.

After 18 months of miserably trying to build a company, I met my #1 mentor and best friend, Billy Hornsby.  Everything changed.

Billy taught me this principle: When you help others become successful, you are successful.

Before I started learning this way of life, I honestly believe I was ripping off the church.  Not financially ripping them off, but relationally.  You can be a relational ripoff!  Here is how God is changing me…

-I used to want a paycheck, now I want a friendship

-I used to want a success story, now I want you to be a success

-I used to believe in myself, now I believe in people

-I used to try to build something great, now I try to be great through serving

-I used to have a packed calendar to make me feel important, now I have more free time for people

I am not saying I’ve got it figured out.  I am just saying that God has me on a journey and he is showing me a whole new way.

I would like to speak to church vendors for one second… Hey guys, the church IS NOT a MARKET… the church is not a NICHE… the church is not a CLIENT…. the church is not an INDUSTRY… the church of Jesus Christ is a beautiful bride that we should be trying to help get ready for the big day!  We don’t need to talk about other companies and bashing them. We don’t need to bombard churches constantly with sales emails all the time.

Proverbs 22:1 says, “A good name is better than great riches.”

Church leaders, I’m going to be honest… We have a goal to be at 500 solid relationships through our DONE-FOR-YOU membership system by December 31, 2011.  We are getting close and I want the opportunity to show you a new way to be served and cared for.  We want something FOR YOU, not FROM YOU!  Join FREE today and we will serve you well! You can test membership out until Easter for free and decide if you’d like to be in relationship with us so we can serve you or not.

This isn’t my usual post, but I needed to say this!