In Matthew 6:21, Jesus said that our treasure and our heart go together.  That means the heart and the bank account are connected.  What’s important to us is really reflected in where we spend our money.  You see that in your kids, in the company that you work for and in your own personal life.

Since finances are a big part of life, if you want to help people follow Jesus with their whole heart, you’re going to have to get involved in their financial lives. Discipleship is helping people follow Jesus, and when it comes to money, you’ve got to help people follow Jesus too.  You’re not taking an offering – you’re helping people follow Jesus.  Here are three ways you can disciple people.

1.  Help them love God. Get people to environments where God is likely to work.  Manipulating people may get you what you want, but helping people follow God with their whole heart can make an eternal difference.  Check your motives and truly help people love God.

2.  Help them love people. Help them develop friendships.  Teach them to care about people and show compassion.  Give them opportunities to be around people in need and people they can serve.  Since generosity requires a consistent choice, help them choose to be in the right place.

3.  Help them give. Giving is an art and a science.  It comes natural to some, but you have to teach most people.  One of the best ways to teach people how to give is to get them around other generous people.  Helping people give is a big difference from taking their money.

We’re passionate about helping churches be healthy when it comes to finances, increasing operational revenue through the regular programs and ministries.  But there’s more to church health than a good profit and loss statement.  After all, there are a lot of churches with money in the bank who don’t make a difference in their community.

Another important characteristic of a healthy church is having a healthy staff team.  If you lead a staff, here’s three things you must do for your staff.

1.  Care for their soul. Don’t just treat them like employees, giving them bottom line tasks to accomplish.  You are their shepherd leader and you have a spiritual responsibility to them.  Perhaps this is one reason why James 3:1 raises the bar on pastoral leadership.

2.  Clarify expectations. Your staff member really does want to do a good job, but they can’t hit a target if you don’t agree where you’re aiming.  Every staff member needs a clear job description with written goals.  Letting people figure things out on their own, apart from honest conversations, is a sure fire way to produce frustration.

3.  Plan something fun. It’s okay to blow off a regular staff meeting and do something fun.  Go bowling or play kickball in the parking lot.  Fun is good for your team, and as their leader, you can swing the mood of the entire office with a little play time.

It is key to have the right people on your staff to be able to do these things for them and function in a healthy manner.  My friend, David Lyons at MinisterSearch.com is the perfect person to help you with your staffing needs.  It can be difficult to find the right people to bring on your team and with his unbelievable network of ministry leaders he can help you!  If you are looking for a team member or considering expanding your I highly recommend my friend, David Lyons at MinisterSearch.com.

Our goal at GivingRocket.com is to help churches move people to be more committed followers of Jesus with their finances and as a result churches see increased giving. We know we talk about our system, but that means nothing if you can’t see the kind of results churches are experiencing. Here is a real pastor in a real church getting real results through our GivingRocket.com membership system.

You can test our membership system for $1.00 for two weeks and receive a truck load of bonuses just for saying “maybe”. Click here to get started today to see real results.

Check out what is happening at The Vine with Pastor David Walters.

I’m sitting on my couch tonight and I can’t believe that I’m hearing about more tornado’s ripping through towns around the USA.  As I watch the Biggest Loser Finale people are getting their houses and lives ripped apart by massive tornados and that makes me sick to my stomach.

A few weeks ago, God led me and Pastor Dave Anderson to raise 10k in 24 hours and God ended up raising 100k in 31 hours.  As of today we have raised 203k for immediaterelief.org.  My hometown was ripped apart in Pleasant Grove, AL and I’ve seen with my own eyes the devastation a major tornado can cause.  As I sat on my couch in Atlanta we leveraged twitter and facebook to raise the money.

This is an equipping post for any person that wants to raise money for disaster relief via social media.  Here are the principles that can work for you to help out!

1. Believe you can make a difference

The reason most relief efforts stay under funded in the short term is because people think, “Oh my $1,000 I raise will not make a difference.”  That type of thinking is dead wrong.  If you raise $100 or $100,000 it makes a difference.  Your $100 buys meals for people that don’t have them! Your $100 will provide clothes for a child immediately! Quit sitting there and not making a difference.  Start today!

2. Join with a local church or relief organization quickly

All you have to do is ask on Twitter, “Who is a church or local organization on the ground that I could partner with.” Also, just search the hashtag of what’s happening like #joplin and tweet those people and ask them who to connect with.  The reason you need to connect with a local church or relief organization is because they can assure you that money is hitting the ground and making an immediate difference.

3. Link to a NON-PROFIT’s Pay Pal or Payment System

Whoever you partner with, just link to their pay-pal or payment system.  It is VERY important when raising money to make the gifts tax deductible.  That is a HUGE way that we connected with large donors.  We had one donor give $50,000 to immediaterelieft.org.  Without it being a non-profit, probably wouldn’t have received that gift.

4. Buy a unique URL

Go to GoDaddy.com and buy something like HelpJoplinNow.com or FundAlabamaNow.com or whatever.  We chose immediaterelief.org because it was very specific on what we wanted to do.  The reason a unique URL is important is because people like to give to something bigger than your blog.  A website communicates your actually serious about doing this.  You can also just link to a page on your blog if that is the route you want to take.

5. Set up a simple website

You can set up a simple website through wordpress.com.  I believe via twitter you can find someone to help you for free to do this.  Keep the site SIMPLE!  It can even be a basic blog that is branded toward your effort.

6. Create a campaign

This is where most people MESS UP BAD!  People say on twitter, “Would you donate to tornado relief here …”   People don’t act until they have to act.  A campaign is based on two things:

-Amount of money you want to raise

-Time frame you want to raise it in

Then you can drive urgency for people to actually stop and get their card out and give!  Remember, people respond to deadlines!  It’s why the store says, “24 hour sale”.  People just don’t act until their is a reason to act.

7. Keep the updates rolling

You can’t tweet 1 or 2 times and get this done.  You have to blow up twitter until your goal is reached.  People will get mad and tell you to stop but those people probably didn’t give any money to help anyway.  You WILL lose twitter followers… DON’T WORRY ABOUT THAT!

8. Be RELENTLESS

Act like it was YOUR family that got hit and lost everything and that will change everything.  Do not quit until your goal is met!

9. Create a Twibbon

The little pictures on twitter profiles are called twibbons and they work really well.

10. Ask directly, not indirectly

We raised the majority of the money through asking people PERSONALLY through Direct Message, phone call or text message.  If you just tweet or FaceBook about your campaign it probably will not be as successful as it could be.

11. Engage churches if you can

We did the Tornado Tithe Challenge and that worked really well.  Asking churches to give 10% of their income for a weekend really can help you fund your relief efforts!

12. Understand the funding window in disasters

You have to act FAST!  The funding window on disasters is determined by whatever news is happening.  When we did immediaterelief.org, we were fighting for people to still care about the tornados after the Osama Bin Laden story broke.  While we were 100% happy about that, it totally took the Alabama tornados off the radar.  ACT NOW!

If this sounds like work, IT IS!  However, if you would take it seriously, you could literally care for the lost, the least and the lonely.  Carry the mat for people… It’s the Jesus way.

ANY HELP NEEDED? COMMENT BELOW!  Anything we missed you can add as well!

There comes a time in the ministry of every pastor and church leader that he or she will need to make a big financial ask.  This isn’t natural to most people, but here are five tips that will help you.

1.  Tell them before the meeting what it’s about. Don’t ask people to meet you for coffee and then blindside them with a talk about money.  People don’t like surprises.  Be upfront and honest about the purpose of the meeting.

2.  Meet with the husband and wife together. Hands down, this is one of the biggest mistakes that people make.  If you’re going to make a big ask of someone, then you need to meet with the husband and the wife.  Most couples don’t make large financial decisions apart from each other, and you need both people to hear your heart and vision.

3.  Care about people more than paper. If the first time you meet with someone is to ask them for money, then you’re going to fall short.  That’s because you’ve got to care more about people than what they can do to fund your cause.  A real relationship isn’t one-sided!

4.  Don’t apply pressure. Let people know that they have time to think, and don’t act like they are your only hope.  You want people to give in response to God’s leading, not your pressure.

5.  Follow up. Make sure you have realistic expectations and don’t expect people to just throw money at you in a coffee shop.  Follow up with people over a long period of time.

What other tips would you offer when making a big financial ask?

This post is from my good friend, Sandy Gibbes, and one of our partners at GivingRocket.  He is a Project Designer for LS3P | Neal Prince. I’ve gotten to know him over the last year or so as they partner with churches to help design buildings that function to reach their community and accomplish the vision of the church.  Here is part 1 of 2 for this blog he wrote recently.

I design buildings. Specifically, buildings for churches. However, the more I work at this I realize that there are many churches that begin the facility design and construction process missing one key element. Eventually in our process, I will ask the question on the idea of what this building needs to communicate and many times that question leads to the deeper issue: Communication Strategy. And many churches (large and small) have no idea where to begin.

What you need to realize as a church is that EVERYTHING you do communicates SOMETHING, from web to bulletins, from signage to facilities – a message is being communicated. Having a focused, clear and specific strategy will help change the culture of your church in a healthy way, from everything to involvement, to mission, brand implementation and definitely in GIVING. So here are three things that may help out with developing a strategy:

1. Identify Your Audience.

I don’t speak French. And I sure as heck don’t understand it. So trying to communicate a message to me in French would probably be a bad idea, right? The same thing goes for your church. The first step to effective communication is identifying who you are speaking to before you even develop what you are going to say and how you are going to say it. This is VITAL when you are sharing something as profound and life-changing as the GOSPEL. You can have the best theological sermon with an abundance of cross references to Spurgeon and even to someone as relational Andy Stanley, but if you don’t know your audience it may not be the most effective way to communicate. If I asked you who you were trying to reach, you would probably say “The people that don’t know Jesus”. Yes, that is great. So is (hopefully) every other church. We know this and we get it. But SPECIFICALLY, who are you reaching? Is it a 35 year old male with 2.5 kids, a dog and a hell-bound cat? Know WHO you are trying to reach and it will help you find effective ways to communicate TO them.

We’ll continue Sandy’s blog for part 2.  For more details on how Sandy and LS3P | Neal Prince partner with churches, click here.

There’s a lot of controversy on the issue of high-capacity donors and how to respond to big givers. Here are three bad options for responding to high capacity donors.

1.  Use them. There are too many pastors who only get in touch with certain donors when there is a big need.  That’s taking advantage of someone’s spiritual gift!  You MUST examine your heart and get to the place where you care more about people than what they can do for you or your church.  People are not a funding mechanism for ministry – they are individuals created in the image of God who possess infinite worth to God.

2.  Favor them.  James 1:8 teaches us that we shouldn’t show favoritism in the church.  We shouldn’t value people differently because of their contributions; instead, we should treat all people equally because they ARE all equally valuable in the eyes of God.  Too many times, people with means are given special opportunities or positions based solely on their financial standing.  Putting wealthy people on committees or giving people special benefits because of their social position is wrong.

3.  Ignore them.  Some people ignore people’s generosity because they are afraid that the attention will turn to favoritism.  But just like we should develop people’s gifts of leadership and give people with the gift of service the opportunity to serve, we need to develop people’s gift of generosity.  The Bible teaches that those who are given more are required to be faithful, and as pastors, we must pay attention to that.  Many people ignore high capacity givers, and while their heart may be in the right place, this is a mistake.

On one hand, you can ignore people with the gift of giving.  On the other hand, you can abuse that gift. It’s a fine line, but with the Holy Spirit, you can learn to develop people with all kinds of gifts.

How do you treat high capacity leaders in your church?