Last week I talked about what to
do if your giving is in trouble. This
week I want to expand on that in a specific way. Here are six behaviors that churches often
practice with the hopes of increasing giving, but actually de-motivate giving. These
all come from the Survival level of the pyramid (see last weeks blog). Typically,
these are used when things are getting tough.
We develop a sense of panic and we are afraid, so we employee these to
respond for our survival needs. Because
these seem to address the pressing need of the moment they are very
attractive. It feels as if we can just
get these things right, then some how the budget problem or crisis will be
resolved. The reality is that these will
never motivate people to be long-term, healthy givers.
1. Budgets numbers.
Budgets are useful tools for a
church. They serve as a way of
expressing vision and goals in tangible ways.
No church should operate without a careful and well-planned budget. So why are budget numbers not a good tool to
motivate giving? In short, numbers don’t
tell stories; they are not exciting.
Most folks in your church do not want to provide a lot of input into the
budgeting process. Most of these folks
do not care how much the electric bill is expected to be each month. Sharing the numbers can create awareness with
a budget, which is not a bad thing, but it will not create a lot of excitement
for giving.
2. Equal monthly division of annual budgets.
Many churches print in their
bulleting a line that says something to the effect “Week needs…$XXXX”. The idea is to take the annual budget and
divide it by 52 and post that number in the bulletin or newsletter. Additionally, a church will also post last
week’s offering on the next line and below that, post the amount above or below
budget that offering was. The number
indicating 1/52 of the annual budget is an almost useless number. A church almost never receives exactly 1/52
of its annual budget on any given Sunday.
Most people are paid on a 2 week cycle so half the time the offering
will be well below the “weekly need” which is discouraging, and half the time the offerings will be well above
the “weekly need”, which may create a sense that generous giving is not necessary.
Additionally, giving varies month to month. No month will receive exactly 8.33% of the
annual budget because giving is fluid.
Typically, giving at the first of the year is low, as folks are paying
off Christmas bills and grows toward Easter.
After Easter giving begins to decline and bottoms out during summer
vacation season. It begins to increase
in the fall and tends to grow until sometime between Thanksgiving and
Christmas. Understand a graph of your
giving over the course of the year will look like a two hump camel. Don’t expect to have a steady income.
3. Bills.
In the classic film “The Sound of
Music” there is a song that praises “a few of my favorite things”, and after
listening to that song a number of times, I have never heard “paying bills” as
one of the favorite things. People are
not motivated to give generously because the church has an electric bill. The only time most people are motivated by
paying bills is if they will be able to walk away from the debt. No one lists the weekly or monthly bill
paying moment as the high point of the week.
While paying bills is an important thing to do, it is not a motivational
thing. I have heard offering meditations
and even sermons in which the speaker says something in reference to the
offering “it is time for us to pay the bills”.
Remember that the word “offering” is essentially a word about worshipful
giving to God. When something as holy as
an offering is reduced to paying the bills, it takes us from something grand
and high to something plain and even boring.
4. Guilt.
Guilt trips are almost always
short trips and generally are not taken a second time. One of the least effectively ways to try to
motivate people to give is to attempt to guilt people into giving.
“Have you done your part?”
“Those who have gone before have
done so much, what have you done?”
“Many of you will spend more on
Sunday dinner than you put in the offering plate?”
“What have you done to support
this church?”
As young teenagers, our parents
may have guilt-tripped us into cleaning our room, but none of us were ever
guilt-tripped into being neat. We may
have been guilt -tripped into writing a thank you note to Aunt Ethel for the
underwear she sent at Christmas, but we weren’t guilt-tripped into have a heart
of gratitude. Guilt as a manipulation
for giving fails to motivate people to have a generous heart. It can never reach the real center of our
will and will never effect long-term change toward generosity.
5. Crisis moments and emergency appeals.
Emergencies happen; they are by
nature unexpected and unpredictable. At
times they require special giving. But
if they come often it leads to the opinion that resources are not being managed
well and that long range planning is not being done. We also need to be a little narrower in what
we call an emergency. A tornado hitting
our town is an emergency. The AC
breaking down should not be an emergency.
The second law of thermodynamics tells me that it will break and I
should plan for that event. A rainy day
fund is not a luxury; it is a prudent preventative. An ongoing pattern of crisis appeals will
cause church members to doubt the wisdom of its leadership and will teach
people not to give generously consistently, but to wait for the next crisis.
6. Power giving.
“If you give, you get your
way.” We would never in a million years
say this out loud or publicly, but we communicate this in many different
ways. If giving volume (amount), rather
than faithfulness (sacrifice) is part of the consideration in the selection of
leadership, we can inadvertently communicate this message. If we are more apt to have a follow-up call
with a wealthy visitor than a poorer one, this attitude has a foothold. Because we live in a culture of consumerism
and preference for wealth this sinful attitude is very subtle and we will have
to be diligent to guard against it.
Take time to do an evaluation and
see if you are attempting to motivate giving using these practices and consider
doing away with them or revising them to help motivate your people to give with
a joyful and generous heart.
Next week, six tools that can
actually help motivate giving and develop generous hearts.
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