Is your church giving being impacted by Haiti?
Eric Foley, author of the Transformational Giving blog, had an excellent post last week about church giving and Haiti. Joanne Fritz provided some great commentary on the same post in “Is your Nonprofit losing out to Haiti?”.
Most church leaders have thought the same thing at one time or another over the past several weeks. It’s beyond my imagination that more than $500 million has been raised in the three weeks since the tragic earthquake. (In no way am I diminishing the need or the response.) To put that amount in context, Giving USA reported that total giving to churches in 2008 (2009 numbers not available yet) was just over $100 billion. If what some church leaders are saying is true (that the people in the pew don’t have money to give), there where is all this “extra” money coming from?
Attacking Haiti is not a great strategy. In fact, it was a very appropriate response by the larger Christian community to mobilize to play a critical role in the recovery process for these people who were already living in the midst of devastating poverty.
My interest lies in what can we learn about this response to better inform how we fund our budgets. We need to focus our efforts on how to create a long-term, sustainable strategy that includes creating a culture that values, teaches, and practices the spiritual discipline of giving. It’s too easy to fund our churches by creating a crisis. It’s impossible to create a strategy and be intentional when our entire funding plan consists of putting our fires as they arise.
What steps are you taking today to create a culture of generosity, grounded in stewardship, that will ensure money doesn’t inhibit your ability to fulfill and complete the vision God has placed on your heart?
About
Ben Stroup recently joined GENERIS, an innovative stewardship consulting firm focused on accelerating generosity and funding the work of the Kingdom, after more than four years of ministry on church staff and five years of ministry with LifeWay Christian Resources.
His primary focus is helping churches maximize their giving capacity and diversify their funding streams while providing the structure needed to build long-term sustainable ministries.
Ben writes and presents at various events on subjects such as leveraging technology to drive funding, understanding the changing rules of church giving, and establishing sustainable funding models for ministry. His writing has been published in magazines such as Church Solutions, Church Executive, The Ledger (NACBA) and other trade and industry publications.
He maintains an ongoing dialogue about stewardship and giving with pastors and church leaders through the Church Giving Matters blog, Twitter (@ben_stroup), and Facebook (Ben Stroup).
Ben calls himself the “Chief Broker of Opportunity” because he helps pastors change the conversation from “What do we have to cut to survive?” to “What does God want us to do next?” He graduated cum laude from Belmont University. Ben and his wife, Brooke, and son, Carter, live near Nashville, Tennessee.
Ben published his first book in 2009 which sold more than 6,100 copies in the first 10 weeks and is currently available in more than 100 retail stores across the country. He is currently working on a second book.
View Ben’s profile for more information.
