The First Question is WHY
Here are a few major reasons we found:
- With a major decline in weekend attendance, many churches feel the need to more fully engage their faithful attenders in financial stewardship, giving and tithing.
- The impact of declining attendance leads churches to explore new innovations in giving: Where people give, why they give, what they give, and even how they give.
- The need to “lead up to” and “finish strong” in a Capital Campaign is critical to accomplish the goals and budgetary commitments the people make to the church and the church makes to the ministries.
- Many churches launch a growth plan to expand their campus or worship center, invest in upgraded technology and in some cases, commit to debt reduction.
Whether your church is growing or declining, the strategies outlined below will help your church strengthen its roots as you grow in fruitfulness and effectiveness for the kingdom.
The Next Question is HOW
Over the last 20 years, we’ve been asked more and more frequently to help churches develop sermon-based series and alignment campaigns that address finances, stewardship, capital campaigns, generosity and other topics that lead to increased giving to the local church.
The results have been remarkable, so we’ve compiled a partial list of 10 unique strategies and some sample sermon series that will help to launch Growth and Giving initiatives in your church. Some of these sermon series come from our newly-developed online library filled with hundreds of video sermons on a wide range of topics. Watch for our official launch of that site soon!
As you read through the strategies below, imagine a sermon series that you’ve already done in the past that could be repurposed–with our help–as a new campaign. Check out the numerous other series below that we are now developing for churches like yours. We’ve partnered with some of the leading teachers and emerging voices in the church today and we would love to help you find the perfect series that has been previously developed and has proven results.
10 Proven Strategies to Increase the Giving in Any Local Church
1. Capital Campaign Support Strategy
For many years, we at Lifetogether have been brought into the process of developing campaign alignment video teaching series that help connect the lion’s share of any congregation into small groups. The strategy we recommend has proven successful partly because it’s initiated a full 6 to 12 months before the campaign launches as well as during the capital campaign season itself. Most churches like to present the capital campaign as a “spiritual growth” campaign and a chance to introduce the new vision for the church. We work closely with the church to develop, produce and execute the campaign in a very creative and compelling way. The results show that we’ve been able to demonstrate at least a 10 to 20% increase in the overall campaign giving and sustain overall giving commitments well beyond the length of the capital campaign as well as the duration of any partnerships the church may have with any Capital campaign companies. A great example of this is the All In campaign we produced for Mile McPherson.
All In Case Study
2. Capital Campaign Follow-Up or Finishing Strong Strategy
More and more we are invited in not just before or during but after a capital campaign or stewardship initiative to help sustain or renew the giving committed during a 2 to 3 year capital campaign. Especially in a long term campaign, the giving can drop off a bit so the need to restart, reboot, or renew the vision becomes a critical factor in helping to achieve the goals and dreams that arose during the financial initiatives. In addition, instead of just building the short term “scaffolding” for the numerous meetings that are hosted during the campaign, churches are now wanting to launch small groups that can help to create a plumbing system that lives far beyond the campaign itself. A great example of this is the Generosity for Generations campaign we produced for David Jeremiah.
Generosity for Generations Color Curriculum
3. Preach a Mission, Vision and Values Series
This idea is a simple review of God’s vision and mission for the local church and it is integrated along with the vision for why your congregation exists as a church. Some of our most popular campaigns are comprised of a 4 to 7 part sermon series that communicates the core values and vision of a local church. The benefits of this type of campaign for your church go far beyond facilitating greater stewardship and increased giving. It’s also a great way to build momentum and mobilize people to serve, grow and get plugged into your church specifically. We created a page on our site with several examples. Please visit here. An excellent case study for a successful Mission, Vision and Values series is the I See A Church campaign we produced for Greg and Josh Surratt.
4. Evangelism and Missions Teaching Series
The Life On Mission series we produced for Parkview Christian Church with Pastor Tim Harlow is a perfect example of teaching a series on sharing your faith in a natural way. If you people background and vision for missions and how it is a foundation to the life of Christ and following Him, your congregation will be excited and hopefully stirred with passion towards outreach, missions, and impacting the world for Christ, and in turn they will give to the life, work, and ministry of the local church.
5. Generosity Sermon Series
This is one of the most popular strategies that we have used to encourage pastors to raise the overall bar for living a generous life. There so many unique and creative ways that we have helped churches accomplish this. One of our favorite past projects was a series by Rick Long called Crazy Generosity which encompasses the idea that an individuals time, talent, and treasure is God’s anyways.
Crazy Generosity Color Curriculum
6. Mobilize People to Serve
When I was on staff with Rick Warren at Saddleback Church, he always said that one of the best ways to get people to prepare to give during a stewardship initiative is to help them take a step in serving in the ministry. The Reveal study from Willow Creek reinforced this by documenting that someone engaged in serving gave nearly 30% more than someone who was only attending. That’s why we have done numerous sermon series and follow-up curriculum alignment strategies wrapped around the discovery, deployment, development, and the God-given design of any individual. We would be thrilled to share with you some of the dozens of sermon series that help mobilize your congregation to serve. In Generous God, Troy Murphy and a team from Green Bay Community Church study the many ways God has gifted us and how He’s called us to give back with our time, talent, treasure and trust.
Visit a few samples from our Next Steps Series: Belong by Terry Brooks and Grow by Dave Minton
7. Pastor’s Life Message Strategy
There is something unique that happens when a Pastor writes his first book or preaches a Life Message series. My first experience of this was with pastor Rick Warren and his life message delivered in The Purpose Driven Life. Though this example is extreme–50 million copies sold! I was privileged to have a front row seat and play a fun role in what happened at Saddleback Church as a result of the excitement wrapped around my pastor’s book and sermon series.
I could give you dozens of case studies but here are two recent examples that illustrate life messages and books that were developed for a pastor’s local church.
Grace Happens Color Curriculum
8. Fall or New Year Vision Sunday
This simple idea of hosting one or two Vision Sunday weekends is being done in most of the growing churches around the country. These weekends are filled with energy, enthusiasm and opportunities to share God’s heart, encourage the congregation and cast vision based not only on what has happened but on what will happen in their church.
If it’s about a shared passion to reach their community for Christ and the people feel like they are part of the vision, they will say yes and give to the vision.
We recommend using this weekend as a catalyst to launch a 4-week follow up sermon series that launches groups by either aligning with your messages or as a motivation to join a group to study the material on their own.
We have done this for dozens of churches with remarkable results.
9. “I Love This Church” Series
This strategy is often aligned with a capital campaign and involves a multi-week series filled with engaging stories and personal testimonies centered on the theme of Why people love their church. We’ve seen numerous innovative approaches to make an ASK at the end of the series.
I “Heart” My Church, or a variation of this theme have proven to be very successful. Another great example is the series we produced for Christ Tabernacle called No Place Like Home by Pastor Chris Durso.
10. Anniversary Weekend Sermon Series
Whether this is your 5th, 25th, 75th or even 100th anniversary at your church, this is a tremendous opportunity to call people to commitment and renew their vision for the church. We are helping churches with dozens of killer anniversary weekend services to help them plan their own multi-week or multi-month anniversary celebration.
Similar to Vision Sunday, you cannot just produce an amazing weekend service, preach a great sermon with a few live stories and then show a video photo gallery like you would at a wedding. However, you can create a beautiful yearbook-like curriculum with hundreds of photos to coincide with the launch of a 4 to 6 week sermon series and small group experience. People will gladly gather in groups and study together for this type of campaign. When your congregation celebrates the legacy of your church and sees the impact you have had on individuals and communities, they will step up and contribute to a great cause.
We did this for the General Superintendent of the Assemblies Of God denomination with Dr. George Wood’s series titled BELIEVE. It was a 4-point outline he delivered to 30,000 people. We then produced a 4-session companion curriculum to celebrate their 100 year anniversary of the denomination.
The list above outlines practical ways that growing churches are leveraging sermon series to increase the weekly tithes and offerings in their church.
Now the Question is What’s Next?
Now It’s Your Turn
- All you need to do is select one or two of the ideas above and we can share with you more about how we can make it happen.
- Or, if you want to start with any one of the hundreds of finance, stewardship, generosity or even capital campaign series we have discovered over the years. Let’s connect right away.
The nice thing about our series is they are already proven to work in growing churches around the country. Not a bad place to start the discussion. In addition, for most of the series we can provide full manuscripts, outlines, video files, design templates and we have the unique ability to create a fully custom video teaching series for your small groups. Which is our most powerful and unique contribution to your church.
Final Thoughts
The truth is, if you want to double your giving you have to connect everyone in community–and keep them in community. And that’s what we do best.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Better Together,
Brett Eastman
brett@lifetogether.com