generosity

Generosity is one of the most important elements that should be part of your church’s DNA. This is primarily because generosity is at the heart of the gospel.

At the rate of 30% of volunteers quitting to serve each year, the church doesn’t want to give willing community members a reason to join that statistic. Using smart software that allows volunteers to easily and quickly sign up for opportunities helps.

The last couple of decades have seen a dramatic shift in how we do church. The nitty-gritty elements of how a service is conducted have become steadily influenced by modern life. One area of 21st-century church activity that has seen a lot of changes is tithes and offerings.

If the people in your church don’t know smart ways to handle finances, they have fewer funds available to give. And what extra money they may otherwise have had can easily be gobbled up by forgotten subscription renewals or a mistaken idea of how much they’re spending. Many want to give more, they just don’t have the financial know-how to make it happen.

This past year has been quite a challenging one regarding how churches operate. Pastors have had to learn new ways to engage with their...

Millennials are making up an increasing number of church attendees, and this generation doesn't carry cash or check. Even older folks are choosing debit cards and online payments over paper payments. Churches, however, struggle to find ways to process online donations, gifts, and offerings that do not eat into their bottom line.

We all know and realize that most pastors and ministry staff operate on tight church and personal budgets. It's just the reality of being in ministry. Expensive degrees and copious years of schooling to do not promise a luxurious salary. However, if you get creative (or have a spouse who works at a more high-paying position) this doesn't have to be a deterrent to being in ministry. At Christmastime, however, often we feel the penny-pinch both in our church finances and in our personal finances.

Heading into the giving season, churches are looking for tools, techniques, and ways to achieve their donation goals and end the year in the black. Leadership Network sat down with the number crunchers at MortarStone, which has analyzed more than $1.5 billion in personal church giving, and asked them to calculate various benchmarks. What they found provided very interesting results.