Why and Why Now?

Congregations are all unique because they are made up of unique individuals and circumstances. The geographical ministry setting and historical context shape the way a church thinks about itself and its community. Leadership styles impact the way strategic plans are implemented. Cultural and educational surroundings influence communication methods. Add to this list vast differences in population base, theological understandings, and innumerable personal preferences. We're a complex ensemble. No wonder we come in so many shapes and sizes! While none of the stories that follow are exactly the story of your church, I hope you will begin to think about yours so that you will identify what it is that your church uniquely contributes to the kingdom of God. My pastor constantly reminds us, as he prays for a different church in our community every Sunday morning, that if we are going to have the impact on our community that we want to have, it's going to take all of us. And we need all of us to have maximum impact. I've heard it called our redemptive potential.

First Church is 150 years old. Their history is rich with generations of families who have worshipped there; however, fewer and fewer of the younger families are continuing to be active. Those who have stayed are struggling to know if they want to continue attending a church that is still using flannelgraphs and overhead projectors. In their tech-filled lives, some of the older methods of worship, teaching, and reaching people aren't appealing. They love their families, respect their leaders, and have great memories tied to First Church. However, their children keep asking to go to the church across town with the soccer fields and the new playground. They see advertisements for VBS that look high-tech and pony rides on parents' night. The families know these things aren't what make a great church, but they know that some of their friends who they've invited to come to First Church are now active members at the other church. The First Church leaders are open to trying some new things, but their budget is very tight, as their older members have fixed incomes and their younger families don't seem to support the church financially. How are they going to update some of their programs and facilities?

Outreach Church has been focused on introducing families to the gospel and preparing them to work on the mission field for fifteen years. The nursery is continuously full, the children's ministry is serving hundreds of kids through summer programs, and the youth are taking sixty people to summer camp. A substantial majority of their active adults are involved in local missions efforts, and they have fourteen missionaries serving outside the United States. This year, two families from their membership have decided to go to Honduras to help run an orphanage. They have raised their own funds to travel, but as they plan to take their families to a remote village for a brave two-year commitment, they are giving up their homes and their income. Outreach Church wants to support these families and the orphanage. However, their missions budget is committed, and there are no extra funds that can go toward the orphanage. It's a project that has touched their hearts and aligns with their mission and vision, but they don't know how to put funds behind it.

Neighborhood Church was planted fifty years ago in a growing suburb of the Big City. Big City has continued to grow, and suburban life keeps pushing farther and farther from downtown. The neighborhood has much greater diversity than it did a few decades ago, and Neighborhood Church has a new vision for ministry and an incredible kingdom opportunity. The presence of young Hispanic families in the area has prompted several leaders to be interested in teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) classes and offering other services to the newest community members. If they could offer a Spanish-speaking service, they could fill an enormous need in their community. The administrative council agrees the timing is right for this transition. However, it would require additional resources for hiring a pastor for this segment of the congregation, development of new programs, and purchasing materials for outreach and discipleship. The field, or the neighborhood, is ready for harvest, but they don't know how to resource this great new opportunity.

Churches are facing scenarios like these all around the country. Churches of various size, age, demographics, denomination, and vision. What they have in common is their desire to "go and make disciples" (Matt 28:19). They have the right mission! The other common thread is a lack of resources to fully pursue the vision they have for accomplishing that mission. Congregations are struggling to meet budgets and secure designated funds for ministry and mission. Over and over again I hear church leaders concerned about the economy and claiming that younger members don't give to the church anymore, but it's reported that 67 percent of all households give to charity and 98.4 percent of high–net worth households give to charity. The complaint about young families not giving isn't factual. However, it may be factual that they aren't giving to your church. We need to examine why. First let's take a look at the facts about the economy as it relates to generosity in America.

This is not a recent discovery. In 2008, J. Clif Christopher, in his book Not Your Parents' Offering Plate, told us that the landscape for philanthropic giving, and particularly stewardship in the American church, had changed:

The church used to be the predominant charity in most communities. In many, it was the only place to make a contribution of any kind. The appeal was simply, "You should give." For too many churches the appeal is still "you should give." And people respond by giving, just not to the church. They are hearing the preacher say that Jesus wants them to give, and they are choosing the youth center or the college or the hospital. Yet, our appeal is still the same.

Think back to how money was collected by your church just twenty to twenty-five years ago. At the appropriate time during the worship service the ushers were asked to come forward. They stood at the front of each aisle during the prayer and then passed the offering plates up and down each row during the offertory hymn. By the end of the song the ushers had disappeared and you moved on to the next item in the bulletin. I remember wondering as a child growing up in church in the 1970s what they did with all that money piled in the offering plates. Twenty-five years later there really wasn't even enough cash in the plate to pique a child's curiosity. Checks were the currency of the day, and many churches began using envelopes to help with the counting procedures and systems of checks and balances.

Between the years 2000 and 2004 there was a handful of technological advances made that point toward the rapid rate of change America is experiencing. Facebook, the iPod, flash drives, civilian use of GPS, TiVo, hybrid cars, camera phones, and iTunes were all introduced.

Not to be left behind, the church also underwent rapid changes early in the millennium. Think back to the changes implemented in how money was collected by your church during the same time period, from 2000 to 2004. This is how it probably looked: At the appropriate time during the worship service the ushers were asked to come forward. They stood at the front of each aisle during the prayer and then passed the offering plates up and down each row during the offertory hymn. By the end of the song the ushers had disappeared and you moved on to the next item in the bulletin.

Okay, so we're not early adapters, but we are creative. As attendance and offerings decreased we started collecting prayer requests and connection cards so that it wouldn't be so easy to see the green or red fabric covering the bottom insert of the offering plate.

In the years 2005 to 2009, technology continued to change the way we American Christians — that is, consumers — lived our lives and interacted with one another and the world around us. We experienced the introduction of YouTube in 2005, the Nintendo Wii in 2006, the iPhone in 2007, the Amazon Kindle in 2008, and the Nissan Leaf in 2009.

It's a little easier to remember the changes implemented in how money was collected by your church from 2005 to 2009. For most congregations this is how it looked: At the appropriate time during the worship service the ushers were asked to come forward. They stood at the front of each aisle during the prayer and then passed the offering plates up and down each row during the offertory hymn. By the end of the song the ushers had disappeared and you moved on to the next item in the bulletin.

You get the point. If we continued this discussion into 2010 to 2014 and 2015 to 2019 it would just be more of the same. It's as if there's something nostalgic and simple about choosing never to change. "After all," they say, "we do have a website now. There's just so much change people can handle!" This attitude contributes to the slow decline in membership being experienced by so many mainline churches. Yet time seems to be speeding up. Technology and the rate of change certainly are. The resourcing challenge for churches is compounding. Not only do they have to compete for the charitable dollar, as Clif Christopher pointed out, but they also have to adjust to unfamiliar methods of collecting those dollars. The way people spend money doesn't look anything like it did at the turn of the millennium, and neither should the way churches collect it.

We weren't even talking about e-commerce in the year 2000, yet our twenty- and thirty-somethings have never experienced adulthood without it. While we are far from becoming a cashless society, our young families increasingly operate without it. A colleague of mine talks about traveling for months with the same $5 bill in his wallet because he only uses his debit and credit cards. Another friend's daughter arrived in Singapore for a visit with less than $20 cash in her purse, which she never spent or converted to local currency! When I'm speaking to a group of pastors who have traveled from out of town for a two- or three-day conference, I always ask the group for a show of hands of those who made the trip with $50 in cash. I can't remember anyone under the age of forty ever raising his or her hand ... ever. I recently purchased my own birthday present: an Apple Watch. With my Apple Watch on my wrist, I won't even have to get out my wallet to make a purchase. By the time this book is published, I will likely be able to tithe to my church from any city, anywhere I'm working or playing, with my watch! My mind goes back to those ushers standing at the front of each aisle with hands crossed in front of them during the offertory prayer. For those of us who are older than twenty or thirty, and who grew up in the church, who would've thought that would even be possible?

To our twenty- and thirty-somethings, the language of the church, particularly around giving, can feel like a foreign language. How are they to engage in stewardship and giving when it seems no one around is speaking their language? When I was an adolescent, my father was in the army and we spent two years stationed in Germany. Living in Germany allowed us the opportunity to travel all over Europe on the weekends and summer breaks. Because each country had its own language and dialects, we simply did our best to navigate and communicate with the local people. In reflecting on this extraordinary time, I have often wondered how different it may have been had we been able to speak the local languages. What would it have been like to hear people's stories in their own words? How much richer would our experiences of their cultures have been if only we could have understood and been understood by them? Whenever I heard someone speaking English, my ears perked up, and I became eager to engage in conversation. Isn't this what we are asking of our younger generations — to try to interpret a language they do not speak?

Amazingly, churches continue to settle for passing the offering plates to younger generations of church members and regular attendees who don't speak the same language. They have come and immersed themselves into your Sunday morning worship experience. God has used the music, a testimony, and the pastor's message to stir their hearts. They have experienced the generosity of God's grace, and they want to respond, to participate. Their wallets are having a conversion experience! And they don't carry cash or a checkbook. As a result, they pass along increasingly empty offering plates. And they assume that few others support the church financially because they watch mostly empty plates passed week after week. It would be wise to start communicating in a variety of ways so that you connect with more of your congregation.

Plan Your Trip

I love snow ... when I'm on vacation in the mountains. It occurs to me that the ski trip provides a helpful metaphor for considering the use of digital tools for ministry. So I'll use it throughout the coming chapters to give you a way of visualizing this process.

My first snow skiing trip was as a teenager with a group of families from my church. It was very well organized. We (translating from the Greek phrase "My dad") just paid for the trip, packed our stuff, met at the church, and got on a bus headed for Colorado. Since then, I've taken several snow skiing vacations and learned that good planning greatly enhances the experience. The same will hold true when you introduce electronic giving to your congregation. A little planning will pay off. Group your planning into three components:

Lead, Learn, and Launch. Each of these three components of planning your initiative will increase its effectiveness. Each of them has individual importance, but collectively they have a compounding impact. Don't deflate your initiative by just promoting it and hoping people will get on board. While there should be some overlap in the Lead and Learn components of your plan, it's important to execute them ahead of the Launch component.

The Lead component is vital because it is where you are shaping the culture of the church, and that may take time and repetition. Hopefully your desire as a leader is to reflect the nature of God as a congregation. God's generosity toward us results from love and is clearly modeled in one of the most familiar verses in the Bible. John 3:16 reminds us that God so loved the world that God gave, not just a token gift, but a most precious one, the life of God's only Son. As we accept this gift, gratitude overwhelms us, and we respond through our own expressions of generosity of time, talent, and treasure. We give because God first gave. We love because God first loved. Church leaders must model the nature of God if they hope for the congregation to reflect that same nature in the community and around the world. Obviously generosity is only one aspect of God's nature, but it is an aspect that should not be ignored.

Building a culture of generosity and gratitude in your overall approach to ministry, and specifically stewardship, will provide a stronger base for electronic giving platforms. As church leaders, clergy, and laity begin to learn and communicate new ideas, remember that what you model will be valued more than what you merely say. Don't wait another day to get started!

Here are some specific ways you can Lead that will enhance the effectiveness of future actions:

1. Speak life into your congregation. Constantly tell them how generous they are! Remind them of the ways they provide hope and life transformation through their generosity.

2. Develop a culture of gratitude. Thank people for serving, sharing, loving, and giving well. Celebrate what you want to duplicate! Honor faithfulness and growth in discipleship. Thank your staff. Thank your donors.

3. Share testimonies and mission-critical success stories in worship every week. Everywhere I work, faithful, committed churchgoers struggle to tell me why their church exists. I know you think they know, but they don't. The impact of your church will improve if you have a clear purpose, if people understand it, and if they see evidence of the purpose occurring. The best way to reinforce the fulfillment of that purpose is through testimonies and success stories.

Leading through these culture-changing practices now will provide strategic pathways for implementing your electronic giving strategies in the near future.