Stewardship &amp; Generosity

Living on Less

By E.G. “Jay” Link What does God want us to do with all he”s given us, especially when that is so much more than we need? Deciding on the answer to that question requires some changes in how we view and how we use what we have. Recently I received an e-mail with the subject line, “You can live on less when you have more to live for.” This profound and thought-provoking statement so struck me that I literally stopped my expeditious handling of all my e-mails and just pondered it. This is not a statement about an involuntary “belt-tightening”;

January 3, 2014

Less Is More: A Suburban Mom Resists Consumer Culture to Increase Her Generosity

By Janet McMahon “I”ve been thinking we should give away our Yukon.” My husband spoke these words early on a Saturday morning. My heart sank and soared at the same time. We had been driving that GMC Yukon for the last eight years. I loved that Yukon, but the truth is, we no longer needed a vehicle that big. With two of our three kids grown and mostly out of the house, we rarely needed a vehicle that could transport all five of us at the same time. Sell it, yes, but give it away, now that was an idea

November 26, 2013

Mark A. Taylor

Stewardship & Generosity

Giving to Those Who Can”t Give Back

By Mark A. Taylor Looking for a different way to infuse your Christmas celebration with meaning? Gayla Congdon has an idea. During our November 21 Beyond the Standard BlogTalkRadio program*, she mentioned a program with lots of possibilities. “We”re encouraging families to participate in 24 days of disruption, starting December 1,” she said. “Each day visitors to our blog or Facebook page will receive another idea for family activities to create a meaningful Christmas.” Here”s how Amor”s website describes the challenge: The 24 Days of Advent journey will stretch you. It will cause you to rethink your economy of Christmas

July 23, 2013

Stymied by Stuff

By Mark A. Taylor Just as most Americans don”t think they”re wealthy, most American Christians don”t think affluence has affected their faith. And American church workers likewise don”t see how money influences the way they approach ministry. A realistic look at the issue comes only with time and distance. Perhaps that is why LeRoy Lawson needs to be heard when he talks about our ministry and our stuff. Having served in ministry for more than 50 years, he remembers an America not as accustomed to comfort as most in the middle class today. Having served with Christian Missionary Fellowship, he

May 26, 2013

The Envelopes, Please

By Daniel Schantz I have enjoyed a lifelong romance withÂ envelopes. When I was just a boy, my preacher-fatherÂ supplied me with several boxes of leftoverÂ offering envelopes to play with. I have beenÂ in love with envelopes ever since. About the size of an index card, these littleÂ envelopes gave me much pleasure. We lived in Springfield, Ohio, at the time, the city where I was born. My cousins lived there, too, and on Saturdays we held a secret club meeting in a dusty corncrib, organized by my oldest cousin, Carol. She appointed herself president of the club, but the purpose of the

May 13, 2013

How a Harley Store Became a Home

By Kent E. Fillinger What do you get when you combine an empty Harley-Davidson store with generous giving? No, this isn”t a bad joke. The answer is a growing church. LifePointe Christian Church, located in Elk Grove, California, launched on February 23, 2003, with a nucleus of about 60 people. It initially met in a local school on the edge of town. The church soon was averaging more than 200 in attendance, and after a few years was averaging more than 300. Then there was some stagnation, said senior pastor Chris Delfs, even though “the congregation loved the church and

April 20, 2013

Lessons from a Fat Wallet

By Eddie Lowen Not long ago, removing my wallet from my pants pocket became difficult. That”s a good thing, right? On Subway restaurants” TV commercial, a thick wallet is evidence of frugal spending and increasing net worth. Dave Ramsey likes fat wallets. However, my wallet was gaining girth from items other than legal tender and dead presidents. Membership cards were to blame. Multiple membership cards. Some were plastic, others card stock. I emptied my wallet and discovered nearly a dozen membership cards to seemingly every organization in our city and beyond. A sampling of my memberships includes: Sam”s Club, which

December 3, 2012

Four Verses for Four Purses: a Teaching Outline About Giving

Fiscal health is a strength of the church I serve. A reason for this is how we challenge people to give. This article is a sample teaching outline for pastors on the theme of giving. For more help, contact me through the church website, www.wschurch.org, or via Twitter @EddieLowen. By Eddie Lowen Some contemporary innovations are nothing short of incredible: High-definition television has made football and golf so much more enjoyable to watch. GPS (global positioning system) navigation has transformed travel. When did you last see someone with a folding map? Smartphones are amazing (my iPhone 5 came today!). I

November 29, 2012

Good Gifts After Black Friday

By Mark A. Taylor I have a friend who works for a well-known benevolent organization not affiliated with any church, but providing a much-needed service to families in crisis. And at Christmastime, she sees the gifts pour in. People drive up every day in December with carloads of clothes, games, and food. But one donor stood out in my friend”s memory. The woman approached the front desk holding her daughter”s hand and carrying an armload of goodies. “We would like to meet the family who will receive our gifts,” she told the receptionist. “I want my little girl to experience

November 10, 2012

Perhaps a Little Guilt Can Be a Good Thing

By Jennifer Johnson In 2011, Americans spent more than $1 billion on scrapbooking supplies. They spent more than 100 times that on fast food and, unbelievably, another $1 billion on the Facebook game Farmville. Anyone who”s grown up in a Protestant church in America has experienced “missions angst”””that gnawing guilt for having so much material wealth and good food while missionaries in foreign countries eat goat and wear discarded American T-shirts. We admire them, but we don”t want to be one of them, which we feel guilty about. We write a check once or twice a year, and know we

September 25, 2012

Facing the Facts about Debt

“¢ Our nation soon will be $16 trillion in debt. The U.S. government is living way beyond its means””it is insane and can”t continue without cataclysmic results. But the government is essentially doing what the average American citizen is doing. “¢ A tsunami of student loan debt will be upon us soon as graduates leave college and enter the workforce with an unimaginable and unsustainable albatross of debt. The average debt load of 2012 graduates will hit “a record $28,700, projects Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of Finaid.org. That amounts to a $330 standard monthly payment. To handle that easily, he estimates,

September 25, 2012

Don”t Ignore Your Debt, Eliminate It!

By Barry L. Cameron In December 1999, my family decided to do something about our finances. We were fed up with money problems and bothered by endless bills and perennial payments on stuff that was falling apart, in need of repair, or already in a landfill. We didn”t go to a financial planner, nor did we mine the endless array of financial resources available. We went back to the Word of God. We figured the One who created everything and owns everything could give us the guidance we needed to clear up our financial mess. Early on, I found a

September 11, 2012

Giving It Away

By Darrel Rowland Mounting a successful fund-raising drive is challenging enough for any church, especially in these difficult economic times. But two churches not only carried out smashing one-day giving campaigns earlier this year, they turned around and gave it away””all $176,000 of it. In fact, most of the money went to places not even associated with the church. Leaders of both churches say your congregation should try it, too. Launched in 2005, Forefront Church in Manhattan began an annual giving event called Celebration Generosity in 2009. That first year, members chipped in about $27,000 for various social service organizations

September 10, 2012

Generous Churches

By Kent E. Fillinger “Generosity needs to be a thread woven through the fabric of the entire congregation,” said Leadership Network development director Chris Willard, “because generosity is a cultural issue.” Here”s how four churches are creating a culture of generosity among their members.Â In their new book, Contagious Generosity: Creating a Culture of Giving in Your Church, Chris Willard and Jim Sheppard define generosity as “a lifestyle in which we share all that we have, are and ever will become as a demonstration of God”s love and a response to God”s grace.” Willard is the director of generosity initiatives

September 8, 2012

Giving Up!

By Alan Ahlgrim Picture this: Your church launches a new campus with a state-of-the-art, 70,000-square-foot building on 30 acres””just before the economy implodes in the greatest recession most of us have experienced. Meanwhile you are fighting for the church”s life in a lawsuit that costs you $2 million to win. This creates a loss of momentum that results in staff reductions and the departure of many members to another congregation nearby. What do you do in such a situation? Alan Ahlgrim, pastor of Rocky Mountain Christian Church in Colorado, faced all those challenges and more. As he shares in this

May 26, 2012

Money Matters

By Kent E. Fillinger Total giving to U.S. nonprofits rose 7.5 percent in 2011, an increase of $24.2 billion over the 2010 total. Although religious institutions represent the largest sector of this giving, those gifts decreased from 37 percent of the total in 2010 to 36 percent in 2011.1 Therefore, while charitable giving increased overall, religious nonprofits, including churches, received a smaller piece of the pie. A Barna Group and Omni Poll from April 2011 found that “69 percent of American adults said they had reduced their giving to churches/religious centers and other nonprofits within the preceding three months and

September 20, 2011

Indiana Church Shows Knack for Winning Grants

By Jennifer Taylor In the last four years, Jamestown (IN) Christian Church has received 14 grants totaling more than $110,000″”including one used to learn how to write grant applications! The congregation, located about 30 miles west of Indianapolis, began researching the process in 2003 and was awarded its first grant in 2007. JCC has received grants for a variety of uses, including beautifying its 17-acre property, building a shelter house for public use, and maintaining its food and clothing pantry. In 2010 the church received a grant of matching funds from the Indianapolis Center for Congregations to hire a design

August 11, 2011

College Offers Online Course with Dave Ramsey

Last week, Rochester (MI) College announced a new partnership with financial guru and radio personality Dave Ramsey to offer a seven-week online course in personal financial management. The class, which begins Aug. 29, carries three college credits and features Ramsey, other financial planning experts, college students, and Rochester College faculty members. “Our Personal Financial Management course covers real-life issues every college student needs to understand in order to graduate on sound financial footing and be set up to win with money,” says the college. “It’s entertaining, relevant, and most of all, challenges how students view money. They will complete this

August 7, 2011

Meeting Others” Needs on Behalf of the Church

By Jennifer Taylor After studying Nehemiah and the offering recorded in its final chapters, First Christian Church in Champaign, IL, collected its own special offering as a response of gratitude for God”s goodness””then gave some of it back to FCC members. Senior pastor J.P. Jones and his team designated $20,000 of the offering for the local community and involved the church in giving it away. Each week for four weeks, a different group received $5,000 with instructions to use the money to meet the needs of others on behalf of the church. The team selected a variety of people

July 14, 2011