I worked along with our Senior Leadership team to implement the Preach, Teach, Celebrate and Apply stewardship strategy initially unveiled by Generous Giving and Crown Financial Ministries during the Exponential 2004 Conference.

PREACH boldly, motivating our members to grace-inspired generosity. Preaching stewardship motivates our church body.

In this area, I helped our Senior Pastor with stewardship related research for various messages he was planning to give. I also worked with our leadership team to redefine how we communicated the offering time in the services. We stopped using the typical “If you are a guest here don’t give…” and instead used this time to highlight ministry wins and tie them into the generosity of the church. Many people commented on how they liked hearing how the money was being used to help people.

TEACH effectively, helping our members to apply God’s principles on finances. Teaching stewardship educates our church body.

This area was the major emphasis of my role at the church. I developed workshops and classes, such as the Making Change Financial Seminar to reach people with the stewardship message. I also oversaw the Crown Financial Ministries courses at the church. Furthermore, I worked with the other ministries in the church to equip them to teach on stewardship principles to their own audience.

CELEBRATE joyfully, developing excitement resulting in a fully funded church. We need to connect money with ministry. Celebrating stewardship punctuates what we are accomplishing as a church.
“Celebration reinforces values” – Andy Stanley

The celebration took place mainly with the Dividends newsletters. I had also just finished up a pilot donor relations program, but as of the time I left the church, the program had not been implemented.

APPLY successfully, modeling faithfulness personally and church-wide. Applying stewardship authenticates our mission, vision, leadership, and moral authority.

We constantly looked for ways to apply the stewardship principles in our church. One of the ways we implemented to make sure we were doing our best was to lead over 90% of our staff through the Crown 10 week study.

Click on the image below to download a more detailed strategy document.

We used videos each to illustrate a point of the upcoming message. Below are three videos that I worked with our creative team to develop.

God Pie

This video was used to illustrate an uncomfortable topic in a light hearted way.

There’s Something About Benjamin (Dollar Man)

A funny look at how our money sometimes controls us.

The Joneses.

A look at how “keeping up with the Joneses” can lead to more problems than we expect.

Dividends – Celebrating Generosity at Central Christian Church is a quarterly newsletter created to celebrate the life changing ministry happening at the church. The newsletter was mailed to everyone who had financially contributed to the church in the previous 12 months. The focus of the articles was to show the reader how their money was put to use impacting the lives of people in the Las Vegas Valley.

This newsletter was one part of our comprehensive Stewardship strategy of Preach, Teach, Celebrate and Apply.

I designed the graphics on interior pages, researched and wrote all of the articles, and coordinated the printing and mailing operations.

Click on the image below to download a pdf copy of the newsletter.

The Designing Your Legacy workshop was developed to assist people at our church in the area of estate planning. National statistics show that approximately 70% of families do not have any type of legal paperwork to cover their passing. We partnered with Financial Planning Ministry (FPM) out of Irvine, California to present a biblically based estate planning workshop.

During the workshop, attendees learned about the various types of planning available, including wills and living trusts. They also learned about the probate process and about federal estate taxes. Finally, they had the opportunity to partner with the church and get all of their legal documents done for them through FPM. Workshop attendance averaged 225 people, with the largest one being 550 people in June, 2005.

The partnership with FPM allowed our church to offer free legal documents to anyone who would leave a gift out of their estates to any one of FPM’s sponsoring organizations, one of whom was our church. If the family left any amount to one of the partners, FPM would give them; a Revocable Living Trust along with Pour-Over Wills and Durable Power of Attorney (living wills) for each person. This partnership allowed us to grow our Planned Giving base, and resulted in expectancies of over $12.8 Million after just 2.5 years. Expected gifts ranged from $100 to 45% of one families estate. Additionally, over 68% of the families who used FPM left the church 5% or more of their estates.

Below are links to some of the bulletin inserts we used to promote the event. Click on the image to open a PDF document.

The Making Change Financial Seminar is a two hour seminar that will show your church members the changes they can make in their finances to enjoy financial freedom. The seminar addresses topics such as planning, giving, saving, enjoying and getting out of debt. If you’re ready to see different results for your members’ financial future, contact me to find out how to bring this relevant, life-changing event to your church.

Seminar Topics:

• Perspectives on Cultural and Biblical world views relating to finances
• Six steps to Financial Freedom
  • Step 1 – Dedicate
  • Step 2 – Plan
  • Step 3 – Give
  • Step 4 – Save
  • Step 5 – Repay
  • Step 6 – Enjoy
• Making Change Challenge – a Generosity focused opportunity for people who attend the seminar.
• Personal Commitment

To find out more, check out the Making Change site at: http://makingchangeseminar.com.