Igniting Leaders Campaign Info

The campaign to reduce the debt on our church building is still underway. We've passed the half-way point in terms of time and in terms of debt reduction. This presentation lifts up some of the principles that were key to that campaign. Leadership is hoping to use these principles to continue to educate the congregation about why we give to the church's general fund and the apportionments.

The Power of ONE

The Power Of ONE - is an idea for a campaign to ensure payment of Mission and Ministry funds in full for 2010. This idea came out of our study on The Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, specifically the group who studied Extravagant Generosity. The goal of this campaign would be to increase financial gifts of the congregation and to raise awareness of the work of and importance of Mission and Ministry apportionments.

Money Saving Tips

These are slides that could be used throughout the year to educate and encourage the congregation to round up their gifts - that even one more dollar can make a significant difference. Leave me ideas for more slides in the comments. Also, I'm considering a different background color - might vary for each slide or group of slides, as they won't be shown all at once anyway.

Faith and Generosity

My top three spiritual gifts are Administration, Faith, and Generosity. When working on committees it is always good to bring a variety of gifts to the table. In the secular world, I'm very used to this. At church, I'm learning that our differing gifts, and our different combination of gifts really does come together to make one body of Christ.

The task before us now is to break the cycle of being a self-focused, self-serving church and begin to look outward - new places for new people.

We are nearing the end of a very successful building debt reduction campaign. We couldn't have asked for better results so far. We involved lots of people in that campaign, taught specifically on stewardship, second-mile giving and the like. We taught, the congregation learned, the debt is disappearing.

We also have had 4 rotations of Financial Peace classes since the building campaign. These folks from inside and outside our congregation are learning to manage their personal finances more effectively - to pay obligations first, cut excess spending, and be good stewards with their resources.

The hope is that these practices would begin to spill over to the church as a whole. But as we look at the general funds coming in, we sense the need for some more direct intentional faith development in the practices of tithing and stewardship for our congregation.

We are talking about raising more money, but we are also evaluating how we (the church) are being good stewards with that money. Are we following the teachings of the Bible and the Discipline when it comes to our church's finances?

I feel very blessed to be able to use my spiritual gifts and professional talents to help lead this congregation. I feel like I've been called to serve in this Lay Leader role because I can help lead us where we want to go.

So what next? I will continue to advocate for paying obligations, including our connectional obligations first. I will help gather resources for intentional faith development of our committee members and the whole congregation with a long-term goal of developing extravagantly generous people. People who feel called to give and know that their gifts are being used faithfully for the transformation of the world.

Putting the Five Practices into practice

Throughout the fall and early spring, our congregation read The Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations by Robert Schnase. Bishop Schnase outlines in his book what healthy congregations practice on a regular basis. We read the book, met in small home groups for 5 weeks, listened to a sermon series on the book, ran our stewarship campaign based on this book, and led into a RETHINK CHURCH activity this spring. In the first round of small groups we studied all five of the practices. They are:

• Radical Hospitality
• Passionate Worship
• Intentional Faith Development
• Risk-taking Mission and Service
• Extravagant Generosity

This spring in follow up groups, we broke off into 5 small groups and took a look at only one of the practices. Those groups generated lists of short-term and long-term goals and presented those at the February Church Council meeting. Church Council will look at the long-term goals as part of their strategic planning for this and future years. The committees were tasked with prioritizing the short-term goals that fell within each of their work areas and accomplishing two or three of the items this year. This was our RETHINK CHURCH work - rethinking the goals of our congregation through the lens of The Five Practices.