October 10, 2024 • 45 mins
In this episode, Jim Shepard and Frank Bealer from Generis share their journey of transforming church generosity, raising over $7 billion while emphasizing discipleship over fundraising. We explore how the seeker-friendly movement reshaped church giving, shifting from traditional models to contemporary approaches, and the impact on discipleship. You'll also learn strategies to engage Millennials and Gen Z in giving, backed by Barna research and real success stories. Tune in for insights on nurturing year-round generosity and fostering spiritual growth within your congregation.
To learn more about Generis, please visit https://generis.com/
🎧 Tune in for an episode packed with insights that can transform your church's approach to generosity!
Remember to like, share, and subscribe for more insight on what it takes to be a modern church leader.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Modern Church
Leader.
I am here with my new bestfriends.
Well, we've got Jim Shepard andwe have Frank Beeler, and we
did figure out that this will bethe very first podcast ever
with two Franks on it, andespecially two Frank Bees so man
guys, welcome to the show yeahthe upside is big, the upside is
(00:24):
big, the upside is big, theupside is big, the upside is big
, the upside is big.
Someone will fact check that.
They'll figure out how to useAI to search every podcast ever
recorded and see if there wastwo Franks on a podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Yeah, and there probably wasn't even one in the
last hour or so, so that'sprobably going to X-nay us right
off the bat.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Credibility shot right off the bat.
Oh my gosh.
And we've taught golf and we'veshared hats and uh, are you
guys both in the office?
Like where do you guys?
You so you know you'll tell usall about generis, but where are
you guys located?
Speaker 3 (00:53):
I'm in the same building from john's cream, so
we uh didn't have any weirdaudio issues yeah yeah, smart,
smart move.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I know it looks like we're doing the bro crush on.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
You know, when two guys try to crowd into one
screen, no we're not gonna betoo weird.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
I've done that podcast no, no, no.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
You do it once.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
You do it once and you'll never do it again so, uh,
I mean, jim, you've been atthis for a long time frank, I'm
less familiar with you and howlong you've been into the
generosity kind of universe, butwhy don't you guys tell us a
little bit about Generis andwhat you guys do for anybody on
the podcast that doesn't alreadyknow?
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Yeah, so I came here Interesting, I'm celebrating my
32nd anniversary right aroundnow.
So I'm not sure exactly whatthe date was in September of
1992, but I usually nail itsomewhere around the 15th of the
25th.
So it's right here in this timeframe.
32 years ago, and you know,honestly, frank, I thought I was
going to stay here for a littlewhile and then go back to what
(01:51):
I was doing, which was, you know, I was a financial executive in
a public company, financialservices, and you know I'd go
back and do that.
And here I am, 32 years later.
It's really, I think, what, whatGod wanted me to do with the
rest of my life.
I've always said to him I'llstay as long as you want and
I'll leave anytime you want.
And you know, I've never felt asense of leaving.
I still, you know, at my agewhen a lot of guys are retiring,
you know I could retire, but Ijust love working with pastors,
(02:14):
love working with churches, loveseeing vision come alive, with
the funding that it takes tomake vision happen, and so
that's a big part.
So that's a big part.
That's what we do at Generous.
You know we talk about ourmission is accelerate generosity
toward God-inspired vision.
But what we're really trying toaccomplish, frank what we don't
say anywhere in print, butwe're not afraid to say it, you
know, in spaces like this iswhat we're really trying to do
(02:34):
is change the conversation aboutfaith and money in the American
church.
We feel like it's gotten off,it's become very transactional
and God means for it to betransformational, and we're
working to try to change that,make it more about discipleship
than about funding.
Funding will happen ifdiscipleship happens, but
discipleship needs to happenfirst, and so I came here 32
(02:55):
years ago, but we have theseprinted for our upcoming summit
meeting.
We have actually been inbusiness for 35 years, since
1989.
And what's cool, I think, isthat how we've refreshed
ourselves over the years.
We've done some new things.
It was starting in 2009, 2010.
We started in our generosityaudit and then our One Fund
campaign and some of the otherstuff we're doing Right now.
One of the things you're goingto see become very public after
(03:16):
the first of the year is ourmove into what we call the
culture of generosity spacegenerosity space.
So we're starting to have a lotof churches that contact us
that are not looking for acampaign, not looking for a
building campaign or debtretirement or whatever that
might be, but just want to helptheir people develop in their
giving.
And so we have developed aframework, a seven-play
(03:38):
framework, that we've startedtesting in about 15 churches and
we are convinced more than ever, based on what's happening
there, that this is the rightmove in the right time.
So we're going to be seeing alot of that.
So that's kind of our mostrecent fresh expression that
you're going to start seeingeven more and more especially
coming after the first of theyear.
So, frank, what would you addto that?
You have some uniqueperspective in church space.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Frank, I get the incredible privilege of, first
of all, getting to spend a greatamount of time with Jim and
learn from him and his heart andposture for serving churches.
I mean he didn't mention this,but I mean Generis has raised
over $7 billion to help churchesand faith-based organizations
3,500 different organizations.
I mean massive impact, from bigto small, to all different
(04:26):
denominations really incrediblework.
And to see Jim's and theorganization's posture just to
serve churches where they're atand to help them really, really
step up in this area ofdiscipleship.
We know this is a commonconversation, right?
Jim and I were talking earliertoday on a webinar and it was
(04:47):
all about this conversationaround.
The church is leaning in veryheavily into the language of
discipleship and what I've seenfrom the outside looking in and
now, as I've gotten closer toJanaris and Jim, that's been the
heartbeat all along.
It's one of the things that'sresonated.
It's why churches continue todo multiple campaigns with
Generis, because there's beenthis history of truly wanting
(05:09):
what's best for the congregantsto help them grow in their faith
.
And now, with culture ofgenerosity game changer Like
Frank, I mean we're seeinginsane results for the forget
the 5% at any given time thatare doing building campaigns.
Yeah, they need help andthere's a strategy.
I'm talking about the 99% ofchurches that could all have a
(05:30):
little bit more funding to moveforward in their vision and
mission and they may not knowthe right practical steps to
take to really serve theircongregation well and make it
become, as Jim mentioned,transformative, not
transactional when it comes togiving so man, to get to draw
closer to that, it's beenawesome.
I came from the business worldand then got connected with a
(05:53):
church called Elevation Churchin Charlotte where I was on the
executive team for years, andthen I came down here to Atlanta
where I had the privilege ofgetting to know Jim and some
other leaders just to figure outways to serve churches, and so
that's why I'm here today andwe're getting this chance to
chop it up and talk.
And, by the way, the factcheckers are in and there is an
organization in North Carolinathat's released the Learn More
(06:15):
Podcast with Frank and Frank.
So sorry, we're not the first,so we're going to have to be the
first at something else.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Oh geez, imagine that , imagine that.
So we're going to be the first.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
it's something else, oh geez, so maybe we get that,
maybe we get the extra letter,yeah, yeah yeah, we're, we're
gonna claim that, wow, that waslike live during the debate.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Fact checking Pretty good, pretty good, I like it.
So one of the things that isinteresting about our space,
like churches and the way thatpeople give in the church, it's
like fundamentally differentthan why people give maybe to
other forms of charities, right,nonprofits and things like that
(07:02):
other forms of charities, right, nonprofits and things like
that.
Cause it is, it is out of faithand obedience and love and
gratitude and all of thesethings for what God has done for
us.
But you mentioned, like, ashift towards transactional
versus transformative or youknow.
However, you want to frame itup Like, how are you guys seeing
that?
Like, when you say you'reseeing it be transactional, like
(07:23):
, why, from your guys' vantagepoint, why do you see that?
Speaker 3 (07:27):
I would say this, frank.
So it's something that, fromagain my perspective, I would
trace it back roughly 40 years,40 to 44 years, right around the
time when the seeker-friendlymovement started in the church.
When the seeker-friendlymovement started in the church
Hybels and Warren and all thosewhich, by the way, I think
(07:48):
seeker-friendly movement,transitioning the church from my
parents' model of church to anew expression that would reach
the boomer generation was agreat idea, but sometimes great
ideas have unintendedconsequences, right?
And so in my parents' churchyou would have had a high value
on discipleship, not as high avalue of welcoming in the
unsaved ones, right, even thoughwe would say evangelism was a
(08:11):
big part.
But we just didn't do it well.
My parents' church didn't do itwell.
So what we tried to do in theboomer movement was to open up
the doors of the church, to bemore inclusive to people who
were hurt or weren't raised inthe church or whatever had
happened.
They'd fallen out of the church.
I mean, like me and my, youknow, when I was in college.
Not that that's an excuse, butthat's what happened.
And so the church had a newexpression that was really
(08:33):
focused on welcoming people inand making the front door a lot
bigger.
But in making the front door alot bigger, we inadvertently,
just slowly this is not a suddensnap of the neck, it's a slow
drift into the wrong directionwe became, we lost the focus on
discipleship, took our eye offof the ball, and it shows up
(08:57):
probably nowhere more clearlythan in the giving conversation.
So the giving conversation ismore about meeting the budget
than it is about developing youas a giver, and the problem with
that is that that is completelyopposite of what the Bible
describes right Most clearly inPhilippians 4.17, when the
Apostle Paul thanking the churchat Philippi for what they did
(09:18):
for him they were earlysupporters and at one time they
were his only supporters andthen in verse 17, he drops this
in on us and he said and Ididn't seek the gift from my own
account, but for the increasethat comes to your account.
Well, what does that mean?
It means that he was thankfulfor the fact that they gave the
gift to him.
But that was not the big deal.
The bigger thing that happenedwas how you were transformed,
(09:41):
what you were storing up inheaven, your treasures in heaven
and your rewards that you'restoring up before God.
As you're giving that and thetransformation that happened
with you.
It drew you closer to God whenyou made a gift of my ministry,
and we're just not celebratingthat.
We're celebrating the gift thatwas made, not the
transformation that happened.
And so it's a slow drift to adestination that no one intended
(10:04):
to arrive at.
But the roadmap just got offand we're there.
And so what happens is now,when we go in and enlighten
people to the fact that they'vedrifted over here, almost every
time they're like help us getback to the center.
Yes, I see that, help us getback over here.
The problem with and here'swhere the transactional thing
shows up, frank the problem withand here's where the
transactional thing shows up,frank we have I'm going to go
(10:26):
out on a limb we have the vastmajority of our churches.
On Sunday morning, when they'representing the offering, when
they're doing the giving moment,they look more like an
organization trying to raisesupport than a church trying to
make disciples.
And that's the problem we'retalking about.
(10:49):
And that's what we talk aboutwhen I say our vision.
Our bigger vision is to changethe conversation about faith and
money in the American church,to move it from this slow drift
into transactional back overinto a real life
transformational conversation.
So the idea would reorient theheart and it redirects the
resources.
It's not that we're not naiveMoney is going to flow into the
church, but we're not shootingat it redirects the resources.
It's not that we're not, we'renot naive.
Money is going to flow into thechurch, but we're not shooting
at the target of the money,we're shooting at the target of
(11:11):
the heart and then letting thattake its route once it gets
transformed.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
So yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you guys have changed, notchanged.
You're doing more in the areaof helping, like holistically,
churches in the area ofgenerosity, instead of it just
being capital campaigns and thatlike campaign based raising
money and building generosity.
It's like let's come alongsidechurches for the whole year or
(11:35):
for multi-year and help themkind of build in the culture of
generosity.
Like what does that look like?
Like how do you come into achurch and help them kind of see
where they're at?
Speaker 2 (11:45):
So yes is the answer.
There's a place where, when itcomes to campaigns, campaigns
are still very much needed.
They are part of an overallstrategy, without a doubt, for
schools Christian schools thatneed buildings and for churches
to expand Absolutely.
There's a place for that.
Churches to expand Absolutely,there's a place for that, and it
can be an incredible part ofthe faith journey to give
(12:06):
sacrificially in those moments,to give generously and
sacrificially.
It's an incredible opportunityfor that.
But you're saying, hey, whatdoes it look like to come
alongside?
Here's the thing, Frank.
Over and over again, we can talkabout the fundamentals of what
it looks like to disciple peoplein generosity, and sometimes
(12:27):
we'll even talk to pastors andthey'll be like oh yeah, we do
that.
Oh yeah, we do that.
Yeah, we've already done that,and all we do is ask them to
open up and take a look at theirown organization.
And they'll be like wait, whendid we stop sending first-time
giver letters?
When did our website get anoverhaul?
And now they click give andthere's no instruction
(12:49):
whatsoever about what you'regiving is doing or what Jesus
intends to do.
It just goes straight to Tidelyto go process my installment or
my gift and it's like well, howdid we get there?
They would be shocked at that.
Like we see this over and overagain where people that are more
than capable of doing this.
It is a part of ministry.
(13:10):
It is not all of ministry, andwhat we find is that the urgency
from the day to day dominatesthe focus, and so what we can
see over and over again is thatpeople already pastors and
leaders in church already have alittle bit of tendency to not
want to step on the landmine andcomplexity that is giving, so
they're not going to talk aboutit too much.
(13:30):
Maybe they do that one sermonseries or whatever.
Well, because it's not aprimary focus, oftentimes some
of the fundamentals get lostalong the way, and I'll tell you
, one of the shocking thingswe're seeing is we're teaching
the culture of generosity.
I've been in sessions withpeople where they're like yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, we know, yeah,yeah, we do that, yeah, yeah,
(13:51):
yeah.
And I'm like no, actually, bythe way, I looked at your
website, by the way, this and wejust open up the playbook and
they're like oh, I didn'trealize we drifted away from
that, or I didn't want to usethat language, or man, we
haven't updated this in sixyears or whatever it may be.
And so what we're finding isthat what churches could use is
not a checklist, it's a guide toevaluate inside their culture
(14:13):
and their context.
How do we help them get back ontrack where generosity is part
of the discipleship conversation.
It is not just cookie cutter,it's not just hey, here's an
e-book, Go do this.
The fact is there are probablyenough bajillions of eBooks on
giving out there where, ifsomebody at a church were to
(14:33):
amalgamate them all together andprocess them and build a game
plan, they could probably dosome good stuff to fix some
stuff.
But the reality is they need aguide to figure out.
How do we make this sound likeus, how do we navigate this
along the way and what are oursticking points?
And oftentimes you need thatnew perspective, which is a
value that generis brings thatoutside perspective going.
(14:56):
Oh, you're speaking as thoughthat is true, that that is just
a reality to deal with, but youknow that's not how other
churches operate or that'ssomething that you've imposed on
yourself.
That's not what God intended, ina very respectful way, to
wrestle with those practicalthings from the very beginning,
which we recently recorded somecontent on this the idea of what
(15:20):
is your theology of giving?
Is your theology of giving?
We have yet to find a churchwhere the executive leadership
team can cohesively communicatewhat the theology of giving is
for the church without sayingdifferent things.
Now we talk about baptism orsomething our communion, they
can man.
It's spot on when it comes togiving.
(15:40):
There's wildly differentanswers, not necessarily
heretical, but they're justbringing their back perspective
what they've read in the Bible,what's important to them, and
they just kind of amalgamate ittogether, and so there's not a
clear plan.
So no wonder the congregation'sa little confused about how all
this works and what God isintending to do.
(16:00):
Our leadership teams are alittle confused around it.
I don't mean to be cynical ordifficult, that's just what
we're seeing, and so there'sroom for improvement in this
area yeah, why?
Speaker 1 (16:15):
why do people come to you guys like what's the spark,
like how do I?
A church wakes up one day andthey're like I gotta find
somebody to help me with thisthing.
And then they find generis likewhat kicks that off?
Speaker 3 (16:28):
felt need of some kind.
It's a felt need of some kindthat usually drives him to us.
I think right now, you know,obviously, with a campaign, if
you need a $15 million buildingand you don't know where the
money's going to come from, yourfelt need is I need to go
figure out how to do that.
If I don't know how to do that,let's go help, get somebody who
can help us.
Or maybe I think I know how todo it.
But let me talk to these guysand just see if they know stuff
(16:49):
that I don't know, which weprobably do, because you're a
generalist and we're spendingall of our time right here in
this one lane, right 35 years?
Right, 35 years or so,something like that.
Yeah, but then there's thisfelt need.
What we're seeing now, frank,this is the crazy thing, this
felt need of.
I just don't think my peopleget it right.
I just don't think my peopleget it.
(17:11):
My people are underdevelopedand there's so much I think it
would be fair to say, witheverything that Frank just went
through there, frank, there isso much low hanging fruit.
That's what we're seeing fromour efforts.
We're just going in with somebasic stuff and it's blowing
them away.
They're like oh man, we tripledthe number of first time givers
.
Our giving went up 33% yearover year, I get you know.
(17:32):
And we're just like, hey, it'snot that, it's not us, we're not
.
I mean, we're just giving yousome insight into if you wanted
to develop your people anddevelop them better, this would
be the way to do it.
Right.
And the whole thing starts withhaving this conversation in a
biblical way.
I said it actually earliertoday stick with me because it
sounds a little off when Istarted.
But you know, the whole idea is, the conversation in money is
(17:55):
so off that the pastor doesn'teven want to talk about it.
He's like, hey, I feel likeit's kind of, you know, maybe I
need to take a shower afterwards.
So here's what I would say theconversations about sex and
money in the church havesomething in common, and here's
what they have in common there'sa clean version and there's an
unclean version of them.
The clean version is pure andbiblical.
(18:17):
So sex outside of marriage isthe unclean version.
Sex inside of marriage is oneof the greatest gifts that God
gave, right?
And then the same thing is trueof money.
Money in a transactional way isthe unclean conversation.
Money as a means that Godintends to sanctify and
transform you is the clean way.
It's a way that you show, asyou said earlier so well.
(18:39):
I was just like maybe we oughtto just hire you and get you on
our generosity team.
You know that it's honor andit's thank you and it's
gratitude and it's worship andit's awe and it's reverence,
it's all those things.
That's our gift, because thething is giving is not what
separates us from theunbelievers.
Unbelievers give money, andsome of them give staggering
amounts of money, but the why?
Why do we give it in the firstplace?
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Who do we acknowledge as the one who provided it?
Frank, I would throw out realquick Jim said obviously felt
need is a huge factor.
I would add to that the crazymomentum that Generis is
experiencing right now.
I mean it's off the charts, thegrowth and impact that's being
had at Generis right now.
It's remarkable, like recordsetting in a new name.
(19:38):
I'm blown away by the churchesthat are just now finding out
about Janaris or that heard, butput them in some kind of 35
years and they're like what,what is this thing called?
I don't understand.
I'm sure you experienced thesame thing with a modern church
leader, with Tide Lee of like,where have you been under a rock
?
Like, you know, that's ourfirst thing to go, okay, okay,
like, how do you not know?
But what?
What's happening now is there'sbeen so much fruit from what
(20:01):
god's done just over the lasthandful of years from generis
that that fruit is showing upand people are going, oh, to
large churches or denominationalleaders or whatever going.
Hey, how did you do that?
Who helped you figure that out?
And so we are in a season whereI'd be like um, it's, more
people are finding out and morepeople are going.
(20:24):
I hear it's.
It's worth the investment toget some insight and wisdom from
this group.
Um, and just a stunning groupof of leaders that are serving
the church through generous yeah, stunning group of leaders that
are serving the church throughgenerous.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I love that.
When you you mentioned kind ofthe playbook, give me the
highlights, like when you go inand you're helping a church kind
of transform their culture ofgenerosity, and you know, going
back to like real discipleship,like what do you like you come
in, you do some kind ofevaluation?
Like real discipleship, likewhat do you like you come in,
you do some kind of evaluation.
And then here's the five thingsthat are like most common, low
(21:03):
hanging fruit, like just sopeople can grasp on.
Like sometimes I just needsimple, you know, like what's
the simple version of what youdo, knowing that it's way more
complicated than just reading aPDF, right, like, but where do
you start?
Like what is it that you go inand do?
Speaker 3 (21:18):
So that's a great question.
We're actually we're doing athree-part seminar on our
webinar on year-end giving andwe're teasing out the first
three parts of the play.
But we're not saying it thatway.
We'll say it probably Friday,but today we covered theology of
giving.
Wednesday we're going to talkabout the pastor's giving story
and Friday we're going to talkabout the giving moment, the
offering moment.
Those are really the firstthree layers, and you know where
(21:40):
people want to go, frank, isthey want to just go preach a
giving series.
Well, giving series is in ourplaybook, but it's stage five,
stage five.
Think about that.
We don't even, we don't eventalk about a giving series until
we get through these firstthree, right?
So the whole idea of having agood theology, a clear theology
of giving, as Frank said earlier, most of the time, if you just
(22:01):
got your executive team in aroom and you gave everybody a
card and said, hey, just writedown pop quiz, what does our
church believe about giving?
If I had a pastor and sixpeople in the room, I'm probably
going to get seven differentversions of what we believe.
And what I would say to thepastor is if it's that diverse
with seven of us, can youimagine what it's like with a
couple of thousand of us in aroom on a Sunday?
There's no clarity there, right?
(22:23):
And the thing about clarity isthat it gives us spiritual
clarity, but it also gives usclarity about expectations.
If you come into this church,this is what we believe about
giving.
So if this is not okay with you, you believe something else.
Either A come here and justknow this is the way it's going
to be, or else you might want tofind another church.
Don't come here trying tochange it.
We're already clear.
But it gives you an anchor, ananchor for everything else.
(22:47):
So the pastor's giving story,the giving moment, the giving
series, all of your donorcommunications, everything that
you're going to do becomesanchored to this theology of
giving communications.
Everything that you're going todo becomes anchored to this
theology of giving.
And most people we have yet tofind a church.
Well, excuse me, we found oneor two churches that had a good,
clear statement of theology,but in both of those cases, they
weren't leveraging it to reallygrow the congregation.
(23:07):
Oh yeah, we got that sittingback there.
I have a client.
I went to the elders and I heldup.
I printed out from their webpage.
I printed out their principlesof stewardship and the elders
said where did you get thatRight?
So they had it, but therewasn't a wide awareness of it,
right?
(23:27):
So we're helping them with thatright, and it was actually a
really good one, frankly.
So this whole idea of atheology of giving and have that
clear, then what you have to dois you have to have the pastor
and the executive team modelingwhat a good giving journey looks
like.
I started here.
Here's where I am today.
So, like for Nancy and me, webecame Christ followers in 1983.
(23:50):
Fall of 1985, god started reallyspeaking into us about
stewardship and generosity andgiving, and we set our face
toward a journey to get fromwhere we were less than 2% to
10% as quickly as we could, andwe got there in May of 1987.
So I was actually sitting down,we had a little bit of a
formula.
We had several layers of incomeand it was different
(24:12):
percentages on the variouslayers, and so I was doing that
and I wrote down a number numberand I was like, wait a second,
we were writing checks back then, typing around back in those
days.
We were writing checks backthen, and so I was like wait a
second.
And I looked at her holy cow,that's 10% of our income for
this month.
I got up from where I wassitting at the breakfast table.
(24:32):
I went back to the room wheremy wife to the bathroom.
My wife was getting ready and Isaid, honey, guess what we're
going to do today?
And she said we're going tochurch.
And I said no, no, no, I knowwe're going to church.
Guess what we're going to dowhen we get to church?
We're going to do what wealways do when we get to church.
No, you don't get it, honey.
Guess what we're going to do togive 10% of our income to our
(24:53):
church?
And she dropped her makeup andhugged me and said that's
awesome, we got there finally.
Right, that's a giving story,right.
And then we've we've had allthese moments along the way
where God just been and we'venever looked back on that, right
.
So, to have a giving journeyand always freshen it up when
something new happens, alwaysfreshen it up.
And so here's the thing about agiving story.
(25:14):
Once you start telling givingstories and the pastor and the
key staff start telling theirgiving stories, you'll be amazed
at how many giving storiesyou'll see in your congregation.
It's viral.
It becomes very viral, right.
And then the third thing is thelowest hanging, easiest to fix
thing in your church is thegiving moment.
Most of them just to be kind.
(25:36):
Most of them are terrible.
They're all about what to giveand how to give it, right?
Hey, so we got three ways togive here this morning.
You go to Tidely and you can goto this and click the QR code
and you do the tap and you cando this and you got your app and
you know what.
All of that stuff.
Why don't you develop theirunderstanding of why you give in
the first place?
Why is it that you get and useBible verses to illustrate that?
(25:57):
Use your two minutes to preacha mini sermon on giving.
And here's the thing If you'reafraid that people are going to
send you an email on your sermonseries, which is probably going
to happen If you get a sermonseries on Jesus coming tomorrow,
you're going to get the email,so let's just talk about that.
Right, you're going to get that,but you's not going to happen.
(26:19):
With the offering moment, youcan do as much as you want and
be as forward as you want.
Nobody's going to say a wordabout that.
And here's the thing Everysingle week it's like you've got
a drip strategy to speakstewardship and giving and
biblical generosity into theirlife and they begin to absorb it
and they develop it and all ofa sudden change starts to happen
.
So those would be kind of thethree that I would start with.
(26:41):
They're easy to fix and they'relow-hanging.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
What's the hardest part of the work you do?
Changing mindsets.
That'd be right, Frank,wouldn't you think?
Isn't that the hardest part?
The mindsets are just soingrained.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
I think you're right, Jim.
It's hard to get people tothink differently.
Sometimes they don't even knowit's there.
They will stay.
As fact, people will neverda-da-da-da-da.
Whatever it is, people willalways.
Whatever it is, people willalways.
And it's wild.
We hear it so consistently andwe're like who told you that?
Where did that come from?
There's history there.
(27:25):
It obviously formed some way.
But they are making decisionsnot based on scripture at times,
but based on a past experiencethat's traumatized them or
caused them to be cautious, orthey're concerned about this, or
they have a family member theysee every Thanksgiving that says
all the church does is talkabout money.
(27:46):
And so what are they doing?
They're running through afilter.
I can never talk about money.
I don't want to offend thatfamily member.
When they show up, that onetime, it's well, there's room
for improvement.
I think that at times are Iwould say generis is biggest
competitor by far is doing itthemselves.
Like, oh, we can, we can readon the internet, we can figure
(28:08):
this out ourselves, or whatever.
But here's what we know.
Every great athlete has a coachthat can see something that none
of the rest of us can see.
Right, my son.
He just went off to playcollege basketball and he had a
slump early in his senior seasonwhere he couldn't make a free
throw for nothing, but hisjunior year he set a state
(28:29):
record for percentage, like sothis didn't make any sense at
all.
He just put on some muscle.
Something wasn't right.
We had him work with his regularhead coach and all this stuff,
and then a buddy of ours who's ashooting coach said hey, I'll
meet you on a Sunday afternoonat this YMCA, let's figure out
what's going on.
And he walks in and he saysstart shooting.
And Isaac starts shooting freethrows and he goes.
(28:51):
Well, there it is, and I'm likehe made six of 10.
I didn't see anything.
They all look the same.
And he goes well, that's whatyou're doing.
And then he had him take theball, lay it on his knee for a
second while holding it, standup straight and go, start with
your hand on the knee on theball and start shooting.
He made 24 of his next 25.
(29:12):
And I still don't evenunderstand it, frank.
I don't understand.
It's like that looks the exactsame.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
I don't know what he did.
I'm standing there.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Isaac's made a bajillion free throws and he
could not figure out what wasmissing.
I think what we find withchurches as we're getting closer
to them sometimes they're likeoh okay, we got it, we got it.
Thanks for the webinar, Jim.
That's all we needed.
We'll go get to work.
But there's some nuances to it,some little things.
Along the way that they'restubbing their own toe, or what
(29:42):
they'll do more often than notis, if they do it by themselves,
they skip a step because theydon't like that step, they don't
want to wrestle with that, orthey deem it unnecessary, when
really it's like no, we got towrestle that to the ground, like
the theology of giving.
Oh, no, no, we got that partdown.
Great, I told everybody.
Now we're moving on.
It's like whoa wait, Did theyembrace that?
Did they agree?
(30:03):
Are they able to communicatethat back?
Those little things?
So, just like a good coach,they're going okay, I can see
things you can't see.
Jim and the team have beendoing this forever, and so they
just see things.
They pick up on those littlenuances or words or even
something that's in an emailcommunication that could
undermine what they're trying todo, and they don't even mean to
(30:24):
do it, and so they just needsomebody to coach, to guide them
, to help them.
Now, the great thing is whatwe're doing now, Frank, is with
this culture of generosity.
We've started building casestudies They'll literally be
ready in like three weeks towhere we can start showing you
know, show our work.
We're not going to list thechurch name or anything like
that, but that church will giveus permission to put the numbers
(30:46):
together, just to go listen.
This is how you move the needle.
So we just want to give yousome examples of churches you
would know that have had massivechange and yet from the outside
, looking in, you would thinkthey already had it figured out.
They had lots of giving, theywere doing fine their campuses
or whatever it is, and when youget under the hood it's like oh,
(31:07):
there was still room forimprovement.
Maybe they weren't chucking itup and throwing it over the
backboard.
They weren't terrible, but gosh, they were shooting 6 of 10,
and they should have been 9 of10.
They could have used a littlebit of help.
And so what we're finding isthat culture of generosity gives
us this incredible opportunityto speak to those nuanced
elements and really help achurch along the way and, Frank,
(31:32):
I'm not going to divulge anynumbers, Let me just say it this
way Double digit significantimpact in their overall ties,
very quickly and consistentlyfor like prolonged periods of
time.
(31:52):
Like I mean we're talkingsignificant impact in the
funding of ministry staffing,eliminating debt without the
campaign elements.
The campaign has its place, butwhat do you do in between or
when it's not a season for that?
We're seeing radical, radicalchange.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Yeah, that's cool, frank.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Let me just show you just one of the ideas what I had
in mind for what's hard tochange and frankly, it
illuminates so much of that.
So this is one of my favorites.
You probably know about five orsix years ago I started hanging
around a lot with young leaders.
I have a passion for mentoringthem and developing them, and so
(32:39):
when people talk about boomersand even Gen Z, I have a pretty
good idea of what I'm talkingabout.
And yet most pastors havebought into the idea that
millennials and Gen Z are notgivers.
The Barna research is very clearin refuting that, the big
giving study that they did acouple of years ago that we were
a part of.
So they asked this one question, two questions.
The first question is have yougiven to a charity, including a
house of worship, in the last 12months?
Interestingly, if you look atmillennials, gen X and boomers
(33:02):
right, those three generationsright in there there was
virtually no change.
It was a plus or minus 3% errorrate.
All three of them were withinthe 3%.
It was like 55, 57, 54,something like that.
They were all just right there.
So there was no discernibledifference in their giving.
And this is participation.
I know the dollars could bedifferent, but that's not the
issue here.
(33:23):
If they have the heart to give,the dollars will grow over time
, right.
But then?
So my boomer friends would saywell, jim, I didn't say they
didn't give, they just don'tgive to the church.
Oh well, let's look at the nextquestion then who gives to a
(33:43):
church?
Who gives to a church?
So the number for boomers was32%, the number for Gen X was
36% and the number formillennials was 42% Outside,
clearly outside the margin oferror.
So they actually have a higherparticipation.
The dollars may be less, butyou're selling me, pastor.
(34:03):
They don't even like to give toa church and I'm telling you
that is patently wrong and toevery person I've shown that to.
They just sit there and look atme like I just came in from a
foreign country, because theydon't believe that the culture
wants you to believe, thepopular culture.
The mainstream media wants topromote the idea that
millennials and Gen Z are off inthis area and it's just not
(34:25):
true.
It's not true.
And, by the way, the Barnaresearch lines up with what I
see when I'm in and out andamong those.
The problem for those churchesis most of the churches that are
saying that is, their languageis off, their language is off.
They're using boomer languageand hoping to get millennials to
give.
Well, you wouldn't use boomerlanguage to try to get
millennials to do anything.
It's completely different waysof thinking.
(34:47):
And you've got to just shiftyour language.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
What are you guys seeing in general?
Just because you're out theretalking generosity to everybody?
Like what do you see today,kind of many years now
post-COVID, but still feelinglike you have to say post-COVID
versus, you know, pre-covid days?
Like, are you noticing any kindof difference in church giving?
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Well, for one thing, you know, the churches that
didn't have didn't participatein online giving had to starting
in COVID, and so theparticipation rate in online
giving is drag, ticking andscreaming.
Yeah, drag, ticking andscreaming.
It's kind of like you may nothave had an online worship
service before March 15th of2020, but you do now.
Yeah, absolutely Either that oryou close down One of the two.
(35:33):
That was your option, right,wasn't it so many churches
flocked to the thing?
The Life Church.
Life Church gives away theirplatform.
So many times flocked to itthat first couple Sundays they
crashed it and they had todouble their capacity.
We ain't doing it online.
Why do we want to do it?
Well, you are now.
So the giving participationrate electronically has gone way
(35:54):
up, which we love.
But the blessing and curse ofthat is it is great when you set
up a recurring gift.
What we want churches to do iscall attention to it every
January because, out of sight isout of mind, and maybe your
income grew by 40% this year butyou haven't shifted your giving
from last year and if you wantto keep up with what God's doing
, then you need to go back andlook at your gift, make sure
your gift is keeping up withyour income, things like that.
(36:16):
But I will say this in terms ofgiving participation giving
participation rates have notchanged.
So it's still true that if youhave 1,000 families in your
church, probably 480 of them aregiving and 520 of them are not,
are not giving significantlyright, and so the work is not
(36:38):
finished there.
We haven't seen that shiftsignificantly in terms of that,
and we're working on thatbecause one of the things, one
of the things too Frank in termsof engaging in this culture of
generosity, is we've got to giveundeveloped givers a way to get
on board, and most of ourlanguage is just not helpful in
that area.
Hey, so you know, you know oneof the things people know if you
come around, we have a thousandfamilies are in this church.
(36:58):
You know 420, 480 of them giveand 520 of them don't.
Well, that might be true, butit's not helpful.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
If.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
I'm keeping up with friends.
Guilt and shame haven't movedanybody recently.
Not enough to matter, right?
So why don't we use inclusivelanguage like hey?
So one of the things we know ina room like this on any given
Sunday is that there are some ofyou who have not started your
giving journey yet, and at ourchurch we believe that there's
three things that we want you todo.
There's a starting point, anext step and a next step.
(37:27):
If you haven't given, givesomething.
If you started by givingsomething, then give it
consistently.
That would be set up arecurring gift.
Give it consistently.
And then, if you're givingconsistently, grow in your
giving.
And it's amazing, some of thechurches that Frank's talking
about that have seen this crazygrowth.
That's their basic strategy andthey're moving the needle.
I mean when you talk about alarge church with over $20
(37:51):
million annual income, over 20million.
But January to June of thisyear, compared to last year,
frank not 50%, not 100% tripledthe number of first-time givers
and you and I both know that ifyou don't have first-time givers
coming in, you're starting toflatten out and you'll start to
go down at some point in timebecause you've got to have
(38:11):
revitalization right.
Triple.
That church is so crazy in thenumbers it's accomplished we
don't even like to talk about itbecause it sets an unrealistic
expectation, but it shows what'spossible.
It shows what's possible, frank, that's what I'm saying.
And so most of the givingsystems that we see, including
websites, are set up to servicepeople, service givers, like the
(38:33):
three of us we're alreadygiving.
You don't need to have a givingpage for us.
What you need to do is you needto have a giving page that
lines up with your strategy todevelop new givers.
So if we have three things wewant you to do, let's have
button number one set up a gift.
I'll make a first time gift.
Button number two make arecurring gift.
Set up a recurring gift andwhen you click there it goes to
(38:56):
entirely the default ofrecurring gift, right.
And then the third one would belog in and change and update
your giving.
So step number three so whenyou say it on Sunday morning and
when they go to the website,they see exactly the same thing,
as opposed to just giving out.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Yeah, without saying that church.
Do you have another church whodoes this?
Speaker 3 (39:18):
well, that way you don't have to give me that I'm
not hunting for that name.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
I'm just hunting for a good example of something.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Yeah, I think that the one I'm thinking of is one
that a lot more churches wouldrelate to.
They're in an area of thecountry that you would say wait,
they were able to make thatwork and they are very, very
good at what they do, butthey're not going to blow you
away right off the bat.
And they've seen 75% increasein first-time givers and last I
(39:48):
looked they're at 32%year-over-year.
No campaign 32% increaseyear-over-year.
So think of this, frank, you'veall of a sudden got a third
more money today than you did ayear ago, and all you're doing
is and you really and, by theway, their church is growing,
but it's not growing that fast.
The giving growth is outpacingthe attendance growth by several
(40:08):
steps.
Right, and that's the one whereI would say you know where?
Because we're looking to see.
Okay, what's the breadth ofwhat's happening?
Is it happening in a morenormal situation?
Yes, just see.
Okay, what's the breadth ofwhat's happening?
Is it happening in a morenormal situation?
Yes, it is.
This is a church with, I think,about a $4.5 million annual
income and in a smaller town,not a big town, not a super
small town, but a medium-sizedtown and the whole strategy is
(40:30):
working, including some otherplaces as well.
But that's what helps us to seein this beta testing, this
pilot program Does this workacross theological and cultural
settings and all that, and it isright.
Yeah, that's what's encouragingto us.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Super cool.
Last question Maybe you cangive me some examples.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
What's your biggest success or biggest joy in doing
this work?
Seeing the light come on forthe senior pastor.
Bro, I'm telling you, seeingthe light come on for the senior
pastor and seeing him, becauseonce he gets it, frank, here's
the thing that's going to have along-term impact.
I can, I can, I can look.
Raising episodic money is notthe hardest thing we do.
That's not hard, you know, Imean it's not a slam dunk, but
it's not the hardest thing we do.
That's not hard, you know, Imean it's not a slam dunk, but
it's not the hardest thing we do.
(41:19):
Changing givers' hearts iswhat's really hard.
And when the pastor gets it,when the light comes on for the
pastor, now I know it's going toget prioritized and it'll get
spoken into and, by the way,that is, I think it's the common
denominator around.
We have a few churches wherethe playbook hasn't worked as
well, and here's what I can tellyou.
The difference is the pastor isnot leaning in on it as hard.
(41:40):
He's not leaning in on it ashard.
So we know that when the pastorgets it and leans in, that
there's a different element ofchange that's going to happen
there.
After all these years, thatstill gives me a gas man.
Seeing those guys have thelight come on.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
Oh, now.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
I understand, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Frank might have a different answer.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
He has some insights.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
For me it's it would be big there.
Ministry, as you guys know, isreally hard.
It has its really long days andmore often than not we run into
churches that feel stretchedfrom a staffing standpoint and a
resource standpoint and theyalready have so many demands on
them from the mess of ministryand just people, and then so
(42:21):
many of them are also navigatingthe complexity of being
under-resourced, and so to seethose breakthroughs occur to
where a church now has they'renot fully funded, their vision
is still bigger than theirbudget, but it's like they get a
little relief, you know, just,I believe that that just helps.
(42:44):
It helps with stability, ithelps with the way they serve
their congregation and theircommunity.
It allows them to do the thingsthat they've been called to do.
And so I think the constraintsof funding have become so
challenging that you add that tothe complexity of the mess of
ministry and it just leads toburnout and stress and burden
(43:06):
and breakdowns.
And I need to find a job that'seasier doing something else,
and so I don't know.
I think there's something to besaid about a church that feels
resourced, properly resourced todo the ministry they've been
asked to do is life-giving forthat congregation and it's when
(43:28):
those moments when you see themhit their goals, whether it be
through a campaign, or you seethem achieve their goals in the
way that they can do communityimpact, because they have the
resources to do it.
It is so life-giving, frank,and so I agree completely with
what jim said too, but thatwould be mine, yeah yeah, I love
(43:48):
that.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
Well, fellas, it's been great to have you guys on
the show and chat about this.
Where can folks go to learnabout like the new stuff you
guys are doing?
Is it still pilot mode or canthey go to the website?
Speaker 3 (44:01):
We'll reveal the cultural generosity framework
stuff toward the end of thisyear and that'll be on our
resource page.
But right now go to generiscom.
Most everything we've got andthings you've heard about here.
We've got a lot of freeresources there PDFs and eBooks
that we've done, that we're gladfor you to download and take a
look at all those.
Some of the things we've talkedabout here and anything else
that we have coming along isalways going to show up there
(44:21):
first.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
Love it and it sounds like there's a webinar series
going on.
Should they register?
Speaker 3 (44:26):
We have a year-end webinar series that's going on
right now and it started todayactually at noontime, so you can
actually go and register.
You can get all the recordings.
So we're doing it Monday,Wednesday, Friday of this week,
so that is the 23rd, 25th and27th of September.
30 minutes a shot, Frank, sowe're keeping it real short and
Frank and I are spending about10 minutes talking about content
(44:47):
, 10 minutes of Q and A and wrapup.
Just get in there and fast,fire, hit hard and move out and
the three together I think wouldbe a really nice resource for a
church.
Yeah, I love it.
I think would be a really niceresource for a church.
Yeah, I love it, and you cansign up for that at our website
as well, put it on the homepage.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
We'll send a bunch of traffic there.
Guys, it's been great to haveyou on.
Thanks, folks, for listeningGreat episode.
Give it a like or share on thesocials and we'll catch you guys
next week on another episode ofModern Church Leader.
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Modern Church
Leader.
I am here with my new bestfriends.
Well, we've got Jim Shepard andwe have Frank Beeler, and we
did figure out that this will bethe very first podcast ever
with two Franks on it, andespecially two Frank Bees so man
guys, welcome to the show yeahthe upside is big, the upside is
(00:24):
big, the upside is big, theupside is big, the upside is big
, the upside is big.
Someone will fact check that.
They'll figure out how to useAI to search every podcast ever
recorded and see if there wastwo Franks on a podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Yeah, and there probably wasn't even one in the
last hour or so, so that'sprobably going to X-nay us right
off the bat.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Credibility shot right off the bat.
Oh my gosh.
And we've taught golf and we'veshared hats and uh, are you
guys both in the office?
Like where do you guys?
You so you know you'll tell usall about generis, but where are
you guys located?
Speaker 3 (00:53):
I'm in the same building from john's cream, so
we uh didn't have any weirdaudio issues yeah yeah, smart,
smart move.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I know it looks like we're doing the bro crush on.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
You know, when two guys try to crowd into one
screen, no we're not gonna betoo weird.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
I've done that podcast no, no, no.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
You do it once.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
You do it once and you'll never do it again so, uh,
I mean, jim, you've been atthis for a long time frank, I'm
less familiar with you and howlong you've been into the
generosity kind of universe, butwhy don't you guys tell us a
little bit about Generis andwhat you guys do for anybody on
the podcast that doesn't alreadyknow?
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Yeah, so I came here Interesting, I'm celebrating my
32nd anniversary right aroundnow.
So I'm not sure exactly whatthe date was in September of
1992, but I usually nail itsomewhere around the 15th of the
25th.
So it's right here in this timeframe.
32 years ago, and you know,honestly, frank, I thought I was
going to stay here for a littlewhile and then go back to what
(01:51):
I was doing, which was, you know, I was a financial executive in
a public company, financialservices, and you know I'd go
back and do that.
And here I am, 32 years later.
It's really, I think, what, whatGod wanted me to do with the
rest of my life.
I've always said to him I'llstay as long as you want and
I'll leave anytime you want.
And you know, I've never felt asense of leaving.
I still, you know, at my agewhen a lot of guys are retiring,
you know I could retire, but Ijust love working with pastors,
(02:14):
love working with churches, loveseeing vision come alive, with
the funding that it takes tomake vision happen, and so
that's a big part.
So that's a big part.
That's what we do at Generous.
You know we talk about ourmission is accelerate generosity
toward God-inspired vision.
But what we're really trying toaccomplish, frank what we don't
say anywhere in print, butwe're not afraid to say it, you
know, in spaces like this iswhat we're really trying to do
(02:34):
is change the conversation aboutfaith and money in the American
church.
We feel like it's gotten off,it's become very transactional
and God means for it to betransformational, and we're
working to try to change that,make it more about discipleship
than about funding.
Funding will happen ifdiscipleship happens, but
discipleship needs to happenfirst, and so I came here 32
(02:55):
years ago, but we have theseprinted for our upcoming summit
meeting.
We have actually been inbusiness for 35 years, since
1989.
And what's cool, I think, isthat how we've refreshed
ourselves over the years.
We've done some new things.
It was starting in 2009, 2010.
We started in our generosityaudit and then our One Fund
campaign and some of the otherstuff we're doing Right now.
One of the things you're goingto see become very public after
(03:16):
the first of the year is ourmove into what we call the
culture of generosity spacegenerosity space.
So we're starting to have a lotof churches that contact us
that are not looking for acampaign, not looking for a
building campaign or debtretirement or whatever that
might be, but just want to helptheir people develop in their
giving.
And so we have developed aframework, a seven-play
(03:38):
framework, that we've startedtesting in about 15 churches and
we are convinced more than ever, based on what's happening
there, that this is the rightmove in the right time.
So we're going to be seeing alot of that.
So that's kind of our mostrecent fresh expression that
you're going to start seeingeven more and more especially
coming after the first of theyear.
So, frank, what would you addto that?
You have some uniqueperspective in church space.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Frank, I get the incredible privilege of, first
of all, getting to spend a greatamount of time with Jim and
learn from him and his heart andposture for serving churches.
I mean he didn't mention this,but I mean Generis has raised
over $7 billion to help churchesand faith-based organizations
3,500 different organizations.
I mean massive impact, from bigto small, to all different
(04:26):
denominations really incrediblework.
And to see Jim's and theorganization's posture just to
serve churches where they're atand to help them really, really
step up in this area ofdiscipleship.
We know this is a commonconversation, right?
Jim and I were talking earliertoday on a webinar and it was
(04:47):
all about this conversationaround.
The church is leaning in veryheavily into the language of
discipleship and what I've seenfrom the outside looking in and
now, as I've gotten closer toJanaris and Jim, that's been the
heartbeat all along.
It's one of the things that'sresonated.
It's why churches continue todo multiple campaigns with
Generis, because there's beenthis history of truly wanting
(05:09):
what's best for the congregantsto help them grow in their faith
.
And now, with culture ofgenerosity game changer Like
Frank, I mean we're seeinginsane results for the forget
the 5% at any given time thatare doing building campaigns.
Yeah, they need help andthere's a strategy.
I'm talking about the 99% ofchurches that could all have a
(05:30):
little bit more funding to moveforward in their vision and
mission and they may not knowthe right practical steps to
take to really serve theircongregation well and make it
become, as Jim mentioned,transformative, not
transactional when it comes togiving so man, to get to draw
closer to that, it's beenawesome.
I came from the business worldand then got connected with a
(05:53):
church called Elevation Churchin Charlotte where I was on the
executive team for years, andthen I came down here to Atlanta
where I had the privilege ofgetting to know Jim and some
other leaders just to figure outways to serve churches, and so
that's why I'm here today andwe're getting this chance to
chop it up and talk.
And, by the way, the factcheckers are in and there is an
organization in North Carolinathat's released the Learn More
(06:15):
Podcast with Frank and Frank.
So sorry, we're not the first,so we're going to have to be the
first at something else.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Oh geez, imagine that , imagine that.
So we're going to be the first.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
it's something else, oh geez, so maybe we get that,
maybe we get the extra letter,yeah, yeah yeah, we're, we're
gonna claim that, wow, that waslike live during the debate.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Fact checking Pretty good, pretty good, I like it.
So one of the things that isinteresting about our space,
like churches and the way thatpeople give in the church, it's
like fundamentally differentthan why people give maybe to
other forms of charities, right,nonprofits and things like that
(07:02):
other forms of charities, right, nonprofits and things like
that.
Cause it is, it is out of faithand obedience and love and
gratitude and all of thesethings for what God has done for
us.
But you mentioned, like, ashift towards transactional
versus transformative or youknow.
However, you want to frame itup Like, how are you guys seeing
that?
Like, when you say you'reseeing it be transactional, like
(07:23):
, why, from your guys' vantagepoint, why do you see that?
Speaker 3 (07:27):
I would say this, frank.
So it's something that, fromagain my perspective, I would
trace it back roughly 40 years,40 to 44 years, right around the
time when the seeker-friendlymovement started in the church.
When the seeker-friendlymovement started in the church
Hybels and Warren and all thosewhich, by the way, I think
(07:48):
seeker-friendly movement,transitioning the church from my
parents' model of church to anew expression that would reach
the boomer generation was agreat idea, but sometimes great
ideas have unintendedconsequences, right?
And so in my parents' churchyou would have had a high value
on discipleship, not as high avalue of welcoming in the
unsaved ones, right, even thoughwe would say evangelism was a
(08:11):
big part.
But we just didn't do it well.
My parents' church didn't do itwell.
So what we tried to do in theboomer movement was to open up
the doors of the church, to bemore inclusive to people who
were hurt or weren't raised inthe church or whatever had
happened.
They'd fallen out of the church.
I mean, like me and my, youknow, when I was in college.
Not that that's an excuse, butthat's what happened.
And so the church had a newexpression that was really
(08:33):
focused on welcoming people inand making the front door a lot
bigger.
But in making the front door alot bigger, we inadvertently,
just slowly this is not a suddensnap of the neck, it's a slow
drift into the wrong directionwe became, we lost the focus on
discipleship, took our eye offof the ball, and it shows up
(08:57):
probably nowhere more clearlythan in the giving conversation.
So the giving conversation ismore about meeting the budget
than it is about developing youas a giver, and the problem with
that is that that is completelyopposite of what the Bible
describes right Most clearly inPhilippians 4.17, when the
Apostle Paul thanking the churchat Philippi for what they did
(09:18):
for him they were earlysupporters and at one time they
were his only supporters andthen in verse 17, he drops this
in on us and he said and Ididn't seek the gift from my own
account, but for the increasethat comes to your account.
Well, what does that mean?
It means that he was thankfulfor the fact that they gave the
gift to him.
But that was not the big deal.
The bigger thing that happenedwas how you were transformed,
(09:41):
what you were storing up inheaven, your treasures in heaven
and your rewards that you'restoring up before God.
As you're giving that and thetransformation that happened
with you.
It drew you closer to God whenyou made a gift of my ministry,
and we're just not celebratingthat.
We're celebrating the gift thatwas made, not the
transformation that happened.
And so it's a slow drift to adestination that no one intended
(10:04):
to arrive at.
But the roadmap just got offand we're there.
And so what happens is now,when we go in and enlighten
people to the fact that they'vedrifted over here, almost every
time they're like help us getback to the center.
Yes, I see that, help us getback over here.
The problem with and here'swhere the transactional thing
shows up, frank the problem withand here's where the
transactional thing shows up,frank we have I'm going to go
(10:26):
out on a limb we have the vastmajority of our churches.
On Sunday morning, when they'representing the offering, when
they're doing the giving moment,they look more like an
organization trying to raisesupport than a church trying to
make disciples.
And that's the problem we'retalking about.
(10:49):
And that's what we talk aboutwhen I say our vision.
Our bigger vision is to changethe conversation about faith and
money in the American church,to move it from this slow drift
into transactional back overinto a real life
transformational conversation.
So the idea would reorient theheart and it redirects the
resources.
It's not that we're not naiveMoney is going to flow into the
church, but we're not shootingat it redirects the resources.
It's not that we're not, we'renot naive.
Money is going to flow into thechurch, but we're not shooting
at the target of the money,we're shooting at the target of
(11:11):
the heart and then letting thattake its route once it gets
transformed.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
So yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you guys have changed, notchanged.
You're doing more in the areaof helping, like holistically,
churches in the area ofgenerosity, instead of it just
being capital campaigns and thatlike campaign based raising
money and building generosity.
It's like let's come alongsidechurches for the whole year or
(11:35):
for multi-year and help themkind of build in the culture of
generosity.
Like what does that look like?
Like how do you come into achurch and help them kind of see
where they're at?
Speaker 2 (11:45):
So yes is the answer.
There's a place where, when itcomes to campaigns, campaigns
are still very much needed.
They are part of an overallstrategy, without a doubt, for
schools Christian schools thatneed buildings and for churches
to expand Absolutely.
There's a place for that.
Churches to expand Absolutely,there's a place for that, and it
can be an incredible part ofthe faith journey to give
(12:06):
sacrificially in those moments,to give generously and
sacrificially.
It's an incredible opportunityfor that.
But you're saying, hey, whatdoes it look like to come
alongside?
Here's the thing, Frank.
Over and over again, we can talkabout the fundamentals of what
it looks like to disciple peoplein generosity, and sometimes
(12:27):
we'll even talk to pastors andthey'll be like oh yeah, we do
that.
Oh yeah, we do that.
Yeah, we've already done that,and all we do is ask them to
open up and take a look at theirown organization.
And they'll be like wait, whendid we stop sending first-time
giver letters?
When did our website get anoverhaul?
And now they click give andthere's no instruction
(12:49):
whatsoever about what you'regiving is doing or what Jesus
intends to do.
It just goes straight to Tidelyto go process my installment or
my gift and it's like well, howdid we get there?
They would be shocked at that.
Like we see this over and overagain where people that are more
than capable of doing this.
It is a part of ministry.
(13:10):
It is not all of ministry, andwhat we find is that the urgency
from the day to day dominatesthe focus, and so what we can
see over and over again is thatpeople already pastors and
leaders in church already have alittle bit of tendency to not
want to step on the landmine andcomplexity that is giving, so
they're not going to talk aboutit too much.
(13:30):
Maybe they do that one sermonseries or whatever.
Well, because it's not aprimary focus, oftentimes some
of the fundamentals get lostalong the way, and I'll tell you
, one of the shocking thingswe're seeing is we're teaching
the culture of generosity.
I've been in sessions withpeople where they're like yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, we know, yeah,yeah, we do that, yeah, yeah,
(13:51):
yeah.
And I'm like no, actually, bythe way, I looked at your
website, by the way, this and wejust open up the playbook and
they're like oh, I didn'trealize we drifted away from
that, or I didn't want to usethat language, or man, we
haven't updated this in sixyears or whatever it may be.
And so what we're finding isthat what churches could use is
not a checklist, it's a guide toevaluate inside their culture
(14:13):
and their context.
How do we help them get back ontrack where generosity is part
of the discipleship conversation.
It is not just cookie cutter,it's not just hey, here's an
e-book, Go do this.
The fact is there are probablyenough bajillions of eBooks on
giving out there where, ifsomebody at a church were to
(14:33):
amalgamate them all together andprocess them and build a game
plan, they could probably dosome good stuff to fix some
stuff.
But the reality is they need aguide to figure out.
How do we make this sound likeus, how do we navigate this
along the way and what are oursticking points?
And oftentimes you need thatnew perspective, which is a
value that generis brings thatoutside perspective going.
(14:56):
Oh, you're speaking as thoughthat is true, that that is just
a reality to deal with, but youknow that's not how other
churches operate or that'ssomething that you've imposed on
yourself.
That's not what God intended, ina very respectful way, to
wrestle with those practicalthings from the very beginning,
which we recently recorded somecontent on this the idea of what
(15:20):
is your theology of giving?
Is your theology of giving?
We have yet to find a churchwhere the executive leadership
team can cohesively communicatewhat the theology of giving is
for the church without sayingdifferent things.
Now we talk about baptism orsomething our communion, they
can man.
It's spot on when it comes togiving.
(15:40):
There's wildly differentanswers, not necessarily
heretical, but they're justbringing their back perspective
what they've read in the Bible,what's important to them, and
they just kind of amalgamate ittogether, and so there's not a
clear plan.
So no wonder the congregation'sa little confused about how all
this works and what God isintending to do.
(16:00):
Our leadership teams are alittle confused around it.
I don't mean to be cynical ordifficult, that's just what
we're seeing, and so there'sroom for improvement in this
area yeah, why?
Speaker 1 (16:15):
why do people come to you guys like what's the spark,
like how do I?
A church wakes up one day andthey're like I gotta find
somebody to help me with thisthing.
And then they find generis likewhat kicks that off?
Speaker 3 (16:28):
felt need of some kind.
It's a felt need of some kindthat usually drives him to us.
I think right now, you know,obviously, with a campaign, if
you need a $15 million buildingand you don't know where the
money's going to come from, yourfelt need is I need to go
figure out how to do that.
If I don't know how to do that,let's go help, get somebody who
can help us.
Or maybe I think I know how todo it.
But let me talk to these guysand just see if they know stuff
(16:49):
that I don't know, which weprobably do, because you're a
generalist and we're spendingall of our time right here in
this one lane, right 35 years?
Right, 35 years or so,something like that.
Yeah, but then there's thisfelt need.
What we're seeing now, frank,this is the crazy thing, this
felt need of.
I just don't think my peopleget it right.
I just don't think my peopleget it.
(17:11):
My people are underdevelopedand there's so much I think it
would be fair to say, witheverything that Frank just went
through there, frank, there isso much low hanging fruit.
That's what we're seeing fromour efforts.
We're just going in with somebasic stuff and it's blowing
them away.
They're like oh man, we tripledthe number of first time givers
.
Our giving went up 33% yearover year, I get you know.
(17:32):
And we're just like, hey, it'snot that, it's not us, we're not
.
I mean, we're just giving yousome insight into if you wanted
to develop your people anddevelop them better, this would
be the way to do it.
Right.
And the whole thing starts withhaving this conversation in a
biblical way.
I said it actually earliertoday stick with me because it
sounds a little off when Istarted.
But you know, the whole idea is, the conversation in money is
(17:55):
so off that the pastor doesn'teven want to talk about it.
He's like, hey, I feel likeit's kind of, you know, maybe I
need to take a shower afterwards.
So here's what I would say theconversations about sex and
money in the church havesomething in common, and here's
what they have in common there'sa clean version and there's an
unclean version of them.
The clean version is pure andbiblical.
(18:17):
So sex outside of marriage isthe unclean version.
Sex inside of marriage is oneof the greatest gifts that God
gave, right?
And then the same thing is trueof money.
Money in a transactional way isthe unclean conversation.
Money as a means that Godintends to sanctify and
transform you is the clean way.
It's a way that you show, asyou said earlier so well.
(18:39):
I was just like maybe we oughtto just hire you and get you on
our generosity team.
You know that it's honor andit's thank you and it's
gratitude and it's worship andit's awe and it's reverence,
it's all those things.
That's our gift, because thething is giving is not what
separates us from theunbelievers.
Unbelievers give money, andsome of them give staggering
amounts of money, but the why?
Why do we give it in the firstplace?
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Who do we acknowledge as the one who provided it?
Frank, I would throw out realquick Jim said obviously felt
need is a huge factor.
I would add to that the crazymomentum that Generis is
experiencing right now.
I mean it's off the charts, thegrowth and impact that's being
had at Generis right now.
It's remarkable, like recordsetting in a new name.
(19:38):
I'm blown away by the churchesthat are just now finding out
about Janaris or that heard, butput them in some kind of 35
years and they're like what,what is this thing called?
I don't understand.
I'm sure you experienced thesame thing with a modern church
leader, with Tide Lee of like,where have you been under a rock
?
Like, you know, that's ourfirst thing to go, okay, okay,
like, how do you not know?
But what?
What's happening now is there'sbeen so much fruit from what
(20:01):
god's done just over the lasthandful of years from generis
that that fruit is showing upand people are going, oh, to
large churches or denominationalleaders or whatever going.
Hey, how did you do that?
Who helped you figure that out?
And so we are in a season whereI'd be like um, it's, more
people are finding out and morepeople are going.
(20:24):
I hear it's.
It's worth the investment toget some insight and wisdom from
this group.
Um, and just a stunning groupof of leaders that are serving
the church through generous yeah, stunning group of leaders that
are serving the church throughgenerous.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I love that.
When you you mentioned kind ofthe playbook, give me the
highlights, like when you go inand you're helping a church kind
of transform their culture ofgenerosity, and you know, going
back to like real discipleship,like what do you like you come
in, you do some kind ofevaluation?
Like real discipleship, likewhat do you like you come in,
you do some kind of evaluation.
And then here's the five thingsthat are like most common, low
(21:03):
hanging fruit, like just sopeople can grasp on.
Like sometimes I just needsimple, you know, like what's
the simple version of what youdo, knowing that it's way more
complicated than just reading aPDF, right, like, but where do
you start?
Like what is it that you go inand do?
Speaker 3 (21:18):
So that's a great question.
We're actually we're doing athree-part seminar on our
webinar on year-end giving andwe're teasing out the first
three parts of the play.
But we're not saying it thatway.
We'll say it probably Friday,but today we covered theology of
giving.
Wednesday we're going to talkabout the pastor's giving story
and Friday we're going to talkabout the giving moment, the
offering moment.
Those are really the firstthree layers, and you know where
(21:40):
people want to go, frank, isthey want to just go preach a
giving series.
Well, giving series is in ourplaybook, but it's stage five,
stage five.
Think about that.
We don't even, we don't eventalk about a giving series until
we get through these firstthree, right?
So the whole idea of having agood theology, a clear theology
of giving, as Frank said earlier, most of the time, if you just
(22:01):
got your executive team in aroom and you gave everybody a
card and said, hey, just writedown pop quiz, what does our
church believe about giving?
If I had a pastor and sixpeople in the room, I'm probably
going to get seven differentversions of what we believe.
And what I would say to thepastor is if it's that diverse
with seven of us, can youimagine what it's like with a
couple of thousand of us in aroom on a Sunday?
There's no clarity there, right?
(22:23):
And the thing about clarity isthat it gives us spiritual
clarity, but it also gives usclarity about expectations.
If you come into this church,this is what we believe about
giving.
So if this is not okay with you, you believe something else.
Either A come here and justknow this is the way it's going
to be, or else you might want tofind another church.
Don't come here trying tochange it.
We're already clear.
But it gives you an anchor, ananchor for everything else.
(22:47):
So the pastor's giving story,the giving moment, the giving
series, all of your donorcommunications, everything that
you're going to do becomesanchored to this theology of
giving communications.
Everything that you're going todo becomes anchored to this
theology of giving.
And most people we have yet tofind a church.
Well, excuse me, we found oneor two churches that had a good,
clear statement of theology,but in both of those cases, they
weren't leveraging it to reallygrow the congregation.
(23:07):
Oh yeah, we got that sittingback there.
I have a client.
I went to the elders and I heldup.
I printed out from their webpage.
I printed out their principlesof stewardship and the elders
said where did you get thatRight?
So they had it, but therewasn't a wide awareness of it,
right?
(23:27):
So we're helping them with thatright, and it was actually a
really good one, frankly.
So this whole idea of atheology of giving and have that
clear, then what you have to dois you have to have the pastor
and the executive team modelingwhat a good giving journey looks
like.
I started here.
Here's where I am today.
So, like for Nancy and me, webecame Christ followers in 1983.
(23:50):
Fall of 1985, god started reallyspeaking into us about
stewardship and generosity andgiving, and we set our face
toward a journey to get fromwhere we were less than 2% to
10% as quickly as we could, andwe got there in May of 1987.
So I was actually sitting down,we had a little bit of a
formula.
We had several layers of incomeand it was different
(24:12):
percentages on the variouslayers, and so I was doing that
and I wrote down a number numberand I was like, wait a second,
we were writing checks back then, typing around back in those
days.
We were writing checks backthen, and so I was like wait a
second.
And I looked at her holy cow,that's 10% of our income for
this month.
I got up from where I wassitting at the breakfast table.
(24:32):
I went back to the room wheremy wife to the bathroom.
My wife was getting ready and Isaid, honey, guess what we're
going to do today?
And she said we're going tochurch.
And I said no, no, no, I knowwe're going to church.
Guess what we're going to dowhen we get to church?
We're going to do what wealways do when we get to church.
No, you don't get it, honey.
Guess what we're going to do togive 10% of our income to our
(24:53):
church?
And she dropped her makeup andhugged me and said that's
awesome, we got there finally.
Right, that's a giving story,right.
And then we've we've had allthese moments along the way
where God just been and we'venever looked back on that, right
.
So, to have a giving journeyand always freshen it up when
something new happens, alwaysfreshen it up.
And so here's the thing about agiving story.
(25:14):
Once you start telling givingstories and the pastor and the
key staff start telling theirgiving stories, you'll be amazed
at how many giving storiesyou'll see in your congregation.
It's viral.
It becomes very viral, right.
And then the third thing is thelowest hanging, easiest to fix
thing in your church is thegiving moment.
Most of them just to be kind.
(25:36):
Most of them are terrible.
They're all about what to giveand how to give it, right?
Hey, so we got three ways togive here this morning.
You go to Tidely and you can goto this and click the QR code
and you do the tap and you cando this and you got your app and
you know what.
All of that stuff.
Why don't you develop theirunderstanding of why you give in
the first place?
Why is it that you get and useBible verses to illustrate that?
(25:57):
Use your two minutes to preacha mini sermon on giving.
And here's the thing If you'reafraid that people are going to
send you an email on your sermonseries, which is probably going
to happen If you get a sermonseries on Jesus coming tomorrow,
you're going to get the email,so let's just talk about that.
Right, you're going to get that,but you's not going to happen.
(26:19):
With the offering moment, youcan do as much as you want and
be as forward as you want.
Nobody's going to say a wordabout that.
And here's the thing Everysingle week it's like you've got
a drip strategy to speakstewardship and giving and
biblical generosity into theirlife and they begin to absorb it
and they develop it and all ofa sudden change starts to happen
.
So those would be kind of thethree that I would start with.
(26:41):
They're easy to fix and they'relow-hanging.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
What's the hardest part of the work you do?
Changing mindsets.
That'd be right, Frank,wouldn't you think?
Isn't that the hardest part?
The mindsets are just soingrained.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
I think you're right, Jim.
It's hard to get people tothink differently.
Sometimes they don't even knowit's there.
They will stay.
As fact, people will neverda-da-da-da-da.
Whatever it is, people willalways.
Whatever it is, people willalways.
And it's wild.
We hear it so consistently andwe're like who told you that?
Where did that come from?
There's history there.
(27:25):
It obviously formed some way.
But they are making decisionsnot based on scripture at times,
but based on a past experiencethat's traumatized them or
caused them to be cautious, orthey're concerned about this, or
they have a family member theysee every Thanksgiving that says
all the church does is talkabout money.
(27:46):
And so what are they doing?
They're running through afilter.
I can never talk about money.
I don't want to offend thatfamily member.
When they show up, that onetime, it's well, there's room
for improvement.
I think that at times are Iwould say generis is biggest
competitor by far is doing itthemselves.
Like, oh, we can, we can readon the internet, we can figure
(28:08):
this out ourselves, or whatever.
But here's what we know.
Every great athlete has a coachthat can see something that none
of the rest of us can see.
Right, my son.
He just went off to playcollege basketball and he had a
slump early in his senior seasonwhere he couldn't make a free
throw for nothing, but hisjunior year he set a state
(28:29):
record for percentage, like sothis didn't make any sense at
all.
He just put on some muscle.
Something wasn't right.
We had him work with his regularhead coach and all this stuff,
and then a buddy of ours who's ashooting coach said hey, I'll
meet you on a Sunday afternoonat this YMCA, let's figure out
what's going on.
And he walks in and he saysstart shooting.
And Isaac starts shooting freethrows and he goes.
(28:51):
Well, there it is, and I'm likehe made six of 10.
I didn't see anything.
They all look the same.
And he goes well, that's whatyou're doing.
And then he had him take theball, lay it on his knee for a
second while holding it, standup straight and go, start with
your hand on the knee on theball and start shooting.
He made 24 of his next 25.
(29:12):
And I still don't evenunderstand it, frank.
I don't understand.
It's like that looks the exactsame.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
I don't know what he did.
I'm standing there.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Isaac's made a bajillion free throws and he
could not figure out what wasmissing.
I think what we find withchurches as we're getting closer
to them sometimes they're likeoh okay, we got it, we got it.
Thanks for the webinar, Jim.
That's all we needed.
We'll go get to work.
But there's some nuances to it,some little things.
Along the way that they'restubbing their own toe, or what
(29:42):
they'll do more often than notis, if they do it by themselves,
they skip a step because theydon't like that step, they don't
want to wrestle with that, orthey deem it unnecessary, when
really it's like no, we got towrestle that to the ground, like
the theology of giving.
Oh, no, no, we got that partdown.
Great, I told everybody.
Now we're moving on.
It's like whoa wait, Did theyembrace that?
Did they agree?
(30:03):
Are they able to communicatethat back?
Those little things?
So, just like a good coach,they're going okay, I can see
things you can't see.
Jim and the team have beendoing this forever, and so they
just see things.
They pick up on those littlenuances or words or even
something that's in an emailcommunication that could
undermine what they're trying todo, and they don't even mean to
(30:24):
do it, and so they just needsomebody to coach, to guide them
, to help them.
Now, the great thing is whatwe're doing now, Frank, is with
this culture of generosity.
We've started building casestudies They'll literally be
ready in like three weeks towhere we can start showing you
know, show our work.
We're not going to list thechurch name or anything like
that, but that church will giveus permission to put the numbers
(30:46):
together, just to go listen.
This is how you move the needle.
So we just want to give yousome examples of churches you
would know that have had massivechange and yet from the outside
, looking in, you would thinkthey already had it figured out.
They had lots of giving, theywere doing fine their campuses
or whatever it is, and when youget under the hood it's like oh,
(31:07):
there was still room forimprovement.
Maybe they weren't chucking itup and throwing it over the
backboard.
They weren't terrible, but gosh, they were shooting 6 of 10,
and they should have been 9 of10.
They could have used a littlebit of help.
And so what we're finding isthat culture of generosity gives
us this incredible opportunityto speak to those nuanced
elements and really help achurch along the way and, Frank,
(31:32):
I'm not going to divulge anynumbers, Let me just say it this
way Double digit significantimpact in their overall ties,
very quickly and consistentlyfor like prolonged periods of
time.
(31:52):
Like I mean we're talkingsignificant impact in the
funding of ministry staffing,eliminating debt without the
campaign elements.
The campaign has its place, butwhat do you do in between or
when it's not a season for that?
We're seeing radical, radicalchange.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Yeah, that's cool, frank.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Let me just show you just one of the ideas what I had
in mind for what's hard tochange and frankly, it
illuminates so much of that.
So this is one of my favorites.
You probably know about five orsix years ago I started hanging
around a lot with young leaders.
I have a passion for mentoringthem and developing them, and so
(32:39):
when people talk about boomersand even Gen Z, I have a pretty
good idea of what I'm talkingabout.
And yet most pastors havebought into the idea that
millennials and Gen Z are notgivers.
The Barna research is very clearin refuting that, the big
giving study that they did acouple of years ago that we were
a part of.
So they asked this one question, two questions.
The first question is have yougiven to a charity, including a
house of worship, in the last 12months?
Interestingly, if you look atmillennials, gen X and boomers
(33:02):
right, those three generationsright in there there was
virtually no change.
It was a plus or minus 3% errorrate.
All three of them were withinthe 3%.
It was like 55, 57, 54,something like that.
They were all just right there.
So there was no discernibledifference in their giving.
And this is participation.
I know the dollars could bedifferent, but that's not the
issue here.
(33:23):
If they have the heart to give,the dollars will grow over time
, right.
But then?
So my boomer friends would saywell, jim, I didn't say they
didn't give, they just don'tgive to the church.
Oh well, let's look at the nextquestion then who gives to a
(33:43):
church?
Who gives to a church?
So the number for boomers was32%, the number for Gen X was
36% and the number formillennials was 42% Outside,
clearly outside the margin oferror.
So they actually have a higherparticipation.
The dollars may be less, butyou're selling me, pastor.
(34:03):
They don't even like to give toa church and I'm telling you
that is patently wrong and toevery person I've shown that to.
They just sit there and look atme like I just came in from a
foreign country, because theydon't believe that the culture
wants you to believe, thepopular culture.
The mainstream media wants topromote the idea that
millennials and Gen Z are off inthis area and it's just not
(34:25):
true.
It's not true.
And, by the way, the Barnaresearch lines up with what I
see when I'm in and out andamong those.
The problem for those churchesis most of the churches that are
saying that is, their languageis off, their language is off.
They're using boomer languageand hoping to get millennials to
give.
Well, you wouldn't use boomerlanguage to try to get
millennials to do anything.
It's completely different waysof thinking.
(34:47):
And you've got to just shiftyour language.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
What are you guys seeing in general?
Just because you're out theretalking generosity to everybody?
Like what do you see today,kind of many years now
post-COVID, but still feelinglike you have to say post-COVID
versus, you know, pre-covid days?
Like, are you noticing any kindof difference in church giving?
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Well, for one thing, you know, the churches that
didn't have didn't participatein online giving had to starting
in COVID, and so theparticipation rate in online
giving is drag, ticking andscreaming.
Yeah, drag, ticking andscreaming.
It's kind of like you may nothave had an online worship
service before March 15th of2020, but you do now.
Yeah, absolutely Either that oryou close down One of the two.
(35:33):
That was your option, right,wasn't it so many churches
flocked to the thing?
The Life Church.
Life Church gives away theirplatform.
So many times flocked to itthat first couple Sundays they
crashed it and they had todouble their capacity.
We ain't doing it online.
Why do we want to do it?
Well, you are now.
So the giving participationrate electronically has gone way
(35:54):
up, which we love.
But the blessing and curse ofthat is it is great when you set
up a recurring gift.
What we want churches to do iscall attention to it every
January because, out of sight isout of mind, and maybe your
income grew by 40% this year butyou haven't shifted your giving
from last year and if you wantto keep up with what God's doing
, then you need to go back andlook at your gift, make sure
your gift is keeping up withyour income, things like that.
(36:16):
But I will say this in terms ofgiving participation giving
participation rates have notchanged.
So it's still true that if youhave 1,000 families in your
church, probably 480 of them aregiving and 520 of them are not,
are not giving significantlyright, and so the work is not
(36:38):
finished there.
We haven't seen that shiftsignificantly in terms of that,
and we're working on thatbecause one of the things, one
of the things too Frank in termsof engaging in this culture of
generosity, is we've got to giveundeveloped givers a way to get
on board, and most of ourlanguage is just not helpful in
that area.
Hey, so you know, you know oneof the things people know if you
come around, we have a thousandfamilies are in this church.
(36:58):
You know 420, 480 of them giveand 520 of them don't.
Well, that might be true, butit's not helpful.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
If.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
I'm keeping up with friends.
Guilt and shame haven't movedanybody recently.
Not enough to matter, right?
So why don't we use inclusivelanguage like hey?
So one of the things we know ina room like this on any given
Sunday is that there are some ofyou who have not started your
giving journey yet, and at ourchurch we believe that there's
three things that we want you todo.
There's a starting point, anext step and a next step.
(37:27):
If you haven't given, givesomething.
If you started by givingsomething, then give it
consistently.
That would be set up arecurring gift.
Give it consistently.
And then, if you're givingconsistently, grow in your
giving.
And it's amazing, some of thechurches that Frank's talking
about that have seen this crazygrowth.
That's their basic strategy andthey're moving the needle.
I mean when you talk about alarge church with over $20
(37:51):
million annual income, over 20million.
But January to June of thisyear, compared to last year,
frank not 50%, not 100% tripledthe number of first-time givers
and you and I both know that ifyou don't have first-time givers
coming in, you're starting toflatten out and you'll start to
go down at some point in timebecause you've got to have
(38:11):
revitalization right.
Triple.
That church is so crazy in thenumbers it's accomplished we
don't even like to talk about itbecause it sets an unrealistic
expectation, but it shows what'spossible.
It shows what's possible, frank, that's what I'm saying.
And so most of the givingsystems that we see, including
websites, are set up to servicepeople, service givers, like the
(38:33):
three of us we're alreadygiving.
You don't need to have a givingpage for us.
What you need to do is you needto have a giving page that
lines up with your strategy todevelop new givers.
So if we have three things wewant you to do, let's have
button number one set up a gift.
I'll make a first time gift.
Button number two make arecurring gift.
Set up a recurring gift andwhen you click there it goes to
(38:56):
entirely the default ofrecurring gift, right.
And then the third one would belog in and change and update
your giving.
So step number three so whenyou say it on Sunday morning and
when they go to the website,they see exactly the same thing,
as opposed to just giving out.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Yeah, without saying that church.
Do you have another church whodoes this?
Speaker 3 (39:18):
well, that way you don't have to give me that I'm
not hunting for that name.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
I'm just hunting for a good example of something.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Yeah, I think that the one I'm thinking of is one
that a lot more churches wouldrelate to.
They're in an area of thecountry that you would say wait,
they were able to make thatwork and they are very, very
good at what they do, butthey're not going to blow you
away right off the bat.
And they've seen 75% increasein first-time givers and last I
(39:48):
looked they're at 32%year-over-year.
No campaign 32% increaseyear-over-year.
So think of this, frank, you'veall of a sudden got a third
more money today than you did ayear ago, and all you're doing
is and you really and, by theway, their church is growing,
but it's not growing that fast.
The giving growth is outpacingthe attendance growth by several
(40:08):
steps.
Right, and that's the one whereI would say you know where?
Because we're looking to see.
Okay, what's the breadth ofwhat's happening?
Is it happening in a morenormal situation?
Yes, just see.
Okay, what's the breadth ofwhat's happening?
Is it happening in a morenormal situation?
Yes, it is.
This is a church with, I think,about a $4.5 million annual
income and in a smaller town,not a big town, not a super
small town, but a medium-sizedtown and the whole strategy is
(40:30):
working, including some otherplaces as well.
But that's what helps us to seein this beta testing, this
pilot program Does this workacross theological and cultural
settings and all that, and it isright.
Yeah, that's what's encouragingto us.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Super cool.
Last question Maybe you cangive me some examples.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
What's your biggest success or biggest joy in doing
this work?
Seeing the light come on forthe senior pastor.
Bro, I'm telling you, seeingthe light come on for the senior
pastor and seeing him, becauseonce he gets it, frank, here's
the thing that's going to have along-term impact.
I can, I can, I can look.
Raising episodic money is notthe hardest thing we do.
That's not hard, you know, Imean it's not a slam dunk, but
it's not the hardest thing we do.
That's not hard, you know, Imean it's not a slam dunk, but
it's not the hardest thing we do.
(41:19):
Changing givers' hearts iswhat's really hard.
And when the pastor gets it,when the light comes on for the
pastor, now I know it's going toget prioritized and it'll get
spoken into and, by the way,that is, I think it's the common
denominator around.
We have a few churches wherethe playbook hasn't worked as
well, and here's what I can tellyou.
The difference is the pastor isnot leaning in on it as hard.
(41:40):
He's not leaning in on it ashard.
So we know that when the pastorgets it and leans in, that
there's a different element ofchange that's going to happen
there.
After all these years, thatstill gives me a gas man.
Seeing those guys have thelight come on.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
Oh, now.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
I understand, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Frank might have a different answer.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
He has some insights.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
For me it's it would be big there.
Ministry, as you guys know, isreally hard.
It has its really long days andmore often than not we run into
churches that feel stretchedfrom a staffing standpoint and a
resource standpoint and theyalready have so many demands on
them from the mess of ministryand just people, and then so
(42:21):
many of them are also navigatingthe complexity of being
under-resourced, and so to seethose breakthroughs occur to
where a church now has they'renot fully funded, their vision
is still bigger than theirbudget, but it's like they get a
little relief, you know, just,I believe that that just helps.
(42:44):
It helps with stability, ithelps with the way they serve
their congregation and theircommunity.
It allows them to do the thingsthat they've been called to do.
And so I think the constraintsof funding have become so
challenging that you add that tothe complexity of the mess of
ministry and it just leads toburnout and stress and burden
(43:06):
and breakdowns.
And I need to find a job that'seasier doing something else,
and so I don't know.
I think there's something to besaid about a church that feels
resourced, properly resourced todo the ministry they've been
asked to do is life-giving forthat congregation and it's when
(43:28):
those moments when you see themhit their goals, whether it be
through a campaign, or you seethem achieve their goals in the
way that they can do communityimpact, because they have the
resources to do it.
It is so life-giving, frank,and so I agree completely with
what jim said too, but thatwould be mine, yeah yeah, I love
(43:48):
that.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
Well, fellas, it's been great to have you guys on
the show and chat about this.
Where can folks go to learnabout like the new stuff you
guys are doing?
Is it still pilot mode or canthey go to the website?
Speaker 3 (44:01):
We'll reveal the cultural generosity framework
stuff toward the end of thisyear and that'll be on our
resource page.
But right now go to generiscom.
Most everything we've got andthings you've heard about here.
We've got a lot of freeresources there PDFs and eBooks
that we've done, that we're gladfor you to download and take a
look at all those.
Some of the things we've talkedabout here and anything else
that we have coming along isalways going to show up there
(44:21):
first.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
Love it and it sounds like there's a webinar series
going on.
Should they register?
Speaker 3 (44:26):
We have a year-end webinar series that's going on
right now and it started todayactually at noontime, so you can
actually go and register.
You can get all the recordings.
So we're doing it Monday,Wednesday, Friday of this week,
so that is the 23rd, 25th and27th of September.
30 minutes a shot, Frank, sowe're keeping it real short and
Frank and I are spending about10 minutes talking about content
(44:47):
, 10 minutes of Q and A and wrapup.
Just get in there and fast,fire, hit hard and move out and
the three together I think wouldbe a really nice resource for a
church.
Yeah, I love it.
I think would be a really niceresource for a church.
Yeah, I love it, and you cansign up for that at our website
as well, put it on the homepage.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
We'll send a bunch of traffic there.
Guys, it's been great to haveyou on.
Thanks, folks, for listeningGreat episode.
Give it a like or share on thesocials and we'll catch you guys
next week on another episode ofModern Church Leader.
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