The Point

I’m working on getting a functional calendar up on this site for churches to use to see when I’ll be in their area to connect and at what conferences you can run into me. Until then, I decided to go ahead and put my upcoming itinerary up this way. February is a busy month this year!

The rest of this week I’m in Orange County and Los Angeles, California.

February 1st-5th I’m in Boston, Massachusetts, heading as far south as New Haven, CT, and north to Bangor, Maine.

February 8th-12th I’ll be with churches in and around New York City.

February 17th-19th is Baltimore, MD and Washington, DC, but you should check out www.c3conference.com

22nd- 26th will start at the Velocity Conference in Cumming, GA then on to Atlanta, ending the week in Charlotte, NC

Most of my client visits are set up several weeks in advance, but I always leave time for new relationships to form and love connecting with church leaders. If you are a pastor or church leader in any of these cities I’d love to buy you coffee and hear what challenges and opportunities you are seeing! If you see me at the airport, say hello…

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There is a lot of information floating around on how to increase your church income via traditional and non-traditional means, all created by people with more knowledge and experience than me. What I want to do is offer a little different approach to one particular segment of this conversation.

How to interact with and engage your high capacity donors.

After talking with a number of ministry leaders and high capacity donors, I’ve come to some insights worth sharing.

For our purposes, I’m going to define high capacity as anyone in your pews who has the ability to write you a check on a moments notice for a couple thousand dollars and/or can give over $25,000 annually to your ministry. Some churches are full of these people, others may have just a handful, but the reality is that momentum and change often rests with a leaders ability to engage this group. If you happen to have a professional athlete or heiress in your church, that’s great and these principles still work.

When putting together an engagement strategy for interactions with your high capacity donors, there are many things that are good, but a few that are essential. You will also notice that while this piece is specifically dealing with high capacity donors, many of the same strategies are viable for any potential donor, but they become essential for reaching High capacity donors.

High Capacity Donors want to know that their gift is making a difference. These are people who are bombarded by requests for funds on an almost daily basis. Only three out of ten Americans give any amount to charity, and the average gift among those is around $4,800. So when you are interacting with the most generous and able of donors, you must realize what every other non-profit realizes, this is a small and highly sought after group.

So here are the questions you must answer from the donors perspective—

Is this the best use of my funds? Why should the donor write that check to your church instead of another one, or Compassion, or any number of other worthwhile high impact non-profits.

What happens as a result of this gift? A clear, compelling set of outcomes is essential to getting extreme financial buy-in. Nearly as important, you must also answer the question of what happens if the goal isn’t met, sometimes the pain of what would be missed is as great as the joy of what can be gained.

Also remember my three laws of fundraising—

Be Clear-These are often very busy people with lots of things going on and lots of request of their time and resources, the first step to engagement is a clear message. These people are comfortable talking about money and appreciate it when you are too.

Be Concise-High capacity donors appreciate direct, concise, communication.

Be Compelling-it’s one thing to lay out the dollars and sense reasons for why you need their funds, its an entirely different thing to show them the real life change that will or won’t happen based on their involvement.

By engaging your High Capacity Donors, your ministry will be more fully funded, and your givers more fully engaged and developing in one of the gifts that God has given them. The more you can engage them and also get them interacting with EACH OTHER, the better it will be for your ministry.

The days of expecting High Capacity Donors to keep writing checks out of obiligation are quickly fading. They want to be good stewards, and expect the same of organizations they fund.

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I was running, I use the term loosely,  on the treadmill yesterday when I realized the similarity of my weight loss to most churches.

Like many of you, I set out 2010 with a list of goals, among them was to get into and stay in better shape. I travel a lot and that makes it a challenge to keep some semblance of normal routine when it comes to diet and exercise. That said, I also visit with ministries on a daily basis and they often share a similar struggle with their finances.  Whenever they get one thing right something else seems to go wrong, giving drops or an unexpected expense pops up.

The buzz words in church finance world today have lots to do with giving, creating “sustainable funding strategies”, having a “culture of generosity” and increasing the “stewardship mindset” of your congregation. Those are all incredibly great. Every church should have a strategic and focused approach to increasing the generosity of their congregation, which in turn will allow them to reach more and do more. BUT, like my weight loss goals, exercise is only part of the equation. To be sure, intentional increasing of income through more sustained and consistent giving as well as alternate channels is integral to ministry success just as exercise is integral to a healthy lifestyle.

However, just as my miles on the treadmill only do so much if I keep eating donuts for breakfast and pizza for dinner, income is only half the battle for the church. Unless we also maintain a healthy diet of proper expense management and stewardship as a church, the increased giving and generosity will only mask what is still an unhealthy church, and sooner or later that weakness will be exposed.

So my challenge to you today is to continue to exercise, creating and maximizing income, generosity, and new outreach opportunities to expand the financial capacity of your church. But I also challenge you to eat a healthy diet of proper expenses, don’t binge on events, staff, facilities, keep a healthy balance and God and your people will see that good stewardship and honor it so that your ministry will Thrive and not just Survive.

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My wife hs been in a book club for most of our 7 year marriage. They meet once  month and talk, sometimes even about the monthly book pick.

I read alot. About 1 book a week on average. I’ve always been a little jealous of my wife’s book club.

Not because I’ve always wanted to read The Time Traveler’s Wife or The Lovely Bones, but I think that reading a book and then talking about it with others would lead to everyone getting more out of it than just breezing through them alone.

Of course, being that I’m a young man in a Social Media crazed world,  this book club will be a little different.

Participants are still invited to come over once a month to discuss in person, but the bulk of the interaction will be online via a GoogleWave. This will allow more real time discussion for those like me who have a point they’d love to write down and discuss ASAP and may have forgotten by the time of our next physical meeting.

This also allows more people to participate, as my wife would be pretty peeved if thirty people showed up on a monday night!

Housekeeping—

If you need an invite to GoogleWave send me your email and I’ll get you one, if you already have an account and would like to be added to the wave send me that.

The focus will be on books that are seemingly relevant for a Christian Leader, that doesn’t mean you need to be a Christian or a Leader to be a part of the group but the books will be focused to growth for that group. If you want an idea of some of the books we’ll read, check out my amazon widget on the right hand sidebar.

We may occasionally get some Q&A time with the the author and I’ll even occasionally offer a free book or other fun stuff.

I look forward to sharing thoughts and ideas and learning from you this year, let the fun begin!

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Many of you reading this online, even on your Iphone, probably don’t need convincing that Social Media has a place in your ministry. For those of you not yet convinced, let me offer a couple real world examples of churches using the power of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc., to reach people they may otherwise not reach.

As I travel around visiting with churches, some doing very well and others really struggling, I’m always looking to find key things that set apart a thriving ministry from one that is just surviving or even declining. One of the differentiators that I’m finding with some consistency is that healthy, growing churches seem to embrace technology. So,  I asked two friends who are also on the leading edge of this movement into Social Media for some of their thoughts on the role it has and can play in church.

Dan Ohlerking is the Online Campus Pastor at Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge, LA. This multi-site mega church was founded by Dino Rizzo in 1994 as a Healing Place for a Hurting World and is looked at as one of the most innovative churches in the country. James Laws is Lead Pastor of Lifepoint Church in Cleveland, TN, and offers a unique perspective of a bi-vocational church planter who works days as a graphic designer and social media architect.

In the last 18-24 months, Social Media has gone from an afterthought to a key component of the evangelism and discipleship process at many vibrant and growing ministries. As Dan Ohlerking, recently told me, “Nearly everyone on our staff has a Twitter account now”. 

When asked about the importance of a social media strategy James said “Social media is really a natural extension of the church. Our whole purpose is to lead people to Christ and engage them in the community of His body for His service. Social media gives us this opportunity on a multifaceted level. Social media can be used to answer questions thrown into the abyss of the internet. It can be used to connect and inform your congregation. It can be used to drive a major charity or giving campaign. In fact, it has.”

Dan shared a story that illustrates the potential as an evangelism tool that a good Social Media presence can have-

“During our Live the Dream Women’s Conference, we were able to put nearly the entire conference live online. We included a Facebook Connect chat window alongside the video feed. One lady who had registered to be in the conference in Baton Rouge had to stay home one day due to one of her children being ill. She joined us online, and began chatting using the Facebook Connect chat. When she chatted in the online conference, the posts went (as FB Connect is designed to do) up on her wall. Well, a couple of her unsaved friends saw her comments and came to check out what she was participating in, and they spent their morning in the conference session online, enjoying the fellowship with those who had gathered and hearing the Truth being spoken in the conference. They have come several times now, and our prayer is that they’ll continue to come and experience Jesus and that they’ll soon surrender to his love and his grace.These two friends heard the Gospel as a direct result of social media connection.”

Still not convinced, if you are sitting on the sidelines thinking this is just a quick passing fad let me offer you a few statistics.  Twitter has 20 million users in the United States. In December, Facebook went over 100 million users, in the United States alone, or one in every three Americans! Even more impressive is the demographic breakdown, which shows that Facebook gets almost as much usage from grandmothers as teen girls.  Another exciting point in favor of Social Media is the huge international reach that these same sites have, over a quarter of a billion people connect via Facebook outside of the U.S. including Turkey, the third largest Facebook market with over 16 million registered users. No doubt, there will be new sites arrive and old sites decline, but it appears that Social Media as a whole is here to stay and has a very large and broad audience.

As James said “Use social media enough, in the right way, and over time you will find that you are known in places you didn’t even know you had any impact at all.” But it’s not just about being known, as Dan added, “ It isn’t about reaching the masses. It is about all the “ones” that make up those masses – individual lives that need Jesus” and Social Media can help your church reach farther and deeper than you ever could before.

You can also Follow Lifepoint and Healing Place on Twitter!

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Most of the first calls I get from ministries start something like this–

Pastor-” We need to borrow money and we’ve looked everywhere and Pastor —- said I should give you a call, please help! ”

The problem with this is that often in this case, the Pastor has already set expectations with his congregation and now I’m being called on to help him not look like a liar, rather than truly try to figure out what is best for the church long term. Of course, after a longer discussion and a look at their financial statements I can pretty quickly arrive at the proper course of action moving forward, unfortunately it’s often not what they had in mind when they picked up the phone.

If your church situation sounds strangely familiar in the above paragraph, don’t freak out, it’s the norm, but let me offer some alternatives for the next time you start looking into a church financing project.

Why now?  Will the church be negatively impacted if they delay this project. How is giving and attendance, if down, is now really the time to ask for more. The big argument FOR construction projects now is that costs are down and “your project will never cost less than it will right now” I’ve heard this standard line for ten years and it hasn’t always held true as we are seeing with the current dip in costs, though prices do tend to rise over time, a negative project is worse than no project at all.

Why This? are there possibly other ways to get the same results without the capital expenses. Will a new building really be the best use of funds to expand ministry. What about additional services, alternate venues, multi-site, church planting…Look for a future post looking into several real life examples of churches getting creative with facility utilization.

If you can answer both that it must be done now and in the way you’ve envisioned, I’d suggest you bring in some fresh eyes, there are at least two solutions to almost every problem, and in church facilities today, there are often even more possible fixes to any facility constraint issues.

Once your team has decided that the way forward is facility expansion, building, or purchase, the lock step is how much to budget and how to fund it. This is another time where it is crucial that you have some outside guidance, to often I see ministries come up with plans in a vacuum that don’t take into consideration the economic climate, funds available internally, the property values, or even the churches ability to repay. When establishing a project budget you must start with money on hand and regular income. This is why looking at all the possible ways to raise additional funds and cut unnecessary expenses are crucial to the success of any project.

In the coming weeks we’ll look at project costs, buying vs building, and how to look like a borrower.

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The first entry into my 200 church services this year is actually a modified repost of a visit I made to the nation’s largest church some time ago.

Type in Lakewood Church Houston TX into any search engine and you’ll get some interesting sites, but the top result is always the church site followed by Joel Osteen ministries, a fact that I’m sure the church intends!  I was a little surprised that they are at www.lakewoodchurch.cc and not a more common .com or .org

On the easy to navigate but not terribly engaging site, you can find all the info you need to decide if a visit to Lakewood might be right for you, statement of faith, vision, leadership, service times and directions, as well as links to broadcast schedule and ability to buy all of Joel’s products. Being a money guy and with Lakewood’s reputation and size, I was hoping to find a link to their annual audit or some sort of financial data on their website, I didn’t.  I’m not a theologian, but the line of their Our Beliefs section that lined up with what I thought I knew about Lakewood was… 

WE BELIEVE…as children of God, we are overcomers and more than conquerors and God intends for each of us to experience the abundant life He has in store for us.

Lakewood is the largest church in the country according to just about everyone who tries to measure such things, in fact, by most counts they are about twice as large as the next largest church in the nation, that second one could be Northpoint, Lifechurch.tv, Willow Creek, Saddleback, or others depending on who you talk with. One thing that makes them different from all of the others I just mentioned is the fact that they are not led by their founding pastor. I actually think that is pretty encouraging for anyone involved in a church that IS led by the founding pastor, it shows that there is hope beyond the vision of that one man/woman.

But I digress, back to my impression of a Sunday morning (8:30 service) at Lakewood. I arrived right on time and had no difficulty finding a very close parking spot (which turned out to be illegal and I was blocked in afterwards, but that’s my fault and another story). As I walked into the former basketball arena concourse I was greeted by a multitude of VERY friendly and diverse volunteers. Each one smiled and offered a hand or hug as I passed, I accepted a few, but was anxious to get to a seat. Since I didn’t know which way was which and I was by myself (easier to get one seat than more), I ended up sitting three rows from the front, almost right behind the Pastor and his wife, Joel and Victoria Osteen. As someone who visits a lot of churches and rarely doesn’t get that pit in your stomach, where do I go how do I not stand out feeling, I felt very welcome and comfortable here.

Having already been disarmed by the greeters in the hallway, I stepped in to a very impressive worship space and the music was already beginning to rise and I along with it. Anyone who knows me can tell you that I’m not the most overtly charismatic worshiper, but something about the atmosphere and music got me pretty excited, I was IN TO IT. Their Worship team looked a lot like the church, there were Hispanics, African Americans, and whites all jamming together and doing a great job. I was somewhat familiar with their style as their primary worship leader Israel Houghton has several CD’s I’ve heard. I was not prepared for the variety of styles they pulled off very well, I must say that it was one of the best worship times I have been involved in at a church recently.

Before, during, and after worship, there were a few breaks for pep talks from Pastor Osteen and/or his wife. Joel Osteen is a unique character and is now probably best known outside of church circles for his best selling books. Most of what he said on this particular morning could have come from those pages. He preached/pep talked a message on ancestral blessings from Deuteronomy 1:11 and 6:10-11 (how many of you have heard a message from Deuteronomy lately?). He has been widely criticized for his “Gospel Light” messages which emphasize a good attitude and the favor of the Lord, which he delivers with a constant smile. While I don’t find his messages to have much depth, I always feel happy afterwards, and this was no exception. A first time visitor who doesn’t attend church regularly could relate to the message and leave uplifted, I think that is a great place to begin!

The most lasting impression for me was actually neither Joel or Israel. It was when Victoria Osteen came up at the end of praise and worship to transition into the message, there was clearly still a lot of excitement in the air from the last song, and she got up and started to transition, when it became clear that she wasn’t ready to do that. She started jumping and dancing a bit and then the praise went on for a few more minutes. As I said earlier, I’ve been in my share of pentecostal services and I’m not easily impressed by emotional displays, but I also am pretty good at spotting real worship when I see it. What I saw at Lakewood that day was seemed real, and it was very cool.

Strengths–Location(visible from freeway), plenty of parking, VERY nice greeters, ample programs for attenders to get involved in(though I can’t comment on the quality of those programs),great worship, diversity

As for the publicity and stardom that the church and the pastor have increasingly had thrown their way, I pray that God will use it positively and keep them safe. If there is one thing I’ve learned its that God can use anyone, even superstar preachers…

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I have a ton of resolutions this year!

I want to lose weight, read my bible more, spend more time with the family, run a marathon, all the normal things…

BUT I also want to be more intentional with  my time…all of it.

Which is why one of the things I’ll be doing this year on weekends is visiting churches. I’d like to attend 200 different church services this year. I will probably visit with 200 pastors in the first 90 days of the year, but I rarely attend more than one church service a week, which is why this is such a big goal.  It sounds a little crazy, even to me, when I read that goal. Part of the process will be to debrief with a post of findings. With that let me share the basic format…

Introduction into why I chose that particular church for a visit, some will be clients, some will be churches that are famous to all of us, and others may just be ones I find after googling saturday church reston virginia.  To be clear, this is an experiment and I don’t know how it will go. I can report that I was able to visit two very vibrant and very different churches this past weekend, but my plans to get to a third were thwarted by ice, so we’ll see how this plays out.

A few housekeeping items…

Most of the time my family will be with me, which means you’ll be getting the perspective of a married couple in the 25-35 demographic with a kindergartner and a nursery baby.

I’ll do my best to ensure that churches don’t know I’m coming, not that most would care, but I want to make sure I’m seeing a “normal” worship gathering for that congregation with the usual elements.

My opinions are exactly that, my opinions, but I will try to highlight both positive and negative elements every time as well as some of my ideas of what could be done to improve the good and negate the bad. 

Along with my opinions, one of the things I’ve already found very interesting and helpful is word of mouth, and that is an area you can help me with! If you have suggestions of churches worth visiting, please share them, also if you see a post about your church or a church you know things about, please share your impression.

I won’t be posting these on any regular schedule, my first instinct was to dump these on you as quickly after a visit as possible. But I want them to be somewhat coherent and also give them a little time to settle before I share my randomness with the world.

So with that…the journey to 200 begins and here is a list of some I will definitely be including…

Lifechurch.tv, Edmond, OK

McLean Bible Church, Vienna, VA

Northpoint Community Church, Alpharetta, GA

National Community Church, Washington, DC

Willow Creek Community Church, South Barrington, IL

Lifepoint Church, Cleveland, TN

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