Your Journey Blog

5 Ways to Overcoming the Summer Giving Slump

Gary Rohrmayer — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 15:34:40 -0500

"God never estimates what we give from impulse. We are given credit for what we determine in our hearts to give; for the giving that is governed by a fixed determination." -Oswald Chambers

Helping our people experience the timeless truth of moving from impulse and haphazard giving to systematically and joyfully giving is a continuous process.

We see this in Paul's writings,

"Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." (II Corinthians 9:7)

"On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come." (I Corinthians 16:2)

Summer is an excellent time to reinforce this principle in the hearts of your people in a way that is inspiring and instructing. Here are five ways to leverage the summer slump to train and motivate your people in the area of consistency in their giving.

1. Get better at vision casting on all levels.

Kennon Callahan writes, “A clear vision of mission will be decisive in fostering your congregations capacity for giving.” Vision is always asking the 'why's' not the 'how's.' A compelling vision moves people on a heart level as well as makes sense on a head level. Crafting your vision through multiple mediums is critical to the process.

How are you at telling your vision?
- Preaching
- 2 minute giving talks
- State of the church talks
How are you at writing your vision?
- Newsletters
- Membership letters
- Leadership briefings
How are you at showing your vision?
- Video
- Testimonies
How are you at celebrating your vision?
- Give and serve moments
- Testimonies
- Leadership celebrations

2. Manage your cash flow properly.

Learning the giving rhythms in your church is critical and maintaining a 120 days of expenses in your reserve account is important for peace of mind. Stressful appeals very rarely produce the results you desire. You don't want to create a culture that the only time the church speaks about money is because they are in need. Need based appeals reduce your vision to paying bills and not changing lives. Making mid-course corrections and spending freezes is a better use of the leader's time than spending energy on need based appeals. This will give you the freedom to deal with the money talks as an issue of spiritual formation rather than "help we are in trouble!"

3. Send out quarterly giving reports.

The whole purpose of sending out quarterly giving statements is to create a deeper vision of ownership throughout the church. This giving letter should include a well written vision letter and thank you. It should include a giving statement and some type of teaching on tithing, generosity or ways to give to the church.

Sample Letter Download S_2_Summer_Giving_Email
Sample teaching document

4. Spend focused time with the 20% who give 80% of your budget.

Too many pastors are afraid to give focused attention to those carrying the bulk of the financial burden of the church. The stated reasons I have heard are 1) I don't want to be charged with favoritism 2) I don't trust my own heart 3) I'm intimated by people of means.

My response to this objections is...Grow Up Pastor! Or, as the Apostle Paul wrote "act like men" (I Corinthians 16:13).

Investing time in people who are generous to your church in not favoritism it is wisdom. One pastor I know spends time with each of his core givers to assess that they are serving in the right areas to maximize their giftedness. If you don't trust your own heart then deal with it by confessing it, and submitting to accountability over the issue. People of means need shepherds too. I remember visiting a couple in their home one evening (he had one of the top fifty salaries in our state). As we chatted over the evening the wife said to me "thanks for coming...you are the first pastor to ever step into our home."

How can you invest in your leaders relationally this summer?
How can you invest in your leaders spiritually this summer?
What could you do this summer to deploy or redeploy them into service?

5. Help people automate their giving.

If your church does not have online giving you are are already 10 years behind. The failure to offer automated giving through online giving or electronic fund transfer (EFT) will hurt you in reaching and capturing the next generation. Every first time giver should be given a "Ways to Give" document. One month a year could be an opportunity to promote "Let's Go Green in our Giving" through emails, letters, announcements and giving talks.

Online giving resources and ideas
Free Download - 10 Things Your Church Should Know About Online Giving

Bonus: Don't give into the summer slump mentality in your church. Keep the vision and mission red hot through strategic and creative outreach opportunities. Every summer our church held a 'Friends Sunday' which at times surpassed our Easter attendance for that year and propelled us to record attendance in the fall. Remember a vision slump will always lead to a giving slump!

Additional Resources:

27 Ways To Stop The Yo-Yo Effect On Your Summer Giving

Gary Rohrmayer — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 09:40:17 -0500

RSI Stewardship offers a number of excellent white papers on at variety of stewardship issues related to churches I would like to encourage every church leader to download the following:

27 Ways To Stop The Yo-Yo Effect On Your Summer Giving

It is simple, practical with straight forward advise. Follow it and it will make a difference. Here is a discription of the content.

Summer is here. Are you prepared for the impact the summer season will have on your church’s giving? If not, then you’re in luck. This resource will give you twenty-seven ideas that you can implement quickly to successfully overcome the summer giving slump.

It doesn’t take a high-powered researcher to point out that most churches experience a decrease in regular giving during the summer months. Some refer to this as the yo-yo effect—giving goes up and down, making it difficult to launch new initiatives and to carry out existing plans. We brace ourselves knowing it’s coming but feel powerless to prevent.

Every year we promise ourselves that we’ll do better next year. The secret to stopping the yo-yo effect on your summer giving is all about staying connected and building community even when your faithful attenders aren’t as regular as they normally are in their attendance of the normal weekend experience.

Download this FREE resource now and make this year the one when you choose to take action and do something different when it comes to addressing the summer giving slump. HT

Download Now

Essential Skills for Missional Leaders - Part 4

Gary Rohrmayer — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 11:13:17 -0500

What are the esstential skills needed for being a missional leader?

The first skill is that of empowering others. They know how to spot, raise up, disciple, coach and mentor others into the mission of God. The second skill deals with sustaining those relationships..The third skill revolves around getting groups of people doing mission together. The fourth skill is turning values into functioning systems.

4. Designing & developing healthy church systems.

The Apostle Paul wrote, "Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ." Then, "whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel" (Philippians 1:27-28 NIV). The image of contending means striving together or fighting side by side as in an athletic contest or team sport. I personally like the term 'synergy' which is defined as "the interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects" (American Heritage College Dictionary). Missional leaders know how to build synergy throughout their church, aligning all the individual pieces to work together for a greater outcome. This is accomplished through their understanding of functional church systems or structures.

What are church systems? Church Systems are reproducible processes by which the church actualizes its values and achieves its mission. Missional leaders know how to design these systems, to create processes that are manageable and measurable. Not only do they know how to designed them but they also know how to development and tweak them all the way without losing momentum. Michael Gerber wrote, "Systems run the business and people run the systems." Missional leaders understand that healthy systems are only as good as the people who are running them and that time, energy and resources need to be invested in these leaders who are running these systems that are critical to fulfilling God's mission.

Questions for Reflection:

Is it easier for you to do ministry or develop a process for others to do ministry?
Do you have a special time of the week where you think about process and systems?
Do you have lay leaders or staff who have a systems orientation?
How could you use others to help you in designing the critical systems needed to take your ministry to the next level?
Which of your key eights system needs the most attention right now?
- Inspiring Worship Services
- Spiritual Formation (assimilation)
- Leadership Development
- Small Groups
- Ministry Placement
- Evangelism
- Generosity
- Relational Health

Excerpt from NextSteps for Leading a Missional Church

Finishing Well Free Download - Dr. Robert Clinton

Gary Rohrmayer — Mon, 27 May 2013 15:38:36 -0500

Dr. Robert Clinton's Biblical Leadership Commentaries are a must read for every pastor, elder and spiritual leader.

The following free download covers the daunting task of finishing well. In his introduction Clinton writes,

"A repeated reading of the Bible with a focus on leadership reveals four crucial observations fraught
with leadership implications:

Observation 1. Few leaders finish well.
Observation 2. Leadership is difficult.
Observation 3. God's enabling presence is the essential ingredient of successful leadership.
Observation 4. Spiritual leadership can make a difference.

And what is true of Biblical leaders is equally true of historical and contemporary leaders. It is the first observation to which this article speaks. Identifying the fact that few leaders finish well was a breakthrough warning for me. This led to further study. Why do few leaders finish well? What stops them? What helps them? What does it mean to finish well? This article identifies six characteristics of those finishing well."

Six Characteristics of Leaders who Finish Well.

Characteristic 1 - They maintain a personal vibrant relationship with God right up to the end.
Characteristic 2 - They maintain a learning posture and can learn from various kinds of sources—life especially.
Characteristic 3 - They manifest Christ-likeness in character as evidenced by the fruit of the Spirit in their lives.
Characteristic 4 - Truth is lived out in their lives so that convictions and promises of God are seen to
be real.
Characteristic 5 - They leave behind one or more ultimate contributions.
Characteristic 6 - They walk with a growing awareness of a sense of destiny and see some or all of it fulfilled.

Six Major Barriers Identified to Finishing Well

Barrier 1. Finances—their Use And Abuse
Barrier 2. Power—its Abuse
Barrier 3. Pride--which Leads To Downfall
Barrier 4. Sex--illicit Relationships
Barrier 5. FAMILY--Critical Issues
Barrier 6. Plateauing.

Five Factors That Enhance Finishing Well

Enhancement 1. Perspective.
Enhancement 2. Renewal.
Enhancement 3. Disciplines.
Enhancement 4. Learning Posture.
Enhancement 5. Mentoring.

Download 3FinishWellArticles

These articles by Dr. J. Robert Clinton comes from the Clinton Biblical Leadership Commentary. This commentary is available from the Clinton Resources.

Urgency and accountability are two sides of the innovation coin

Gary Rohrmayer — Tue, 14 May 2013 21:59:12 -0500

Urgency and accountability are two sides of the innovation coin

As organizations and individuals succeed, it gets more difficult to innovate. There are issues of coordination, sure, but mostly it's about fear. The fear of failing is greater, because it seems as though you've got more to lose.

So urgency disappears first. Why ship it today if you can ship it next week instead? There are a myriad of excuses, but ultimately it comes down to this: if every innovation is likely to fail, or at the very least, be criticized, why be in such a hurry? Go to some more meetings, socialize it, polish it and then, one day, you can ship it.

Part of the loss of urgency comes from a desire to avoid accountability. Many meetings are events in which an organization sits in a room until someone finally says, "okay, I'll take responsibility for this." If you're willing to own it, do you actually need a meeting, or can you just email a question or two to the people you need information from?

Thus, we see the two symptoms of the organization unable to move forward with alacrity, the two warning signs of the person in the grip of the resistance. "I can take my time, and if I'm lucky, I can get you to wonder who to blame."

You don't need more time, you just need to decide.

Read the history of the original Mac and you'll be amazed at just how fast it got done. Willie Nelson wrote three hit songs in one day. To save the first brand I was responsible for, I redesigned five products in less than a day. It takes a team of six at Lays potato chips a year to do one.

The urgent dynamic is to ask for signoffs and to push forward, relentlessly. The accountable mantra is, "I've got this." You can feel this happening when you're around it. It's a special sort of teamwork, a confident desperation... not the desperation of hopelessness, but the desperate effort that comes from being hopeful.

What's happening at your shop?

via sethgodin.typepad.com

Creating Spiritual Conversations - Immersion Experiences

Gary Rohrmayer — Fri, 10 May 2013 12:31:57 -0500

This series of posts is dedicated to giving you ideas that will help you, your team and your church in developing a plan for increasing your spiritual conversations this year.

First you need to own it as the leader, second you need to expand the effectiveness of your staff, third you need to continually call your leaders into the mission and fourth you need to provide training opportunities for your church.

5. Create Missional Immersion Experiences.

Two weeks after I received Christ I was invited by my new Christians friends to attend a Saturday seminar on evangelism. To be honest, at that time, I didn't even know what evangelism was or even meant. I was just excited to be with my new friends. By the end of the day I discovered that evangelism was just sharing what Jesus has done for me with the people who come into my life.

At the end of that training the leaders gave us an opportunity to practice what we had just learned. My friends asked me if I wanted to go with them to a local college campus and live out the principles we all discovered that day. I did not knowing what I was getting myself into...that next Saturday I was engaging spiritual conversations with college students! The leader and myself would walk up to a group of college students, he would initiate the conversation and at some point he would say, "Gary, tell them what Jesus has done for you."

Three weeks after trusting Jesus as Lord and Savior I was completely immersed in evangelism. It was life changing. Every time I shared my faith that day the gospel was deepened into my life and I gained confidence in what I was communicating. This is why my life verse is, "I pray that your partnership with us in the faith may be effective in deepening your understanding of every good thing we share for the sake of Christ." (Philemon 1:6)

Jesus Created Missional Immersion Experiences

Jesus used immersion experiences to train his disciples; first, the Apostles (Luke 9:1-6,10-11) and then the Seventy (Luke 10:1-24).

Jesus did a quick orientation
Jesus sent them out on a specific mission
The disciples reported back what happened
Jesus debriefed and celebrated them

Five Key Ingredients for Creating Missional Immersion Experiences

Leadership: Leaders who live, breathe and exemplify the behaviors they want to be lived out in their people.
Orientation: A short motivational instruction that reviews the why's and how's of the outreach activity you are doing. This is a time to go over the do's and don'ts as you send the team out.
Multi-Sensory: This experience must touch a person's heart (move people deeply), their soul (force a deeper sense of faith), their mind (stretch then intellectually) and their strength (involves physical activity).
Reproducible: This must be a behavior that a person could do without the leader or the team. It must involve something that they can take with them for the rest of their lives.
Celebration: A time for the group to report, debrief, and celebrate with the leader.

Take Aways

Study the Gospels and look for other immersion experiences that Jesus used in training the disciples.
View the Webinar on Equipping Your People in Evangelism.
First take you leaders and staff through and evangelistic immersion experience
- Prayer walking
- Servant Evangelism
- Door to Door Visitation Check out Ed Stetzer's research
Plan a sermon series on evangelism with a churchwide evangelistic immersion experience at the end of it.

Next Post: Offer multiple invitation points into the life of your church.

Check out Additional Resources & Ideas on Evangelism

Training Your Church to Engage in More Spiritual Conversations.

Gary Rohrmayer — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 15:06:08 -0500

This series of posts is dedicated to giving you ideas to help you, your team and your church in developing a plan for increasing your spiritual conversations this year.

First we need to own it as the leader, second we need to expand the effectiveness of your staff, and third we need to continually call our leaders into the mission.

4. Train 1/3 of your church in evangelism this year.

In Win Arn's 'Church Growth Ratio Book', he states, "One of every three adults should receive evangelism training at least once a year."

Why?

In many churches the emphasis is on nurturing existing Christians and strengthening the faith of current members is a preoccupation. While this is important it is not the chief purpose. If this training lacks any focus on reproduction it will lead to an inward mentality that will puff up the church instead of building up the church. Churches that continually make it a goal to train a significant portion of the congregation in evangelism tend to be more outreach focused. If you have a church of 150 that means 50 people need to be trained in outreach. If you have a church of 1000 that means 333 people need to be trained. As your church grows bigger I believe that achieving this ratio gets harder and needs for more focused attention by leaders.

How?

1. Develop a training rhythm that touches people weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually.

Weekly: by creating an investing, inviting and including culture.
Monthly: by providing entry level immersion experiences (see the next post).
Quarterly: by offering full day equipping opportunities.
Annually: by offering Sunday morning/small group campaigns.

2. Start training trainers.

I have discovered that the faster I can get the training out of the professionals hands the quicker the lay leaders own the process.

Which lay leaders can reinforce your investing, inviting and including culture?
Which lay leaders can lead and promote your entry level experiences?
Which lay leaders can be mentored in training others in sharing their faith?
How many leaders can you engage in an annual spiritual emphasis campaign?

3. Focus on one tool that will mark your church.

When you think of Campus Crusade (CRU) what evangelism tool comes to mind? Four Spiritual Laws! When you think of Navigators? The Bridge! The Billy Graham Association? Steps to Peace with God! What do people think of when it comes to your church? Anything? Find a tool and work the tool. If you can't find anything that fits your culture then create one. That's what we did 25 years ago with the Spiritual Journey Guide...it shaped our church and is now shaping thousands of other churches.

Action Steps

Keep track...how many people are you training a year?
Find trainers...who can help you?
Find a tool...what works for you and your church culture?

Additional Evangelism Resources

Next Post: Create immersion experiences for your people.

Just the good parts - Seth Godin

Gary Rohrmayer — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 18:57:08 -0500

"I want to be an actress, but I don't want to go on auditions."

"I want to play varsity sports, but I need to be sure I'm going to make the team."

"It's important to sell this great new service, but I'm not willing to deal with rejection."

You don't get to just do the good parts. Of course. In fact, you probably wouldn't have chosen this path if it was guaranteed to work every time.

The implication of this might surprise you, though: when the tough parts come along, the rejection and the slog and the unfair bad breaks, it makes sense to welcome them. Instead of cursing or fearing the down moments, understand that they mean you've chosen reality, not some unsustainable fantasy. It means that you're doing worthwhile, difficult work, not merely amusing yourself.

The very thing you're seeking only exists because of the whole. We can't deny the difficult parts, we have no choice but to embrace them.

via sethgodin.typepad.com

The Value of Coaching

Gary Rohrmayer — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:01:39 -0500

Here is a great collection of quotes reflecting the value of coaching from N2Coaching.

"Employers are shocked at how high their ROI numbers are for coaching."
Alastair Robertson, Manager of worldwide leadership development, Accenture

"Many of the World's most admired corporations, from GE to Goldman Sachs, invest in coaching. Annual spending on coaching in the US is estimated at roughtly $1 Billion Dollars."
Harvard Business Review

"In one study, executive coaching at Booz Allen Hamilton returned $7.90 for every $1 the firm spent on coaching."
MetrixGlobal LLC

"I absolutely believe that people, unless coached, never reach their maximum capabilities."
Bob Nardelli, former CEO, Home Depot

"I'll bet most of the companies that are in life-or-death battles got into that kind of trouble because they didn't pay enough attention to developing their leaders."
Wayne Calloway, former Chairman, Pepsico, Inc.

"I never cease to be amazed at the power of the coaching process to draw out the skills or talent that was previously hidden within an individual, and which invariably finds a way to solve a problem previously thought unsolvable."
John Russell, Managing Director, Harley-Davidson Europe Ltd.

"In research conducted over the past three years we've found that leaders who have the best coaching skills have better business results."
VP of Global Executive & Organizational Development at IBM

"The business demand for coaching is nearly doubling each year. Out of the $80 billion being currently spent on corporate education, FLI Research estimates that $2 billion is spent on executive coaching at senior executive levels in Fortune 500 companies."
Business Wire

"Even modest improvements can justify hiring a coach. An investment of $30,000 or so in an executive who has responsibility for tens of millions of dollars is a rounding error."
Jerome Abarbanel, VP of Executive Resources, Citibank

"What's really driving the boom in coaching, is this: as we move from 30 miles an hour to 70 to 120 to 180......as we go from driving straight down the road to making right turns and left turns to abandoning cars and getting motorcycles...the whole game changes, and a lot of people are trying to keep up, learn how not to fall."
John Kotter, Professor of Leadership, Harvard Business School

"We have done lots of research over the past three years, and we have found that leaders who have the best coaching skills have better business results."
Tanya Clemens, V.P. of Global Executive & Organizational Development at IBM

"Executive coaches are not for the meek. They're for people who value unambiguous feedback. All coaches have one thing in common, it's that they are ruthlessly results-oriented."
Fast Company

"Personal coaches are a hot commodity among executives these days. Never mind the mansion, the Mercedes, the membership in the exclusive country club. In corporate America today, the sign that you have truly arrived - or at least that you are being groomed for arrival - is an executive coach. Your own personal coach, that is. Even if the coach's assignment is to render you less obnoxious, his or her presence at your elbow signals that you are regarded by the company as entirely too valuable to fire or shoot."
Training

"In a recent study, training alone improved leadership skills by 22%. When combined with Executive Coaching, improvement jumps to 77%."
Fortune

"The benefits of coaching appear to win over even the most cynical clients within just a few weeks."
Money

"A coach is part advisor, part sounding board, part cheerleader, part manager and part strategist."
The Business Journal

"Who exactly seeks out a coach? Winners who want more out of life."
Chicago Tribune

"Once used to bolster troubled staffers, coaching now is part of the standard leadership development training for elite executives and talented up-and-comers at IBM, Motorola, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and Hewlett Packard. These companies are discreetly giving their best prospects what star athletes have long had: a trusted adviser to help reach their goals."
CNN.com HT

Reflective Questions:

Who is coaching you?
Are you willing to be coached?
What skills do you need coaching in?
Does your staff need coaching?
How much do you spend in coaching each year?

Tim Keller's Insights on Personal Evangelism

Gary Rohrmayer — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 11:17:29 -0600

Just read a great post by Martin Salter as he does a great job summarizing a talk given by Tim Keller on evangelism. Enjoy and do!

A while ago on our elder retreat we listened to a talk Tim Keller gave at Lausanne. As part of that talk he gave 10 tips to help our lay folk in their evangelism. They were so helpful I wanted to put them down somewhere, so here they are:

Let people around you know you are a Christian (in a natural, unforced way)
Ask friends about their faith – and just listen!
Listen to your friends problems – maybe offer to pray for them
Share your problems with others – testify to how your faith helps you
Give them a book to read
Share your story
Answer objections and questions
Invite them to a church event
Offer to read the Bible with them
Take them to an explore course

What Keller also advises is that we (generally) start with 1-4. If people are interested and want to talk more you can move them to stages 5-7. If they’re still interested go on to stages 8-10. Sometimes people will want to go straight to 10, but often people start from way back and need some time to think and discuss things in a non-pressured way. We often think that only stages 8-10 count and invest all our energy there. TK suggests that to get people at stages 8,9,10 you have to put the work in at 1-4. Sometimes you’ll have to keep going round the loop multiple times.

TK suggests to leaders that we should aim to get 20% of our folk doing this (of course it should be 100% but let’s be realistic). If we do, we’ll see a steady stream of conversions over the long term, and sustainable church growth. HT

Go here to purchase the full sermon