Church Campaigns- Need advice

I am with you. God is not the author of confusion.

The first question I would ask is who is heading this thing up? If it is a God sized deal then enticements are not necessary. The Holy Spirit will work in mighty ways if he wants it.

I used to work for a man who I have known to write more than 100,000 dollar checks to help people and churches in need. I know he would have been turned off by a campaign. I know of one time that he wroite a check to a missionary for 100,000 dollars so they could renovate a building in Romania.

A lot of churches are unwilling to trust God and leave the bill to Him.

I find it hard to believe that a church would put up a lavish dinner for such a thing. 100 thousand dollars is not alot of money nowadays for a church to raise. But 5% of the needed money for a fancy dinner is not necessary.

God will supply all your needs and the church's needs.

 

sounds like your church has hired someone to help out, this is fairly routine methodology in the capital stewardship areana.

I used to work in the industry and you're going through what a lot of faithful parishioners go through. My suggestion is if you're really feeling that this is getting in the way of our faithfulness to the church in general quietly step out for a bit and spend some time in prayer. See where God leads you, and don't be pressured by anyone to move in a particular direction.

These campaigns usually focus on a lot of whiz bang "let's all buy into the vision" kind of pep rallies. I suggest you stay away from events like this and see what God wants your family to do in this regard. 100k isn't that big of a figure, but if it is pastor decided and not God led it probably isn't something to be giving your monies to. Just my opinion though...too many pastors are pressuring their people for "sacrificial giving" because of pulpit envy (yes the double entendre is supposed to be present there)

thanks for being transparent :thumbs:

 

Our very first building campaign looked like this. We were meeting in a school and had an opportunity to buy a 22 year old church building from a congregation that had declined, aged and was disbanding. The two buildings, a sanctuary with six classrooms in the basement, and a two story educational building with offices, classrooms and a fellowship hall in the basement, needed some repairs, but were in fairly good shape. They wanted $1.4 million as it was, and it needed about $150,000 worth of repair. I thought that we would likely have to borrow the money and pay it back over a two to three year period. We looked a hiring a consultant and doing a capital campaign. The pastor said he just wanted to put the need out there and see how the church responded. In less than two months, $1.7 million was pledged and it was given in large enough amounts for us to avoid paying any interest on the note.

We added a multi-purpose facility last year. It is basically a metal-constructed building, a gym on a concrete foundation with carpet flooring, air conditioning and insulation (it shows from the inside, but who cares?) and an attached addition with a large meeting room and kitchen. It cost $550,000 and we raised it the same way--here's the need, pledge what the Lord directs. The only thing we paid a contractor to do was pour the foundation and put up the frame. Church members did the rest. A carpet business in the area offered to put the sport carpet down at no charge if we would let them use it as an example of how durable it was.

 

Ezra and Nehemiah come to mind for biblical examples . . .

OK - whether or not to use a consultant . . . personally, I don't like them.

OK - capital campaigns without consultants produce significantly (so they say) less results.

So in that regard, do you want to build? If the answer is yes, then most churches find out that if they do not have a consultant their opportunity for failure goes up greatly . . .

Biblical? Not really. Do I like it - not at all.

:thumbs:

 

I find the dinner to be the least offensive of the things you have mentioned. For that matter, I see nothing wrong with the dinner at all. But, would it not be more appropriate to have the dinner for the members who are putting up insulation, staining wood, etc.?

 

Early in my recent pastorate we recognized that we had to do major renovation. Our Stewardship Committee prayerfully considered, for a long while, whether to hire a campaign consultant, and did so. He was the least costly of all the proposals we had received, largely because he was local.

He used all the same procedures that have been mentioned ... groups, dessert functions, dinners, etc. We "cheated" a bit on the dinner .. went to a neighboring church with a large social hall and hired a caterer rather than going to a hotel. But essentially we followed his pattern.

Several observations and learnings:

What he led us to do was really nothing more than common sense organizational stuff. Any one of us could have done it. In fact, more recently, when our church began to consider more construction, and we met with a representative of the American Baptist Extension Corporation, he said, "I can give you a book that will tell you how to do it, step by step. But you do need to follow every step."

The campaign consultant approach was not appropriate for the personality of our church. Our people do not respond well to pressure and push. If I had led the program personally, as I now wish I had, I would not have cornered people into giving, as he tried to do.

We did raise much of the money we needed to raise, but, on the basis of other incidents here and there over my twenty years at that church, I think we would have done just as well if not better had we avoided the consultant approach and simply "trusted the Lord and told the people", as we used to say in Baptist life.

The consultant's rhetoric in many cases sailed right past our folks; he had been through this kind of thing so many times that he sort of went on auto-pilot with his speeches, etc., and was not really aware of what they were feeling and asking.

In the end, after it was all over and we did not have enough to do the project, and so went to the bank to borrow, a couple of our members got concerned about the church having a debt, and those two women got the attention of our people and retired that debt early. I wish now we had "hired" them for the task!

I certainly like and understand the idea of people doing much of the hands-on work for a church building, but not every church has a pastor capable of general contracting, nor are all the skills necessary going to be present in most congregations. Often local building codes and laws will not permit this sort of do-it-yourself work.

 

have you talked to your pastor about this?

 

For ten years I attended a church that was the largest church in town. They had the same pastor for 31 years since it began. The pastor was one who believed in never borrowing any money to build a church building. The church has had three pastors since it began shortly after the depression. Never has one penny of the money the people gave ever gone to interest. The church recently built a huge gymnasium and offices. Again it was paid for at the end of the project. For many years the church owned a conference ground. They gave it away a few years ago because they felt that it could be better maintained if it were separate from the church.

Years ago I preached at a church that was experiencing some difficulties. The economy had gone down and the land and buildings was not worth near what they owed. If they had waited a few years they could have bought that land and buildings for about 60% of what they did.

I was pastoring a church that had as low as ten people. They lost everything except ten people. Later God gave them 20 acres of prime ground in one of the best locations on the main street through town. We prayed for people to help us and God gave us people who were already trained who heard about what we were trying to do. When we reached 35 people we had a trained youth man who volunteered his time and a young music leader from a large church whose dad led music and he was a great singer. God gave us much more than we ever thought about. We had a lady who traveled 21 miles to help us who had been with the Billy Graham organization helping them in a foreign country.

Don't think for one minute God cannot do the impossible. If he can create me with a beating heart and create the universe he certainly can supply every need and more.

 

I'm convinced that if Christians gave cheerfully of their income (call it tithing or giving, I don't care) like they should, then very few churches would ever have to do campaigns to beg for more money. When a church needs money it is usually because either (a) the people haven't been giving like they should, or (b) the church has not spent wisely in the past. Most likely it is a combination of the two, but knowing statistics of how little the average Christian gives to his church, it is usually (a).

So these campaigns are usually band-aids for a deeper problem that the church must face. And they shouldn't need a business consultant to tell them that.

 

Our church's plan for future growth in our facility is simple. Right now, we run at about 80% of capacity in the sanctuary, and use about 60% of the educational space we have. We will first go to two services, with a Bible study in between. When the Bible study gets to 80% of capacity, we will go to two services and two Bible studies. If and when we max out our facilities at that point, we would be running over 500 in attendance, and we will go to Saturday night. Long range, we will start a new church. That's one of the reasons I am on board with this particular congregation. It isn't about the buildings, grounds and facilities, it is about the ministry. I doubt we will ever build any more buildings.

 

Amen. This is so true.