[Note: Every Thursday during the month of December, I’m going to pick three links I’ve cataloged in my Del.icio.us account during the previous week. This site houses 100’s of links related to stewardship, generosity, and giving – and the list grows almost daily – that can be easily searched and used for sermon preparation, committee prep, funding strategy, etc.]

Here are my top picks for the week:

1. Give Your Wealth Away: An Argument For a Secular Tithe

Thoughts: I think it’s interesting that someone who has be ” left church” is finding the formula for financial success (or at least better financial management) in the substance of what she was taught early in life…tithing. Consider this validation that what God has to say about money management works. Perhaps we could call tithing and “Holy” economic stimulus plan.

2. Organizing Your Donors

Thoughts: Ok. So maybe we don’t call them “donors” in churches. We’re probably better offer using “givers.” It’s less clinical and more personal. The principle of segmenting your congregation’s giving habits is absolutely essential to building a sustainable funding model. The value lies in a better, clearer understanding of what’s happening. The better information we have, the more informed we can be as we build a long-term strategy that moves congregations toward generosity.

3. Churches experiencing cash-flow problems

Thoughts: This is problem that happens when we restrict our ministry funding plan to one stream of revenue. Most people only have 9% of their entire asset portfolio in cash. 91% is in non-liquid form. That means basing our entire funding strategy on 9% has obvious limitations that are compounded when cash is tight such as in a recession. (Not that I really need to remind you of that.) My hope is that we can learn from this and begin the conversation of diversifying income streams that provide a more sustainable and scalable funding plan.

I hope this link collection is helpful to you in your ministry. Be sure to visit my Del.icio.us account regularly for updates or subscribe via RSS.

And always feel free to send links to anything you think is missing.

Also on The Content Matrix: