8 Feb
Is your church giving being impacted by Haiti?
Eric Foley, author of the Transformational Giving blog, had an excellent post last week about church giving and Haiti. Joanne Fritz provided some great commentary on the same post in “Is your Nonprofit losing out to Haiti?”.
Most church leaders have thought the same thing at one time or another over the past several weeks. It’s beyond my imagination that more than $500 million has been raised in the three weeks since the tragic earthquake. (In no way am I diminishing the need or the response.) To put that amount in context, Giving USA reported that total giving to churches in 2008 (2009 numbers not available yet) was just over $100 billion. If what some church leaders are saying is true (that the people in the pew don’t have money to give), there where is all this “extra” money coming from?
Attacking Haiti is not a great strategy. In fact, it was a very appropriate response by the larger Christian community to mobilize to play a critical role in the recovery process for these people who were already living in the midst of devastating poverty.
My interest lies in what can we learn about this response to better inform how we fund our budgets. We need to focus our efforts on how to create a long-term, sustainable strategy that includes creating a culture that values, teaches, and practices the spiritual discipline of giving. It’s too easy to fund our churches by creating a crisis. It’s impossible to create a strategy and be intentional when our entire funding plan consists of putting our fires as they arise.
What steps are you taking today to create a culture of generosity, grounded in stewardship, that will ensure money doesn’t inhibit your ability to fulfill and complete the vision God has placed on your heart?
Ben – You have some great content here! Would you consider changing the color combo on your blog so your entries are easier to read? Many folks on church finance committees (who desperately need your help) are older and might have trouble reading your advice. Thanks!
Thanks, Anne. I appreciate your feedback and encouragement. I am working with a designer on some other issues and will add this to the list.
Keep reading. Blessings!
Not sure the comparison of giving to Haiti and giving to churches is valid/important. Haiti donations are 0.5% of total giving to churches, and if you were quoting the total pledged/given to Haiti, even if it rises, much of it comes from individuals who don’t give to a church or house of worship. For me to give even 1% more to Haiti than I give to my church doesn’t hurt my budget in the least. I simply don’t go out on a date with my wife next week; we stay in and watch something off Netflix.
I’m not sure I agree that “much of [the money given to Haiti] comes from individuals who don’t give to a church.” Though we can’t be sure, I think it’s very possible that a significant amount of the money given has come through communities of faith and/or churches. The goal of the parallel is to point out even in a time when some churches are seeing a decline in giving, there has been a surge of nearly a billion dollars given to Haiti in three weeks time.
I simply want to bring to light that there is always room to increase giving. Most people are not currently giving at their full capacity. That being the case, how can we as church leaders challenge them to practice reckless generosity?
Great question, Ben–and thanks for noting my post.
A few comments about the Haiti situation especially as it relates to churches:
Churches tend to see two possible categories of response when it comes to Haiti. On the one hand, respond directly by creating a program (e.g., gather relief supplies or plan a mission trip through a church contact). On the other hand, take an offering to give to an organization that is responding directly.
Either hand presents challenges.
As Baptist churches in Idaho will tell you, intervening directly is fraught with difficulties. We can mean well and yet still end up with trauma (or at least lots of leftover toothpaste when it turns out no one wants what we collected).
But taking offerings for other people to do ministry loses its appeal after special offering #10 or 11 in a given year. Congregants grant that each cause is worthy, but they resent the seemingly never-ending flood of requests from the never-ending flood of worthy causes.
Truth is, these two choices hardly exhaust the church’s possible repertoire. They represent a diminished creativity of response.
As you note in your book and your blog, Ben, churches hold a distinct advantage over nonprofits because of their frequency of gathering. And a key element of this advantage goes well beyond churches’ ability to ask congregants’ more frequently for money. (That can actually be a disadvantage–a kind of compassion fatigue.)
Instead, the frequency of gathering can correlate to a comprehensiveness of response. We can–and should–do more than write a check. If writing a check provides an exit from consideration of the disaster (which, unfortunately, is exactly what it has done and always does for so many folks), then writing a check is exactly the wrong response.
Writing a check must draw us deeper into our relationship with Haitians and with the God who permits their suffering and commands our response. Our response to that God and these Haitians must always be more than writing a check.
In this vein, Jon Hirst of .W, author of the Generous Minds blog, wrote a Haiti Family Action Plan, the prayer portion of which I cited on my blog at http://ericfoley.com/2010/01/22/a-transformational-response-to-tragedy-and-crisis-part-iv-a-gift-to-remember-not-forget/ .
Jon wrote the plan for his family’s own comprehensive response to the disaster, but I think it works equally well for a church. He’s happy to share the whole plan for free, of course–just email him at jhirst@dotheword.org.
Keep up the good work, Ben!
Eric, excellent thoughts. I really like what you wrote:
Giving is first a spiritual issue, not a financial one.
Blessings, Ben.