If your church that has experimented with technology and capital campaigns, I’d love to hear more about what worked and what didn’t (if you’re brave enough to share).

P.S. In case you don’t get the magazine, here is my joint editorial conversation with Ron Keener on church giving.

I find myself saying it over and over again. The temptation for organizations is to just keep creating more and more messages while sending them across the most efficient and established models for the organization. The lie that organizations buy into is that they constantly need to have something new in order to break through the clutter and reach their target audience. While their intuition isn’t entirely off (breaking through the clutter is vital to success), I’m becoming more convinced that new ideas aren’t necessarily what people responds to. Rather, they crave compelling content that provides a call to action which reaches them using their preferred or native habits of content consumption (e.g. iPhone, iPad, Blog, Email, etc.).

For example…

• A nonprofit might depend solely on direct mail (and rightly so given its sustained performance) but never consider the impact direct mail is having on online interactions. Some studies even suggest that traditional direct mail is driving online donations and transactions. If I only give online, you lose.
• A church might be launching a new program, and it wants to let the community know about it. Only they do this once a month. The church thinks that “new” will attract the prospect. Maybe. I tend to think it will just underline how confused you are about your purpose and identity. If I’m the prospect and I’m confused, you lose.

The problems created by sending too many new messages are…

• Not everyone in the organization has time to assimilate them into their strategy and planning.
• Not enough time is spent testing and refining the idea to determine whether or not it’s a success or not.
• The prospect will shut you down immediately if you don’t take steps to establish trust. Always presenting yourself as something new — running after a new cause, objective, or product — doesn’t establish trust. It’s the same thing as if you went out with the same person multiple times and each time your date changed their name. You’d begin to wonder what’s going on and what you don’t know.

Fewer messages means more time for…

• Refinement of ideas, concepts, and calls to action.
• Ownership of vocabulary in your space.
• Expectations to be set that refine and protect the relationship with the intended audience (e.g. client, prospect, etc.)
• Expansion of distribution channels based on audience segmentation and preferences. People want organizations and causes to communicate with them through their native filters and habits.

Building trust is about being the same person in multiple situations. Building trust is about creating a confidence that who you are today is who you will be tomorrow. Building trust is what content strategy is all about.

What’s more important to you and your organization: revealing your next BIG idea or nurturing the relationship you have with your target audience?

A study commissioned by Smart Money magazine and Redbook found that more than 70 percent of couples talked to their partner about money at least once a week. (Source link.)

I recently completed a review for a pastor that showed a spike in church giving every time he talked about money. He is someone who is incredibly uncomfortable talking about the subject. Honestly, it stresses him out.

Sometimes we have to ask oursevles what is more important: staying within our comfort zone or engaging people with an issue that is central to doing life as a Christ-follower.

If so many couples are already talking about the subject, why is the church silent?

1. 5 practical things churches can do to increase giving
2. 10 excuses pastors make about church giving
3. 18-second listeners don’t cultivate high-capacity givers
4. What will your church do differently in 2011?
5. Giving testimony [video]

It’s time rethink our approach to subject of money in church. If Jesus talked more about it than heaven and hell combined, perhaps we ought to make it a more central part of our teaching as well.

Warning: Churches who refuse to consistently deal with giving in a healthy way help fund outside organizations with money God intended to fund his church.

You could read a library full of books on how to cultivate high-capcity givers. Let me save you the trouble. The key is: listening. Are you creating an environment where you are listening to those individuals and uncovering what is most important to them? If you don’t, a very intentional development officer already is and will absolutely secure the gift that might have dramatically changed the financial trajectory of your church, no matter how big or small.

Are you an 18-second listener, or are you giving people the chance to express themselves without your preconceived notions getting in the way?

Let’s see what Tom Peters has to say about where we fall short in our listening habits:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwB7NAvKPeo]

Here are 7 things churches should measure regularly:

1. First-time givers. Every week someone should receive a report with the names and amounts of first-time givers. It’s very important to acknowledge all first-time gifts as they are an external reality of an internal commitment to your church. It would be rude, quite frankly, not to.

2. Giving habits that vary more than 10%. You should always be looking at a rolling twelve month average. If in any given month the difference is greater than or less than 10%, someone on staff should follow up. Changes in giving habits always reflect other realities — often very personal and perhaps spiritual — that might be “hidden” ministry opportunities.

3. 90 days of expenses and revenue and attendance and participation. Budgeting is a good tool and discipline to build into a church’s management process. However, we should be willing to adjust expenses within the year and well before it creates a significant variance later in the year based on current revenue patterns. Don’t wait until Q4 to adjust, or you may just create an unnecessary crisis. This information should be used alongside the attendance and participating habits of the membership. Almost always they tell the same story, only through two different perspectives.

4. Staff giving. If your leadership isn’t practicing generosity, you can’t expect the person in the pew to either. Monitor this closely as it could also reveal who is thinking/about to leave and who is truly “all in.”

5. Giving habits of those who complete membership classes. When a group completes a membership class or process, their habits should be measuring within 30 days, 90 days, 6 months, 9 months, and 12 month intervals. This will give you a good indication as to what to change or adjust to ensure your membership class is effectively assimilating new members or just fulfilling an organizational objective.

There are many, many more reports to consider. However, these are a core group that I recommend you start using today. The better you are at leveraging your ChMS as a ministry partner, the more strategic your decision making will become. Stop managing your church with your gut; it’s not as “dead on” as you may “feel” like it is.

For more ideas, check out Getting Disciple Making Right: 7 Ways Technology Helps Churches Win at Making Disciples.

How valuable is your ChMS to you?

1. Church giving is not my responsibility.
2. They never taught us about that in seminary.
3. I’m not a numbers guy.
4. That’s why I hired [insert name of another staff member].
5. Talking about money isn’t spiritual.
6. If I just have enough faith, God will make sure we meet our budget.
7. We have all the money we need to do all the ministry we can.
8. I’d rather talk about anything but church giving.
9. As long as we’re paying the bills, I don’t need to think or talk about money.
10. If I talk about money, people will complain or leave the church.

Every pastor who makes excuses about church giving leads a church that is struggling when it comes to funding ministry. I find it ironic that the churches who don’t make excuses are thriving.

Are you making excuses or taking action? Pastor, giving IS your responsibility.

How will you leverage the giving testimonies from the people in your church to encourage others to be generous?

Here are three reasons you should present a “State of the Church report (and place greater emphasis on it if you don’t already):

• People love stories and look to identify with great ones. We must not undervalue the storytelling function we are afforded every week in corporate gatherings. People are in a posture of great expectations in January, and our story must affirm their core values, interests, and dreams.
• People are in the mood to set goals and make commitments. They are hitting the gym again for the first time in 10 months, they are trying new things, and still feeling positive about fulfilling their new year’s resolutions.
• People forget. The only person who lives at “ground zero” of your ministry is you. Everyone else lives at 30k feet. Never forget that. The only one who thinks you might be repeating yourself is you. Everyone else is pleased to your vision for the “first” time.

What will your “State of the Church” report look and sound like this year?