Tag Archives: money

How to do a 90 Day Giving Challenge

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Twice a year at Revolution Church, we do a 90 day giving challenge. This isn’t a new idea, in fact, churches have been doing it for years. Here’s how we set it up:

If you aren’t giving back to God at Revolution Church, today is the day to take that step. For the next 90 days, give. See what God does as he expands your faith and works in your heart. Malachi 3 tells us to test God in the area of our finances. If over the next 90 days you don’t see God move in your life, expand your faith, then let us know and we’ll give back all the money that you gave. No questions asked. You should know that since our first giving challenge in 2008, we’ve never had anyone ask for it back.

As people take this step, we send them a book, a note about what is ahead and then throughout the 90 days I send them 7-8 emails with stories of God’s faithfulness, verses and other encouragement to continue in this challenge.

Here are a few things to keep in mind if you are going to do this at your church:

  • It needs to come from the lead pastor, someone else can’t do it. The vision starts at the top, he has to communicate it.
  • It can’t feel like an add on, it must be a specific next step from the sermon and passage.
  • This can’t be the first time you talk about generosity or giving. This must be part of your DNA, otherwise it will feel like a beg for money.
  • If you are behind budget, you must explain why this isn’t a money grab. One of the things I’ve always done is tell people, “Don’t believe me, give to another church for 90 days and see what happens, but we won’t give your money back if you do that.” Perry Noble says this principle is telling people “you want something for them not from them.”
  • Be clear about how they join the giving challenge and have your resources and emails ready to go for the following days. I send out 7-8 emails to everyone who does the giving challenge over the course of 90 days.
  • Use a story from someone who has done it before. This is always golden to have someone share how God moved in their life during the giving challenge.

If you are curious, you can hear how I laid out at recently when we were going through the book of Ecclesiastes.

Money and the Vision of a Church

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Most pastors hate to talk about money. People also don’t like to hear pastors talk about money. Yet, money is a huge issue in people’s lives. They mismanage it, get divorced because of it and it often ruins their lives.

The reality for churches and pastors is:

There is a direct correlation between giving in a church and vision.

I was talking with some pastor’s the other day and the question of how to increase giving in a church came up.

Now, if you aren’t a pastor you may think this a coarse conversation to have. Why would a pastor want giving to go up? The reason is simple:

  • Giving is a heart issue. Jesus said as much in Matthew 6:21. If giving goes down, it shows that the heart of the people in the church aren’t there, their passion and worship is somewhere else besides Jesus. 
  • It shows that they might need to hear solid, biblical teaching on the topic.
  • It shows buy-in.

It was this last reason that struck me as I thought about.

While churches can increase giving and generosity by having a giving challenge (you can listen to me here giving our last giving challenge), or teaching on giving (which many pastors need to start doing).

What many churches need do a better job at is communicating a compelling vision. When the giving at Revolution has gone down it has been during the seasons where our vision was cloudy or if felt like our vision wasn’t going anywhere.

Tell stories. Show how your church is winning. Talk about how your vision is happening. Make videos, show people it is happening.

People want to be generous, they want to be part of something that is winning, something that is going somewhere.

This Weekend @ Revolution || Work, Money & Being Content in Life

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I don’t know about you, but I have been loving this series. Every week of this series has been incredibly powerful weeks. If you missed last week, you need to listen online. The response time at the end was incredibly powerful. The sound of people breaking the power of past hurts and pain through the power of Jesus was inspiring.

This week is going to be just as powerful. Here’s what is happening:

  • We are celebrating baptism. This is the ballgame for us, seeing lives changed by the power of Jesus. Don’t be late to the service or you might miss this.
  • We are continuing our series Meaning and I’ll be preaching from Ecclesiastes 5:1 – 6:12 and looking at the power of work and money in our lives and the search for contentment and being satisfied in those 2 areas of life.
  • If you are like most people, this is a huge struggle. So many of us find meaning in our work, money and what we have or don’t have that we fail to see how they run our lives. We’ll look at how work and money can be God glorifying instead of life destroying.
  • We are also having an informational meeting right after church on this sunday, February 10 about a summer missions trip through Revolution Church to the Czech Republic.
  • If you haven’t “Liked” the Revolution Fan Page on Facebook, do so now. It is one of the ways we communicate and pass on resources for sermons and other ways to help serve you in your spiritual growth.

This is definitely a week you don’t want to miss at Revolution Church. So, bring someone with you (you never know when a simple invite will make an eternal difference).

Remember, we meet at 8300 E. Speedway Blvd. at 10am.

90 Day Giving Challenge

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Tonight, we continued our series The Story of God and Mike preached on generosity from the book of Malachi. When it comes to the topic of money and giving back to God, people get very private and touchy about it. The Bible does not say that being rich is wrong or sinful, just how we get rich, what we do with it, what it says about us. One of the things we do twice is a year to help people in the area of money and generosity is what we call the 90 day giving challenge. I love seeing people take this challenge. When we did it back in March, we had 15 people take the challenge. Every time we give it, more and more people take it.

One of the things I have come to see in my own life and in the lives of others is the deep connection between our money, how we use it and God. I believe that God works through people who are generous with their stuff, time and money. For a few reasons:

  1. It gives God a chance to show His power.
  2. It shows God that we in fact trust Him.
  3. Generosity is the pathway to freedom.
  4. Generosity is evidence of a changed life.

While I don’t believe the Bible lays out a specific amount that we are to give (here is a great article that I pulled a lot of information from for tonight). I know many pastors point to 10% as the tithe, but the tithe in the Old Testament was actually closer to 22%. In the New Testament we are given principles when it comes to giving. They are:

  1. We should give.
  2. It needs to be systematic. We need to decide how often we will give.
  3. It needs to be generous and sacrificial. It should cost something. (Not giving will cost us something, but you’ll have to listen to my talk to here that part)
  4. It needs to be proportional.
  5. It needs to be intentional.

For Katie and I, we started at 10%. It was a round number, which helps. But when we began, it was sacrificial. As we have gotten older, God has blessed us with more, our giving has changed. I’ll post later about what that is.

Here is how how the challenge works. If you are not giving, start. If you are giving a little, move to greater generosity.

We don’t lay out a specific amount. Just look at the 5 principles above. For the next 90 days, give back to God through Revolution. If you feel at the end of those 90 days that it was a waste of time, you didn’t see God move in your life, you didn’t see God stay true to Scripture. Just tell us and we will give you the money back.

It is that simple.

Still not sure? Here is a video we showed tonight from Kat, a woman in our community.

Links of the Week

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  1. Christianity Today on Sex, money…pride? Why pastors are stepping down.
  2. Michael Hyatt on Why you don’t get retweeted.
  3. Discerning the idols of your heart.
  4. Guy Kawasaki on 7 reasons why your blog fails.
  5. A prayer for pastors before and after preaching.
  6. Videos from the gospel coalition conference on church planting. So good.
  7. Casey Graham on 3 mistakes pastor’s make when they talk about money.
  8. Depression claims more and more pastor’s.
  9. Jon Nielson on Why students stay in church after graduating high school. Stats are really bad in this area, but this is a great look at what keeps those students.