Maximizing Contributions in Your Church
by Aubrey Malphurs
The Malphurs Group

Pastor, how many ways do people give to your church? Most churches provide only two or three ways for their people to exercise the privilege of giving to the church’s ministry for the Savior. The problem is that these churches and their people are missing out on some wonderful opportunities for expanding kingdom giving. There are at least five different ways that people can and will give when provided the opportunity. And all five should be emphasized during the year. Some people refer to them as the “five pockets of giving.”

 

The General Fund

 

The first pocket is the general fund. This fund is used for such important matters as staff salaries, programming, and facilities (insurance payments, light bills, the mortgage and such). These are the core items that appear in some form in most church budgets. The general fund isn’t very glamourous, but if people don’t give to the general fund, the church can’t operate and will eventually close its doors. When consulting with struggling churches, especially with those in deep decline, we can figure how much longer the church will survive by calculating the rate of decline in worship attendance and the rate of decline in giving to the general fund.

 

General-fund giving is important to those who care deeply about the church and has an appeal to rule keepers and the rank-and-file who have grown up in the church. The older Builder generation, the people born before 1946, seem the most willing to give to this fund. They understand that money is necessary to run a church, and they’re willing to write a check every month without being asked. The obvious question is what happens to Builder-supported churches when the Builder generation moves on to be with their Lord and the younger generations have not been taught to give to this fund?

 

The Building Fund

 

The second pocket is the building fund. We are amazed at the number of churches with facility needs that do not have a building fund. Many people who give to the general fund will give to the building fund above and beyond their normal giving if a legitimate need is presented to them. There are also some people who will give to the building fund but not to the general fund. They like to see their gift provide something immediate and tangible, and they can conceptualize a building much easier than they can many of the things provided through the general fund.

 

Because many people will give to a building fund, churches often enter into a one-to-three-year capital campaign during which the church members are asked to give above and beyond their normal giving to provide the down payment for a building or to service a short-term building loan.

 

Some churches work hard at paying off their mortgage and any other debt. Their goal is to become debt-free, which often means the elimination of the mortgage on the building plus the elimination of any building fund. The idea seems very noble—they can divert funds from “bricks and mortar” to people and programs. However, the problem with this thinking is that should they need to build a facility in the future, or acquire more property due to growth, the funds aren’t available. They have eliminated one of their primary pockets of giving. And people who may have given to this pocket when they don’t give to any of the others invest their money elsewhere, such as in themselves.

 

We recommend strongly that churches maintain a building fund. We see no problem with keeping debt low or eliminating it if the church’s giving is good, but we recommend adding a building fund when churches don’t have one and maintaining an existing building fund, even when the building has already been constructed. We also recommend that the portion of the general fund that services debt should not be eliminated. Getting rid of the building fund will severely limit the church’s options in addressing future facility needs. When the money is not currently needed for the building, it can be placed in a savings account for a mission effort, such as a church start.

 

The Missions Fund

 

The third pocket of giving is the missions pocket. Once again there are people who will give to missions who won’t give to any other fund. They’re passionate about God’s command to share the gospel around the world, and they’re willing to make sacrifices in addition to what they already give to their church to fund a particular mission project or to fund the salaries of missionaries.

 

While you can find people from most of the generations with this passion, the older Builder generation in particular has been known to be good givers in missions. It’s interesting that, while many Builders are quick to write a check to missions, which is good, they’re very slow to share the gospel with their neighbor, which is not so good. For them, evangelism is something that takes place overseas and out of sight. The younger adult generation—Busters—are also big givers to missions, primarily because of their personal involvement.

 

At Lake Pointe, we mail out offering envelopes to our church members each month. These envelopes allow for giving to the three pockets—general, building and mission funds. There’s a space to indicate what is being given to the general fund, the building fund and missions. This allows our people to write one check and then designate what portion of that check they want to go to each of these categories. The fact that we have these options on the envelope reminds people of the three pockets. We believe that at Lake Pointe we have people giving to both missions and the building fund who would not normally do so on a regular basis were it not for the opportunity provided by the envelope. Because it is there, we receive substantial offerings in all three of these areas every single week of the year.

 

The Designated-Giving Fund

 

We find several examples of designated giving in the New Testament. In Acts 11:27-30, Luke writes that the church in Antioch provided help, or designated an offering, for the church in Jerusalem to see them through a famine. We suspect that, after the disciples in the church at Antioch had given to this collection, they would have been upset if the gift had been used for some other project. Another example of designated giving is the collection of funds for God’s people in Jerusalem that Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 16:1-4.

 

A Problem

 

Our experience is that there are many church leaders who are afraid of the designated pocket. They think they know where the church needs to spend its money. They fear that if they open up the door to designated giving, their people will begin to direct gifts to designated projects that may not be priorities in the church’s overall strategy. Another fear is that people will divert funds away from the general fund to some pet projects. However, when church leaders don’t allow for designated giving, the church misses out on money that may not come in otherwise.

 

A Solution

 

The key to the designated pocket is to direct the designated gifts. Tell your people in what particular areas you’ll receive these gifts. For example, at least once a quarter, Lake Pointe Church sends out a financial newsletter to all of our church members. Along with other information, it presents a list of designated items that are needed. They include items that range from fifty-dollar Bibles for new Christians to a fifty-thousand dollar, twenty-one-passenger van—and everything in between. The list encourages people who are passionate about a particular area of the church to give to a specific need and know that their gift has made an immediate difference. For example, someone may be passionate about the youth program in our church, and he may also have a high interest in computers because of his job or hobby. He reads over the list and sees that we need two computers for our youth division that cost fifteen hundred dollars apiece. There’s a distinct possibility that God may move through this person to write a check for fifteen hundred dollars for one or three thousand dollars for both computers. In this way our church can control designated giving and receive money that the person wouldn’t have given to the general fund.

 

A Helpful Practice

 

Another practice that has proved helpful at Lake Pointe (which we address in chapter 5 on analyzing the budget in our book, Money Matters in Church) is moving items out of the general budget and onto the designated-giving list. As we review the general budget, we look for areas of people’s interests and passion that could be funded if they were designated items. An example might be helping to support a missionary or some short-term mission project. Whereas funds for these needs would naturally flow out of the general budget, we can move them into the designated area, and those who are passionate about these missionaries or the particular mission can designate special gifts to them. This frees up funds in the general budget that would normally have gone to these causes and allows us to divert them to other needs in the general budget. If a church decides not to take the items out of the general budget, and someone gives to them as a designated item and the budget is met, there will be an end-of-the-year surplus that can be used for debt retirement or some one-time purchase.

 

There are times when people will ignore the list of designated items and come up with something on their own. For example, we had a lady offer to give a designated gift for a flagpole. We didn’t feel that the church needed a flagpole, so we politely refused the gift. The church can always turn down a designated gift or redirect it. However, not to receive such gifts is to leave money on the table.

 

Along with the quarterly financial newsletter, we include an individualized statement of what a congregant has given to date. Some people think they are giving much more than they are, or they may think their spouse is giving when he or she isn’t. The statement serves to inform them of their actual giving. We also send financial statements to church members who have given absolutely nothing to serve as a reminder to give. Along with that financial statement, we enclose another statement that explains such matters as how the church is audited, its checks and balances for accountability, and several stories of how money is being spent.

 

An Annual Offering

 

Every December, we receive an “annual offering,” which is a type of designated offering. It captures money that people receive as end-of-year bonuses and the income some self-employed or “commission only” employees receive at the end of the year. The church publishes a short list of needs that are funded by this annual offering. Most of the time the items on the list are missions-related, although when kicking off a capital campaign, the offering may be used for facilities as well.

 

The Benevolence Fund

 

The fifth pocket of giving is the benevolence fund. We find some examples of this giving for benevolence in the New Testament. When the church at Antioch provided help for the Jerusalem church to see them through a famine (Acts 11:27-30), not only was this designated giving but it would also fall under the benevolence category. The same is true for the example that we cited above in 1 Corinthians 16:1-4. The funds that believers in the Jerusalem church brought to its leadership, as recorded in Acts 4:32-37, were benevolence funds as well.

 

An Old Practice and the New Practice

 

Years ago at Lake Pointe we included the cost of benevolence in our general fund. We set a fixed amount for the fund to help people pay their light bills, provide food for their families, and pay for counseling, childcare, hotel rooms for transients, and other needs.

 

Later we found that it isn’t necessary to include benevolence in the general fund if once a year we take up a separate benevolence offering. We do this on Christmas Eve and have determined that we will use 100 percent of the offering to provide for the benevolent needs of the community throughout the year. Since the Christmas Eve service has become the “second Easter” for many churches in America, we, like many churches, have a large crowd that comes to our church on Christmas Eve, and the money they give to that offering has been enough to fund needs all year. If enough money is not collected in this offering, other benevolent offerings can be taken throughout the year.

 

Some pastors are hesitant to take up an offering at a service that lots of guests are attending. We have discovered, though, that visitors view a benevolence offering differently than other types of offerings when we explain that we’re taking up an offering to help with such needs. So the pastor can push a benevolence offering very hard on such an occasion. We say more about the benevolence offering on Christmas Eve than we do any other offering. And often we have the non-churched write checks for thousands of dollars and put it in the offering plate for this special fund. As a result, over the last twenty-five years, we’ve collected enough money in that one offering to respond to all legitimate benevolence needs throughout the year (In 2005, we received more than two hundred thousand dollars in one offering for benevolence).

 

Special Offerings

 

The benevolence offering falls into the category of what we call “special offerings,” which churches take up for needs and opportunities now anticipated in the general budget. The examples cited above from Acts 11:27-30 and 1 Corinthians 16:1-4 would fall under this category. We think there is a legitimate role for special offerings in the overall stewardship plan, but we believe you have to be careful not to take up too many of them. We know of churches that take up an offering for some kind of special project every month. They may do so to provide funds for a particular family whose house has burned down or to send a group of people on a mission trip, and so forth. If you’re not careful, you’ll wear your people out. You’ll nickel and dime them to death. What we suggest instead is that you carefully and strategically choose a limited number of special offerings for the year. The benevolence offering is one example. Remember that when it comes to special offerings, less is more! You may be able to help hundreds—if not thousands—of people by taking up a single offering.

 

A good example of how some churches conduct and perhaps overuse or even abuse special offerings is missions giving. Some churches choose to take up several missions offerings a year. The church in which I (Steve) grew up, a Baptist church, was such a church. The church in which it would take up a state missions offering that would fund missions work around the state for a year. At another time, it would take up a national missions offering that would help fund mission efforts in the continental United States. Then around Christmas it would take up a foreign missions offering. Since the church took other special offerings throughout the year, people felt overwhelmed by it all. It seemed like every time they came to church, they were reaching into their pockets for some worthy cause. Instead of viewing stewardship as a privilege, many were tempted to view it as a burden.

 

In our church now we give our people the opportunity to give gifts to missions every week of the year because it is one of the options on the offering envelope, and we’ve chosen to rarely take up special offerings in our worship services throughout the year. That way we’re not asking them to give all the time. We’re not saying a church should never take up a special offering, just take as few as possible, for example one benevolent offering a year instead of one for each needy family. When we have a guest missionary in, we remind our people that when they give weekly missions, they are providing the resources to support this individual and others.

 

In summary, we believe there are far too many churches today that have too few pockets of giving. To balance what we have just stated: More “pockets,” less offerings.  Consequently they deny people opportunities to give to the Lord, and they leave money on the table that could have been used for Christ’s kingdom. The people in these churches don’t give more because the churches don’t ask for more. They have not because they ask not.

 

 

The Five Pockets of Giving:

 

·         General Fund

 

·         Building Fund

 

·         Missions Fund

 

·         Designated-Giving Fund

 

·         Benevolence Fund

 

Aubrey Malphurs is the president of The Malphurs Group , a church consulting and training service that specializes in leadership and strategic thinking and acting, and serves as a professor at Dallas Seminary. He is also the author of numerous books and articles on church growth and leadership.  Dr. Malphurs has recently written a book with Steve Stroope entitled Money Matters in Church: A Practical Guide for Leaders from which he has adapted this article.