Today, in churches around the world, we celebrate Palm Sunday. This day, the week before Easter, is when we focus on Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. On that day, Jesus rode into the city on a donkey that had never had anyone ride it. People came from all over the...
The following was originally posted at https://www.onlinegiving.org/support/the-seasonal-giving-strategy. Does your church have a giving strategy? Most churches don’t, so they struggle to be financially stable. They fall behind early in the year and struggle to get through the summer months. The typical church has more missions and ministry in the summer and...
My job is to keep you focused and out of the ditch. I write each Stewardship Coach column with that in mind. I do for you what no one else does; think, how will that impact giving? I’ve been at this for, well, a long time. So, I’ve learned a...
CP giving soars to more than 12% above budget. That was the Baptist Press headline on February 3rd, and it is certainly something to rejoice about. The lead paragraph sums up the state of giving in the Convention by saying, “The start of 2022 indicates a continuation of recent giving...
Welcome to another Stewardship Journal! Giving to the Cooperative Program is experiencing record highs! That is what Baptist Press reported back in early February. That is, of course, good news. Yet, if we probe beneath those numbers we find some startling facts that might alter future CP reports. Our team leads...
The following was a blog post I wrote in May of 2021: Trust the science. You hear that a lot today. Typically, it comes from those wanting to silence any questions about COVID-19 in general, masks, and now the vaccine being pushed upon, well, everyone. One group in particular is being...
I will always remember Sunday, March 13th, as the day the offering bucket passed by me for the first time in, well, forever! Since I moved to Oklahoma, I have seen a lot of things in church I have not seen in a long time, like shaking hands and maskless...
Ah, Covid. As if leading a church were not hard enough, roughly two years ago, Covid came in and disrupted everything in the church’s life, making an already difficult job seemingly impossible. Covid brought many rounds of mandates, rules, and recommendations for the church. The vast majority of churches had...
Change is inevitable. That is one lesson we have all learned these last couple of years. We have been forced as a church to change how we do a lot of things. One thing that changed immediately with Covid was how we took up the offering. We went from primarily...
Welcome to another Stewardship Journal! From time to time we like to produce a Journal that challenges us and makes us think. This edition is one of those times. The entire issue deals with the subject of whether churches can return to the way things were before Covid. You might not...
