From the Desk of Our Executive Director

Welcome to another edition of the Stewardship Journal. Our mission is to help you build a culture of generosity based on biblical principles that will help drive the fulfillment of God’s vision for your church. Our desire is to give you the help you need to help your church achieve and maintain financial security. We are the only SBC entity providing pastors and church leaders with this type of weekly help. Our goal is to take the Journal nationally in 2024. As a result, you will see changes to our format and what we offer. We believe this will improve the quality of our content, making the Journal an even more valuable tool. Stay tuned! For now, here is a brief overview of this edition.

Americans are giving to charity at lowest level in nearly 3 decades. That is the opening sentence of Mark Brooks’, The Stewardship Coach, column entitled How to Avoid the Coming Giving Crisis. Mark then gives stunning statistics about the continued decline in giving. Like all of Mark’s stuff, he doesn’t just present a problem; he gives you a detailed list of what to do to avoid the coming crisis. It’s an informative post and a must-read.

Do you have your vision established for your end-of-year giving initiative? We have been turning your attention to end-of-year planning in the past few issues. In our Bonus Section, Preparing the Vision of Your End-of-Year Appeal gives you a printable worksheet that you can give to your team to begin planning for the message you want to communicate.

Our final post is entitled #GivingTuesday for Churches and probes whether churches should participate in the now international movement called #GivingTuesday. This post explains what #GivingTuesday is and how a church can benefit from this annual giving day.

Again, thanks for reading this Journal. We are building out a full range of stewardship-related material and help for the churches of our Convention. Spread the word and help us help our partnering churches as, together, we work towards,

Advancing the Gospel!