“You never have to recover from a good start.” My mentor in capital campaigns, Dave Sutherland, drilled that statement into our heads on the importance of planning out a campaign. 99% of campaign mistakes could have been avoided during the planning phase of the campaign. A big part of being...
A lot longer than you think. But when I get asked this question they always mean the “public phase” of a campaign. This comes after months and sometimes years of planning. In most “public phase” campaigns, the average time is at least six months from initial planning to completion. In...
About this time every year, churches call and ask, "Is it too late to start a capital stewardship campaign?" The answer is, it depends! We joke that most of our answers are, it depends! That is because there are so many variables that go into campaign planning. As I write...
How old is your “new” fellowship hall or your “new” children’s wing? For the typical church, putting the tag “new” in front of any building simply means it was the last structure built or renovated. For many churches, their “new” whatever was built in the last century! One of the...
In my over twenty-five years of helping churches hold capital campaigns, I have found that the majority of mistakes made happen BEFORE the campaign even starts. The goal of this paper is to help you avoid these mistakes by showing you what you need to know and do BEFORE your...
Don’t let a committee kill your dream of expanding your ministry! I cannot tell you the number of times I have talked to a pastor with a dream of expanding his ministry, only to have a committee kill that dream with questions, hesitations, and roadblocks. Committees are designed to enhance...
A year ago, I issued a stark warning to a group of Southern Baptist leaders: without immediate action, thousands of their churches could vanish by 2030. This year, the warning was tragically confirmed. In April, Lifeway Research reported that the Southern Baptist Convention lost 1,253 churches in 2022. This is...
Get the help you need for your next capital campaign for a price you can afford AND never have to leave your office or home! I wrote that line in 2015 for a program I developed called The Online Campaign. I devised an eight-part online series that would teach any...
An Open Letter to SBC Leadership In the fall of 2019, I began discussions with leaders of the Executive Committee about building a stewardship platform for SBC churches. Then Covid hit, and then controversy came, followed by resignations, and all that talk was shelved. Last April, I was invited to speak...
I believe that by 2030, less than six years from now, we will witness a significant wave of church closures across the U.S. Church closures are happening already, and the pace of closures is picking up. A few weeks ago, Lifeway Research posted the following headline: Southern Baptists Lost More...
