Raising Funds by the Good Book

Churches use financial lessons from the Bible and see gifts rise

Willow Creek Community Church, an evangelical congregation in South Barrington, Ill., has managed to buck fund-raising trends.

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While giving to Protestant and Catholic churches has been stagnant or declining, donations to Willow Creek have increased by 40 per cent over the last five years.

The church attributes that success in large part to its “Good Sense Ministry,” a program to help church members manage their personal finances according to biblical tenets. Church members can attend workshops on the lessons that the Scriptures hold for budgeting, retirement planning, and other financial topics. They also can receive personal advice from financial counselors trained by Willow Creek.

Contributions have also risen at Trinity United Methodist Church, in Arlington, Tex. The church recently adopted biblically based training programs on such topics as estate planning and managing a stock portfolio. The courses are part of the church’s effort to reduce its $2.45-million debt by $1-million, in order to free up more money for good works. This year, the first since the programs have been offered, 585 church members pledged $1,059,618, up from 412 pledges worth $805,515 in the previous year.

“We are learning that Jesus spent a lot of time talking about money and possessions,” says the Rev. Jim Chandler, the church’s senior pastor. “It takes a lot of time to help people understand what the biblical authority really is on money, but we can see a lot of spiritual awakening going on.”

Across the country, a growing number of churches and other Christian institutions are taking the same approach — and reaping significant dividends in giving.

Many theology experts say that such training is long overdue. “We can’t just teach people to give, we have to preach about what keeps people up at night — like how they’re going to pay the bills,” says Scott Cormode, a professor at Claremont School of Theology, in California. “Until we can talk about things like how to pay the mortgage and how they can send their kids to a good school or have enough to help their parents get into a nursing home, we are not prepared to talk about giving.”

The approach can have other benefits besides an increase in giving. When people bring their finances into alignment with Christian principles, says Brian Kluth, president of the Christian Stewardship Association, “they tend to keep materialism in check, have a strong work ethic, avoid or eliminate indebtedness, and be committed to generosity.” Mr. Kluth, who has compiled a resource guide to help churches implement Bible-based financial education, is stepping down from his job this month to become a “goodwill ambassador” who will speak at religious gatherings about the need to advance Christian financial training.

“The church needs to offer money-management programs to help its members, not just to get money,” he says. “But the byproduct, if they do it right, is more giving.”

The biblically based approach also appeals to Christian clergy members. Many ministers are uncomfortable with secular fund-raising techniques like planning big-ticket events and wining and dining wealthy donors — or they feel that such techniques are inappropriate in a religious setting. What’s more, religious leaders welcome the opportunity to help people with their finances instead of simply asking for donations.

Experts on religious giving say that churches have little choice but to try new approaches to fund raising. Many churches have seen their membership drop, and standard techniques for raising money, such as annual stewardship appeals, have failed to bring in as much as they once did. Empty Tomb, a Champaign, Ill., research organization, has studied 29 denominations and found that giving as a percentage of church members’ after-tax income declined from 3.12 per cent in 1968 to 2.58 per cent in 1996, the most recent data available. That’s a 17-per-cent decrease.

Many religious leaders are predicting even more-dramatic declines in the decades to come. The United Methodist Church, which has lost 1.6 million members since the 1970s, for example, is projecting a 25-per-cent drop in gifts by 2010.

Such projections have helped fuel new efforts to teach people about the relevance of the estimated 2,350 verses in the Bible that Christian leaders say are related to budgeting, saving, investing, and debt.

Among the new developments:

Pastors of stewardship. Over the past five years, a growing number of large churches have hired leaders known as “pastors of stewardship.” They work alongside the minister to offer biblically based workshops on debt elimination, tax and estate planning, and many other subjects.

The Perimeter Church, in Duluth, Ga., which has about 4,000 members, hired the Rev. Jerry Schriver as its pastor of stewardship nearly two years ago. In addition to supervising financial counselors who work individually with church members on money problems, Mr. Schriver oversees a series of workshops. Twice a year, for example, the church has a “Business by the Book” seminar to help business owners run profitable enterprises. “It sounds like a business course, but everything is based on biblical principles,” says Mr. Schriver.

One couple who took a financial-education course at the church and pulled themselves out of debt recently made a five-figure gift to the church. “The man told me that he never could’ve considered or would have been willing to do something like this before,” Mr. Schriver says. “He did it as a way to thank God for his new stability in life and finance.”

Study groups. Churches of all sizes are increasingly starting small-group “study circles” run by trained volunteers who use curriculums on money management. Crown Ministries, a Longwood, Fla., non-profit organization, offers a popular 12-week curriculum to such church groups. The curriculum is based on the notion that “most Christians have only been taught God’s principles for handling 10 per cent of their income — the area of giving. Although this is crucial, they do not understand the Lord’s perspective on the other 90 per cent.”

While the company has been in existence since 1985, its president, Howard Dayton, says interest in the study materials has recently accelerated, even though the company does not advertise. The number of churchgoers who have signed up for the study groups in each of the last three years grew by 35 per cent, 50 per cent, and 29 per cent, respectively. A total of 27,000 people participated last year.

And among some 3,000 people who have participated in Crown study groups and were surveyed by their churches three years after completing the program, giving increased by 35 per cent or more.

Biblical fund-raising courses. The Christian Stewardship Association, a 35-year-old Milwaukee organization that helps religious institutions promote giving, held its first Christian Stewardship Institute last year. The week-long seminar, attended by more than 100 people, covered such topics as “small-ministry fund raising” and “funding broadcast ministries.”

In addition to providing practical fund-raising techniques, the courses rely heavily on Scripture. Participants must study Bible verses related to giving and marshaling funds, and share their views about the verses with other participants. Officials say they organized the classes that way because people at religious organizations are often expected to raise funds — but often have never looked at what the Bible has to say about money.

Money-awareness seminars. The Alban Institute, a non-profit organization in Bethesda, Md., that provides publications, consulting, and other resources to help churches, has started holding a series of “faith and money” conversations with church leaders in five cities to talk about how churches can deal with declining gifts and rising costs.

“We talk about the pressures on Christians of living in a consumer economy and the unending demands of having your worth determined by wealth and economic prowess, and we talk about how people find it hard to see the connection between their work lives and spiritual beliefs,” says the Rev. James Wind, the institute’s president. He says that Alban will conduct a second round of meetings later this year to examine how some churches are trying to tie religious beliefs to the ways in which the church itself and individual members handle money and possessions.

“There is a hunger to talk about this stuff,” says Mr. Wind. “Our goal is to help congregations become places where people can make connections between how they handle their money and religion. We also want to help congregations become more effective at garnering the resources they need.”

Seminary courses. Mr. Cormode of the Claremont School of Theology was hired three years ago to teach finance to seminary students because, he says, the school’s board members realized that ministers and other church leaders seldom talk about money with their congregations, and they have difficulty managing church budgets.

In 1997, Mr. Cormode received a $500,000 grant from the Lilly Endowment to hold meetings with other seminary leaders across the nation. The goal is to produce a theologically based textbook on leadership administration and finance, which Mr. Cormode will complete next year. The text will help teach seminary students how to manage money in line with Christian principles, and how to share that information with their congregations.

A few other organizations are trying to reach aspiring and new clergy members. Crown Ministries has just released a new curriculum to enable seminary professors to teach biblically based financial principles. And the Texas Methodist Foundation, in Austin, has started adding lessons on the theological underpinnings of financial management to “think tanks” attended by new clergy.

The focus on theology students comes after several studies documented the lack of training in financial matters among people planning to become priests or ministers. The Christian Stewardship Association, based on its work with religious institutions nationwide, for example, estimates that only 2 to 4 per cent of seminaries, and only 1 to 2 per cent of Christian colleges and universities, teach biblical financial principles.

If Christian seminaries begin to teach financial principles based on theology to aspiring priests and ministers, more congregations will ultimately be exposed to the concepts, experts say. And there will be more people like Jan LoMonte.

Ms. LoMonte, a medical secretary in Milwaukee, says a course on money management at her church saved her from catastrophe and inspired her to tithe. Ms. LoMonte took the course two years ago, shortly after joining the Harvest Community Church. Aged 51 and recently divorced at the time, she says she was in “terrible trouble” due to a car loan.

After her marriage ended, Ms. LoMonte says she needed a car to keep her job. However, because she had a bad credit rating, the best option she could find was a used-car loan with a 31-per-cent interest rate. When the vehicle subsequently broke down and needed some expensive repairs, Ms. LoMonte found herself dipping into her rent money and falling dangerously behind on other bills.

In desperation, she joined the 12-week study group, led by a trained volunteer at her church who used the Crown Ministries curriculum. Every week, for two hours, Ms. LoMonte met with several other church members to study Bible verses on money management. One of the first principles she learned was that all money and possessions belong to God. “It was kind of a relief,” she says, “because I could turn over all my money worries to God.”

In the group, Ms. LoMonte recorded her spending patterns, set up a budget, and created a debt-repayment and savings schedule. At the group’s suggestion, she returned the car to the loan company, which agreed to forgive part of the loan.

The group also helped arrange for Ms. LoMonte to get a car that had been donated to the church; the church sold it to her for $1. In gratitude, she now drives people without transportation to church on Sundays. “I call it God’s car,” she says. “What happened to me was a miracle.”

Ms. LoMonte soon pulled herself out of debt and even started two savings accounts. “I used to wait ‘til the last minute to pay for something like a vacation; now I budget for it all year long,” she says. “And if I buy anything, I never do it on the spur of the moment anymore. I have to see how it fits into the budget, and I pray about it.”

Prayer and Bible study, Ms. LoMonte says, also led her to begin systematically giving away 10 per cent of her income, mostly to the church. “Before I had maybe put a couple of bucks in the basket on Sunday,” she says, “but nothing steady.”

“I not only learned how to handle money, I learned to tithe,” she says. “None of this would have happened without the power of prayer.”