[00:00:00] So, a mission budget will help you focus on what God is calling you to do. So, you ask,
[00:00:05] what's the big vision? Let's allot our best resources for it. I mean, think about it.
[00:00:11] Why wouldn't you put your best people, your best resources, on what you think God's calling you to do the most?
[00:00:21] Welcome to episode 368. Today, we continue our series on Dreaming Big for 2025. How do you develop and launch
[00:00:29] a vision for your church? How do you discern together what God is calling you to do? Today,
[00:00:35] we talk about how to utilize your church budget as a tool for vision. That's today on The Reclaimed Leader.
[00:00:48] Welcome to The Reclaimed Leader Podcast. I'm Jason Tucker. And I'm Jesse Skiffington. We're two pastors
[00:00:54] in the trenches who are passionate about church health for greater gospel impact. We share the
[00:00:59] ups and downs of ministry, strategies that worked for us, and some that didn't, best practices and
[00:01:05] practical tools for church leadership. The goal? To help all of our churches flourish. Let's get started.
[00:01:14] Welcome back to The Reclaimed Leader Podcast. It is so good to be back with everyone again. We're in
[00:01:19] this series that Jesse, whenever we start talking vision, I don't know, we kind of light up a little
[00:01:24] more. Yeah. We don't even need all the Christmas lights. We are lit up when it comes to talking about
[00:01:31] mission, vision, strategy. And I think now's the time, as we talked about last week, now's the time
[00:01:36] to at least start giving it a little bit of headspace, even in the midst of all the holiday stuff.
[00:01:44] Yeah. Because that's what really kind of gets you going for the new year.
[00:01:47] Yeah, I think so. And I think actually I've found in as much as December's crazy and we're cranking
[00:01:53] through a bunch of stuff and we're getting ready. Like there is space in there for us to kind of
[00:01:58] start dreaming ahead. It's kind of how we're wired as leaders, I think. And you know, this is probably
[00:02:03] true for a lot of our listeners too. You can't help but thinking about January and beyond. And maybe
[00:02:08] just finding some intentional time to give space to that actually kind of gives you a break from the
[00:02:14] grind of the season in this life-giving way. At least that's the hope. And I've found that to be true for myself.
[00:02:18] Yeah, I found, so the other day I did yours and mine favorite thing because I was really feeling
[00:02:27] scattered. And I went to the Starbucks that has the nice lobby or the nice seating area. And I sat
[00:02:36] there for about an hour and a half with a notebook, computer closed, everything closed, phone on do not
[00:02:43] disturb. And I just sat there and just kind of scribbled in the journal. And I got to tell you,
[00:02:49] it was so helpful. Every time I do it, I'm like, I'm so glad I did that. What's your drink of choice
[00:02:54] when you're sitting there? Right. It's always the same. I'm a dark roast guy. I just go dark roast
[00:02:59] coffee. I'm very boring. I order the same thing every time. It's good. It's that comforting thing
[00:03:04] that it's like for me, if I need something like that, I don't usually do lattes, but a nice vanilla
[00:03:08] latte. It's like, yeah, that's just a little bit of sweet. But yeah, having that notebook,
[00:03:13] there's something, you know, in the old days when we had to defragment our computers, do you remember
[00:03:17] that whole thing? Oh, yeah, that's right. Am I supposed to be doing that still? I don't know.
[00:03:22] Probably. I don't know. But it kind of has that effect, doesn't it? It does. You're processing,
[00:03:28] you're writing, things are dumping out of your brain. It's kind of ordering your thoughts, maybe taking
[00:03:32] some things out that you don't have to worry about anymore. I don't know. Just it's a life-giving thing.
[00:03:36] So if you haven't done that in a while, give yourself the excuse and take an hour and a half
[00:03:40] and go find your coffee of choice and sit there. See what happens.
[00:03:44] Yeah. Yeah. And it's, so let these next couple of weeks, let this series be a little bit of a
[00:03:51] defrag, a little bit of allowing you some space to think about where you're hoping or where you're
[00:03:59] feeling God wants to take your church in the new year. So, and really it's about, well, how do you
[00:04:04] find out what God is asking you to do? That's kind of baked into this process. Before we go on,
[00:04:10] just want to encourage you to do us a favor and share this episode with a friend or leave us a
[00:04:16] review on your platform of choice. It helps us to continue to help more pastors. And that's really
[00:04:22] what we are passionate about. So thank you so much. And thank you for listening. I know that,
[00:04:27] I mean, there's like a million podcasts and I listened to several and I hope that this is one
[00:04:33] that's really helps you and is practical enough to give you some ideas to move forward because
[00:04:40] it's in everyone's best interest that we all have healthy churches.
[00:04:43] Yeah. So much. So true. And we have a lot of words, Jason, we say,
[00:04:47] but every so often there's a nugget in there from, from our experience working in the trenches and the
[00:04:52] local church. And so, you know, that's where we go. We're hoping you're finding some of that gold
[00:04:56] along the way, the midst of our, our kind of processing through our own, our own churches and
[00:05:01] leadership and all that. Yeah. There's some gold mixed in there with the pie, right? Right. Okay.
[00:05:06] That's right. So, so last week, if you didn't listen to last week's episode, you may want to stop
[00:05:12] and go back and listen to that first. If you decide to trudge on anyway, because it's kind of
[00:05:17] a pain to switch episodes right now, that's fine. Quick review. We just talked a bit about how
[00:05:22] when it comes to vision, we need to be a bit more like Disney imagineers rather than bookkeepers.
[00:05:31] Like we need to develop organizational vision and it's, and that's what happens when you combine
[00:05:37] creative imagination with practical processes. And usually depending on what sort of leader you are,
[00:05:44] what sort of church you're in, you struggle with one, one of the two more than the other. So maybe
[00:05:49] for some of you, it's, you're having a hard time being imaginative about what could be. And it could
[00:05:56] be that either you're not a vision person or you are a vision person, but you are so wrapped up in
[00:06:03] the day to day. You feel like you don't have time to go to the coffee shop with a pad of paper, right?
[00:06:07] You feel like you're just swamped. Um, so we talked a bit about that, about how do you work
[00:06:13] on vision from both sides? Cause you actually need both. You need the vision, you need the
[00:06:19] creative imagination, the dreaming, but you also need processes and you can get to your vision goals
[00:06:25] through both or through either side of it, but it's most effective when you have both.
[00:06:30] Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's spot on. And so I think that's where we get traction and
[00:06:34] actually see vision implemented is when those things come together. So we want that. And, uh,
[00:06:39] yet to get the ball rolling sometimes is tough. And one of the big obstacles sometimes is thinking
[00:06:44] about how, how are we going to pay for this thing? Jason, how are we going to pay for it? Because
[00:06:49] that's one of the questions I get a lot in the church. I hear that from pastors and church leaders
[00:06:54] too. Yeah. That's all well and good, but where do we get the resource for that?
[00:06:58] Yeah. We, on some level, we're all wondering that. And you may have a big vision in front of you,
[00:07:04] a big dream for next year. And you feel like I would love to take a swing on this dream,
[00:07:08] but I don't, I don't know if it's responsible based on what our financial situation appears to be.
[00:07:16] Yeah. I don't know how much is like, I, we should just have more faith and we should roll with it. Or,
[00:07:22] you know, we need to count the cost at the same time. It, it's a tension that you have to figure out.
[00:07:31] And, but I think if you put together a healthy budget building process,
[00:07:37] I think this is what gets you there because, um, one of the things that happens in ministry is a
[00:07:43] similar thing that happens in businesses. Usually businesses fail and not because of a lack of
[00:07:48] inventory or, or because they have a bad product. It's a lack of capital. They, they don't have enough
[00:07:56] to keep the product, the widgets, if you will, on the shelves. So budget has always been part of
[00:08:04] ministry. And, you know, I, we were just doing a series on Romans and a sermon series on Romans and,
[00:08:11] you know, Paul always asking for money to do, uh, to support him in his ministry. You know,
[00:08:19] he was hoping to go to Spain and, you know, what a whole new world, uh, that would have been for him,
[00:08:24] uh, to do. And it's just a reality that we have to face. And I know that Jesse, I didn't go on
[00:08:32] to the pastorate to talk about money. I really didn't, but I had to learn that it's an important
[00:08:38] part of the conversation if we're hoping to achieve what we think God wants us to achieve.
[00:08:44] Yeah. It's part of the reality of it. And actually I was just, before we hit record,
[00:08:48] we were talking about meeting I had last night with our leadership team, our session.
[00:08:51] And part of the conversation was what is our approach to our budget going to be?
[00:08:56] And what is our approach to how we talk about fundraising, how we talk about giving, how we
[00:09:03] invite the congregation to be a part of that. And we just really sat with that for a while.
[00:09:07] And I thought about how are we communicating about this really crucially central piece?
[00:09:11] Church doesn't just happen and people give and, uh, they, they practice that spiritual discipline
[00:09:17] and how do we help people do that? And, and then what's our approach to our budget in the midst of
[00:09:22] all that? So for me, this was a really relevant conversation. I know you guys are on a little
[00:09:26] different, uh, budget cycle, uh, Jason with the, with your June to June budget. Um, but yeah,
[00:09:32] this is part of all of our work and it's not why we went to, to, to ministry and we didn't have this
[00:09:38] class in seminary. At least I missed that day. I didn't have that one. Yeah. So we kind of figuring
[00:09:43] it out as we go a lot of the time. And, uh, you know, so we're going to be talking about some of that
[00:09:47] today. Yeah. So the truth is lasting change is about having the right systems and your budget
[00:09:53] plays a huge part of accomplishing that vision. And, you know, it's sort of like, um, it's sort of
[00:10:00] like the old, uh, star Trek. Right. And, uh, Mr. Scott, I'm giving her all she's got captain. She
[00:10:08] can't take much more of this, you know? And I always wondered why didn't she build a more powerful
[00:10:13] engine? It can never take it. Uh, but this is what happens in, if you have the wrong system for your
[00:10:22] budgeting process is it will never expand to meet the vision. It will never support it. Um, for
[00:10:31] example, uh, here at tower Hill, when I first got here, it was never really a church that was built
[00:10:37] on, on pledge cards. I served in plenty of churches that were, and there's always so much anxiety over
[00:10:44] the pledge cards, determining how we build our budget. Now, when it came here, they really didn't,
[00:10:49] they tried to use pledge cards, but people weren't really into them for one reason or another,
[00:10:53] which made it almost impossible to build a budget because we had no, nothing to kind of base it on
[00:11:00] other than, well, last year people gave this amount. And so let's anticipate a 1% or 2%
[00:11:11] congregational increase. And our process was, okay, we have our line items of all the different things
[00:11:19] that we must pay for buildings and grounds, um, personnel, right? Uh, children's ministry, youth
[00:11:29] ministry, discipleship, you know, all the different categories. And we got to pay for all these things
[00:11:35] and everybody gets their budgets. And the process was this, it was our treasurer would give our elders
[00:11:44] a copy of last year's spreadsheet alongside of a blank spreadsheet. And they're supposed to fill in
[00:11:51] what they think they need for the following year. And every single time it was like the same exact
[00:11:58] buckets, the same exact numbers plus 5%. Yeah. Yeah. And even if they didn't spend all,
[00:12:05] but which by the way, it becomes like a feeding frenzy at the end of the year because they're
[00:12:10] like, Oh my gosh, we got to spend our budget. Otherwise we won't get more, which tell me how
[00:12:13] that makes any sense. But that's how people think because they're like, well, the amount of budget I
[00:12:18] get and whether or not I get an increase is a reflection of how much we're valued. And then it
[00:12:25] becomes all about if I'm valued, then they're going to give us the budget ask that we ask for. And this
[00:12:33] is what's called an entitlement budget. I'm entitled to this, this much because we got this
[00:12:38] much last year. And this is what it looks like with interest, if you will. Obviously this is going
[00:12:45] to be a big barrier in moving forward. It's sort of like a mental block because most churches don't
[00:12:51] even realize you could do it a different way. And I hear a lot, I hear the excuses I used to give
[00:12:57] with this is I don't really know budgeting. It's the model that I inherited. I know it doesn't work
[00:13:05] great, but Hey, we're Presbyterians, you know, um, it's something's better than nothing or Hey,
[00:13:14] I don't really have the energy to tackle this, you know, change the whole way to a budget. So let's
[00:13:20] just make the most of it. Those strategies are okay. But again, they won't actually get you
[00:13:28] where you want to go. Yeah. Um, for example, I can't tell you how many churches I've seen and I
[00:13:38] have been a part of that have said that if maybe it's a church that doesn't have a huge budget,
[00:13:44] but a decent budget, like let's say $250,000 a year or something, or $300,000 a year, which is
[00:13:49] for some churches that sounds like a lot for other churches, sounds like nothing,
[00:13:53] but let's say, you know, $250,000 a year budget. And the church is like, you know what? We've got
[00:13:59] no young people in this church and we've got to figure it out. And, and our vision is we're going
[00:14:04] all in, all in with the next generation, all in with youth ministry. We need to hire a youth person
[00:14:11] part-time. We need to get some program really need to put our chips in the middle. And you look at
[00:14:18] their line item budget and they max out it's $1,500 of a $250,000 budget. And you're saying
[00:14:27] you're all in. That's the thing you feel God's calling you to do. Something's wrong. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:14:33] You're just never going to get there with, because there's no room to grow that thing because all the
[00:14:39] money's already accounted for. Yeah. It's hard because there are real things that we need to pay
[00:14:44] for and we want to support. And some things have been really meaningful in the life of the church or,
[00:14:50] you know, but so there's some hard discernment that needs to happen. That can be tough because
[00:14:55] probably we're going to step on some toes and some different things, but, um, there is an approach
[00:15:00] that I think can help us to move out of that and to create some more, um, margin for dreaming big and,
[00:15:07] uh, and moving out of a scarcity mindset or a went, what we have left over we'll put toward that
[00:15:13] mindset. Uh, because if you have that, there's never going to be quite enough to really go in
[00:15:18] the direction of a dream. So how do we do it, Jason? I mean, it's, how do we change our mindset?
[00:15:24] And we've got a whole community of people that have been budgeting a certain way for,
[00:15:27] you know, for as long as the church has been there, you know, or whatever. So
[00:15:32] what's some pivots that you guys have made? How do we move towards a healthier approach?
[00:15:36] Yeah. So what we discovered was we had to get out of this entitlement budget trap
[00:15:43] because entitlement budgets cause division mission budgets. On the other hand, cause multiplication.
[00:15:51] If you are able to say, uh, here's, here's the idea that we had, we said, okay, look,
[00:15:56] what if we just started all over again? If we were, if we were a brand new church and we had all these
[00:16:00] realities in front of us, what will we do? What do we feel God's calling us to do? We,
[00:16:05] we started with vision, which is, I think the right place to start. And then you allow your
[00:16:11] budget to be informed by the vision, not the other way around. The vision isn't the size,
[00:16:16] isn't determined by the size of your budget. It's, it's determined first, and then you build the
[00:16:21] budget around it. So a mission budget will help you focus on what God is calling you to do. So you
[00:16:29] ask what's the big vision. Let's allot our best resources for it. I mean, think about it. Why
[00:16:35] wouldn't you put your best people, your best resources on what you think God's calling you
[00:16:43] to do the most? Now, the reality is like you said, there's only so much money to go around.
[00:16:49] And, and most of us who have church buildings, aging church buildings, that's a huge, like
[00:16:55] albatross. That's like a huge chunk of the budget that is sort of out of our control. Unless we decide
[00:17:02] to, to just kind of blow the whole thing up and we're going to go and be a portable church, which
[00:17:07] is not a very good idea. But you know, so, so you may not be able to just take all the money off the
[00:17:15] table and be like, okay, let's, let's put $248,000 on, on the next generation. Right. Well,
[00:17:23] you're also, you can make the argument that your personnel costs are, are part of that vision
[00:17:30] because those are the people that are going to be helped steering that. And personnel costs are more
[00:17:36] than ever. We were just talking about this, Jesse. We're definitely North of 70% of our budgets toward
[00:17:43] personnel, which is crazy. And I remember years ago, someone's like, if your budget's over 50%
[00:17:48] personnel, you're in trouble. I'm like, well, we're in trouble. We've been in trouble for a while.
[00:17:54] Yeah. Like, I don't know what to do. Different ministry landscape for sure.
[00:17:58] So, so here is, here's the way that we have been working with this new way of building a budget.
[00:18:06] And that is we think about our vision. We think what's God calling us to do? What's the one thing
[00:18:10] God wants us to do? Let's make sure we rearrange our resources and push them toward that thing.
[00:18:19] So, um, for us, we thought, uh, going into this year, it's how are we going to go all in on
[00:18:29] engagement? How are we engaged? We have lots of new people. How are we going to engage them in the life
[00:18:35] of the church? And that's a big question for like discipleship, spiritual formation. How are we going
[00:18:40] to do that? It's, we made sure that the, we actually reorient, we're reoriented our staff and
[00:18:47] teams around our spiritual formation or discipleship model, which all we did was pretty much adapt it for
[00:18:55] North point. Like we do everything else neighborhood for your living room kitchen as you know, the house
[00:19:01] of the church with the mission in the middle, how are we bringing people along this flywheel to engage
[00:19:07] them in this and create disciples. Right. And so that was our first thought when we were thinking about
[00:19:15] budgeting. Now it doesn't mean we had tens upon tens of thousands of dollars to put there,
[00:19:20] but it was the first thing that we talked about budgeting and it ended up getting way more than if
[00:19:27] we thought of it as a leftover. You see what I mean? So when you put the budget side by side,
[00:19:32] they might look very similar in the end, but the point is we think vision first. Yeah. And that makes
[00:19:39] a big difference. Yeah. And it's a reorientation to first things first, right? So even if you end up
[00:19:44] with a budget that if for all intents and purposes, if somebody went side by side, they're like you did
[00:19:49] what we used to do basically, but you're not, well, actually we're thinking in terms of all those
[00:19:54] resources are pointed towards our vision. So that children's team or children's budget, it has,
[00:19:59] for us, it was creating more sort of landing spots for our new guests. So events and different things
[00:20:07] where people could go, okay, this is something I can go to, to deepen my connection here. And so part
[00:20:13] of our children's team this year is they did a series of kind of service oriented events that we
[00:20:19] could invite people to. So building lunches for the Tacoma rescue mission and doing some other
[00:20:23] things like that. But so the children's budget was still there, but it was oriented into this vision.
[00:20:29] And we set aside additional resources to help them do that with staff hours and some other things.
[00:20:33] So the budget might look similar, but it's, it's steering towards that vision. And by starting with
[00:20:38] the vision, it's helping everybody get on the same page about where are we going this year? And what are
[00:20:43] all these resources for? It's not just to do what we did last year. It's to move towards the thing
[00:20:47] that God is calling us to now and next. Well, and then here's what it does. It encourages
[00:20:54] congregational giving because now you're talking about what's the big thing God wants us to do.
[00:20:59] You're sharing that with the congregation and you're inviting them to participate in the mission,
[00:21:03] which is different than filling out a pledge card. So we don't, we don't do pledge cards or anything
[00:21:10] like that. But what we do is we talk about life transformation. We talk about, um, we talk about
[00:21:17] the stories of how God is showing up in people's lives. We, we do immersion baptism and our baptism
[00:21:23] tank in during the worship service and people are moved by seeing that experience. We share stories
[00:21:30] of faith. And in the end we say, then, will you join us in this mission? Now, let me just share
[00:21:36] with you a couple of numbers. So we made this big shift to a mission budget right in the middle of 2020.
[00:21:46] Good timing. Good timing. Yeah. Yeah. We'd been talking about it and we put in a lot of work
[00:21:53] in late 2019. So the, the road was already paved, but we still had to decide to drive on it. Um,
[00:22:04] and here's the result since 2020 and now we have increased our budget by $400,000.
[00:22:16] We had a small cap of smallish capital campaign or it might be big to some, but small compared to
[00:22:21] other campaigns we've done of $610,000. We raised on top of that for, uh, facilities for our youth
[00:22:28] spaces. We increased 200 members of kind of the all in number since then. So, you know, we lost a lot
[00:22:38] gained a lot and about 300 worshipers a week. And I believe there's a direct correlation between the
[00:22:47] accomplishment of that vision and the way we strategize how to build our budget because it's
[00:22:54] all based on getting people excited to buy into the mission, which is different than I, and I think
[00:23:01] it's generational a little bit, Jesse. I think that, um, younger generations or let's say our generation
[00:23:08] and younger, especially they give more, more by being inspired to give by seeing, you know, Sarah
[00:23:16] McLaughlin and the puppies. I'm just kidding. But, but you know, but that's it. The, the giving is based
[00:23:22] on, uh, emotions a little bit. We give emotionally and we give in chunks. Uh, although we're huge fans
[00:23:30] of recurring giving and we try to get everybody on board with that. Yeah. But when you can figure that
[00:23:37] out and if you build the whole thing around what's God's doing in people's lives, people are excited to
[00:23:44] give. We had a shortfall at the end of our fiscal year, uh, last year. And it was a big one. It, cause we
[00:23:50] had a really aggressive budget. I think, I think it was something like 10%, uh, increase in congregational
[00:23:58] giving we were planning on for that year. It was, it was sort of an insane idea. And we were only about,
[00:24:05] I think we were $60,000 short, which in the end is actually a pretty small number. And, and we had a big ask
[00:24:13] again, Hey, help us close the gap. Yeah. And they did. And I had somebody email me and say,
[00:24:21] thank you so much for letting us know of the need. Yeah. It was our pleasure to give to it. I'm like,
[00:24:27] what? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was our conversation with my leadership team last night is that when we're
[00:24:34] clear about the need and opportunity and tell the stories of what God's doing, people want to be a part
[00:24:41] of that. And I think sometimes it's that the, the inspiration piece is maybe the beginning of the
[00:24:46] journey torn toward the more spiritual discipline of giving that the older generation has, right?
[00:24:51] Yeah. How do you get the ball rolling? One of our amazing folks, we met her here before,
[00:24:55] Allie Colonnane was our preschool director for a long time. She's moved on to start like four other
[00:24:59] businesses and she's crushing it out there. But she said, sometimes you just got to get someone to do the,
[00:25:04] do it the first time. And then they, the buy-in starts to begin and then the habit begins and then
[00:25:09] the discipline grows. And are we that inspiration piece, that story piece that you're talking about,
[00:25:15] the vision mission piece is what helps people to take that step. Yeah. They're not just here to
[00:25:21] babysit somebody else's old thing and keep it alive. No, this is something new that I'm a part of that's
[00:25:26] growing and developing. So, um, you know, one of the, I don't know how you guys make sure that those
[00:25:30] stories happen. But, uh, for me, we had to create a system to ensure that we were highlighting those
[00:25:36] things. I don't know what your rhythm is. I'll just tell you ours real quick. That first Sunday of the month
[00:25:42] is communion. So we, we highlight God's love, God's story, uh, there. And then the second Sunday, we highlight
[00:25:48] an internal ministry and its impact. Sometimes it's about the ministry. Often it's about somebody whose life's
[00:25:53] life has been touched or impacted or changed in some positive way because of it. The third Sunday, we talk
[00:25:59] about our giving. We, we give thanks to God and we celebrate the fact that we get to participate in
[00:26:04] God's mission. And that's where we pray for our offering old school. What style, you know,
[00:26:08] bless it. In the fourth Sunday, um, we do an external ministry highlight. One of the things that we're
[00:26:14] doing in partnership with our community or community organizations, what is God doing in people's lives
[00:26:19] or through us? Um, uh, you know, often as someone sharing about how God has impacted them as they've
[00:26:25] served or things like that. So we scheduled it to make sure that it happens because if it's kind of
[00:26:30] anecdotal or one-offs, it'll start to fade because it, what's get, what gets scheduled is what gets done.
[00:26:37] So that's, that's how we've approached it. But I think, I think that's an excellent approach.
[00:26:41] Ours is a, is a little more, um, loose in the sense that it's a feel thing with our leadership team.
[00:26:47] So every week we talk about, you know, what happened on Sunday, what's happening this coming
[00:26:53] Sunday, where are we just kind of up periscope what's going on? What are we seeing? And that's
[00:26:58] usually where we make those decisions in those conversations. So our system is we have a weekly
[00:27:04] meeting where we talk about it and decide how we're going to do it. What do we want to highlight?
[00:27:08] What do we think would be the way to give thanks to God for what he's doing? And I think if you can get
[00:27:12] out ahead of that a little bit, for me, I need that extra week or two to reach out to that person,
[00:27:18] set them up for success, make sure they have what they need to, to do that well. Or sometimes we do
[00:27:22] it in a video based way. Um, we had a really awesome story this past Sunday, but it was supposed to be
[00:27:29] five to seven minutes and ended up being 16 minutes long. Right. So, and it was in person and you could
[00:27:34] just feel it. I mean, it's powerful. So it was worth it, but you know, there's some, there's a little
[00:27:40] bit of risk involved in doing some of these things. But in the end, I think people probably
[00:27:44] benefited more from hearing the story than my sermon. So telling those stories is really a way
[00:27:49] to celebrate what God's doing, but also get people to go, ah, what we're doing is worth it. Count me in.
[00:27:55] Well, it's a reminder too, of, of why we're here. We're not just here to nod our heads in agreement
[00:28:03] with the teachings of Jesus. We're here to be transformed and to help others find Jesus to be
[00:28:09] transformed. Like it's, it's life altering moments with eternal consequences. And I think when you're
[00:28:20] reminded of, we all need reminding of that because we get lulled to sleep a little bit by religious
[00:28:24] habit. And so I think the stories awaken us to God's work in us and around us right now.
[00:28:31] Yeah. Yeah. It's good. Um, okay. So I thought, you know, with budgeting and stuff that I would just
[00:28:39] share just to give some ideas. This is literally what we're doing right now in real time here in
[00:28:45] December. This is, uh, we have a few different strategic times a year where we help with the
[00:28:51] budgeting or we have specific asks. This is one of them. So I'll just lay it out for you. This is
[00:28:55] what we're doing is what we do in December. So on the first, we launched our end of year, um,
[00:29:04] campaign. So we had a standalone, we call it tower talk. That's our weekly e newsletter that goes out
[00:29:11] to everybody. We had a standalone one and it was a video of me talking about, uh, the vision mission
[00:29:17] and how they can participate by giving and the different ways they can give. It's like a minute
[00:29:21] long. I mean, it's like really short. Then the ask is that they would set up recurring giving.
[00:29:29] We specifically asked them to set up recurring giving them one time gifts are great, but we would
[00:29:33] love to be set up recurring giving. And I, I actually joke. I, and I'm intentionally funny about it
[00:29:38] because that seems to get a good response with our people. I tell them it's so that when you're not
[00:29:43] here, your money is and they, they laugh at that and it's just kind of, uh, winsome and, and fun.
[00:29:51] Yeah. Um, but we, we have very specific, uh, like a training video, like this is how you set it up.
[00:29:56] This is where you go. It's like sort of an instructional video, somebody put together.
[00:30:00] And then, um, you know, we use support the mission of tower Hill financially. And then we have other
[00:30:06] like mission opportunities, physical mission opportunities for them to do. Then on giving Tuesday,
[00:30:11] which is the third, um, we actually have never had success with giving Tuesday. I think whenever we
[00:30:18] sent out stuff on giving Tuesday with like social media and stuff, I think our best year, we got like
[00:30:22] $150. I mean, I don't know. It's like, I guess it's not for churches or at least not for our church.
[00:30:29] I don't think it, well, maybe it is for some, it hasn't been for us. So, um, but what we're,
[00:30:34] what we tried this year was an email blast again, uh, using recurring giving as a theme.
[00:30:41] So, uh, it's actually, it was sort of clever. Like we're asking you don't give today. Um,
[00:30:49] but set up for recurring giving, right? Cause our goal is, is to increase the recurring giving that
[00:30:54] we have and had a remind video of how to update their recurring giving. So, um, it was, uh, uh,
[00:31:02] something that talked about, Hey, you, if you're already on recurring giving, thank you so much.
[00:31:06] If, if you and your family are prayerfully considering increasing that gift, this is how
[00:31:11] you change the amount. Yeah. Um, which actually it's funny because I was sharing that, um, my
[00:31:17] family hadn't looked at that in a little while. I was like, Oh my gosh. Yeah. Wait, let's change
[00:31:22] that. We need to step up our game too. Yeah. Yeah. Totally.
[00:31:24] Throw yourself in the mix. Yeah, totally. And then, um, December 8th through 24th is kind of like
[00:31:31] the open part of the campaign of Christmas giving where there's a PR will announce it from up front.
[00:31:37] There'll be slides, uh, scrolling in the sanctuary. Again, the focus on recurring giving,
[00:31:44] but this is not a message from the pastor. This is a message from the person doing the welcome and
[00:31:48] they talk about giving, but it's all kind of goes hand in hand announcements, slide deck, social
[00:31:53] media. And then at the very end, we've done this for the last few years. We have a year end match
[00:31:58] campaign. We have a very generous donor who has, uh, who says that they'll do a match of the gift.
[00:32:05] And that is big. Most one-time givers give to the match. They really like it. That's awesome.
[00:32:11] We get a lot of new givers that way because they like the idea that their money's doubled. I'm giving
[00:32:16] 10 bucks. Now it's 20 bucks and they, it's good. And all of these gifts that we have all month range
[00:32:23] from a dollar. We have somebody, uh, Jesse that gives the church a dollar a week faithfully.
[00:32:29] That's fantastic.
[00:32:30] But like never misses. I just, I don't know. There's something so cool about that.
[00:32:34] Yeah. Um, but yeah, so we do a year end match campaign and that's our December strategy. That's
[00:32:39] what we do in December. That's what we're doing this month. And, um, because December for us,
[00:32:45] just like probably most churches, it counts for two months worth of giving usually.
[00:32:49] I think the last couple of years we've been in the 25 to 27% range for November, December giving.
[00:32:55] Yeah. It's a big deal for a lot of our churches and it's on people's minds. And so I like what
[00:33:00] you're doing there. You're giving someone something that they have direct control over.
[00:33:05] Yeah. I think sometimes, uh, when we do this part wrong, we talk about what we've spent so far and
[00:33:10] whatever. And like, there's no control over, over that piece. You're so by focusing on the giving gap
[00:33:17] or the opportunity to give, you're talking with people about something that they can do something
[00:33:21] about. And that's something that we've really learned to do here is we can give a snapshot of
[00:33:27] where we are year to date with our finances, but we, the ask needs to be related to something that
[00:33:32] they can help bring about through an, at, through their behavior, through their giving or through
[00:33:37] their, you know, uh, action, you know, if we're doing a giving tree, you know, they can come and
[00:33:42] bring a toy, you know, something they can do. So, um, yeah, we've, we've really oriented our year
[00:33:47] end to ask around here's where, where we think we need to be by the end of the year.
[00:33:52] And here's how far we are away from that. Can you help us close that gap? Kind of, how do you,
[00:33:57] can you help us get there and, uh, recurring giving and we present kind of our four ways to give.
[00:34:02] And we talk about those things and to do it in, in this clear, normal, non weird way.
[00:34:08] I think people go, yeah, this is the church. We know that this is going to be part of that in
[00:34:12] some way. So let's, let's be healthy about it, but also be clear about the need that is there.
[00:34:17] Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, that's, uh, hopefully pastors, maybe that's helpful for you as you're
[00:34:21] thinking about what do we want to do either this month or, or really anytime during the year,
[00:34:27] as we think about what's our strategy going to be for helping to build that budget. So hopefully
[00:34:32] it's helpful. I know, uh, probably pastors out there, you got a lot of different things going on
[00:34:37] with budget building and it's maybe might be, if you're not on the, on the calendar year,
[00:34:42] or even if you are, it might be the last thing you want to think about changing it right now,
[00:34:45] but keep this in mind as you're thinking about dreaming big for 2025, because your vision's only
[00:34:52] going to go so far as your budgeting system. That's right. Yeah. Good stuff, Jason.
[00:34:58] All right. So, Hey, thanks to everyone for listening. Now next week, Jesse, we're, uh,
[00:35:02] talking more in this lane and, uh, you have one that we're going to be talking about coming up,
[00:35:07] which is to share this and really think about it together. Jason will be a collaborative
[00:35:11] kind of thought process, but what does it look like to get moving so that we can build healthy
[00:35:16] culture in the church? And we'll start with this idea that you can't steer a parked car and God can't
[00:35:22] steer a parked life or a parked church. So let's get moving and do some, some things that I love it.
[00:35:26] I love it. All right. Hey, thanks everyone for listening. Ministry is hard. It is so much better
[00:35:32] when we do it together.