Yesterday, I addressed the most common complaint I hear from small church leaders: We are a church of older people. Today's complaint runs a close second. In fact, I usually hear them in the same sentence: Many of our people are on fixed income. That, in their minds, explains the financial challenges within their church.
My response to that complaint is that nearly everyone I know is on fixed income. I've been on a fixed income all my life. The only people who are not on fixed income are people who earn commissions. Having a large percentage of the congregation on fixed income has nothing to do with the money issues many smaller churches face.
The reality is that smaller churches do not have money problems. How many times have you seen a small church barely make it financially from month to month, and then raise $5,000.00 in a week's time to replace a furnace that quit working in January? Most smaller churches have money available to them, so if those churches are struggling financially it is due to other reasons. Those reasons are usually a lack of vision for ministry and/or a lack of stewardship training.
Few smaller churches I have worked with had any kind of vision for ministry. They opened their doors each Sunday and hoped something good would happen. The closest thing to a ministry vision they have is to keep the doors open, and that doesn't require much. As long as they can pay their utility bills and give their pastor a token salary they can keep the doors open. Not surprisingly, just enough money is given each week to allow that to happen.
People do not give to pay electric bills and keep the grass mowed on the church property. However, they will give to vision. Many times I have seen smaller churches respond quite generously to support a vision for ministry that has united them. Shortly before I resigned as pastor of my church we began construction on a new fellowship building. I had challenged the 50-member congregation to build the building without borrowing any money. Several months later the building was dedicated and was completely debt free. Our blue-collar congregation made up of many retired persons had raised the $200,000.00 needed to build the facility. The treasurer told me that money had come in from places I could not imagine. People had bought in to the vision of what that building could do for the church and its ministry, and they supported it with their prayers and their finances.
The second reason churches face financial challenges is a lack of stewardship education. I once met with a pastor search committee who assured me they would pay their pastor more if they only had it. I asked how long it had been since the church had any training in the area of stewardship. The chair of that committee asked me what stewardship was. I explained she had just answered my question.
Recently, I worked with some small church leaders and led them in an exercise to determine the tithing potential of their church. I pointed out that the average church member in America gives 2.1% of his income to the church. When we finished the exercise they learned that their congregation was giving less than 2% of its income to the church. None of the churches present had done anything intentional in recent years to teach about stewardship, and none of them had a vision for ministry that would generate giving within their congregation.
People living on fixed income is not the reason why many smaller churches struggle financially. The real reasons are a lack of vision and a lack of stewardship training. When these are addressed most smaller churches will find they will have all the financial resources to do what God has called them to do.
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