Dear Small Church Pastor,
(This letter may strike a nerve or seem controversial, but I present it with all the grace and concern I can muster from my experiences.)
According to a minister who was associated with it, there is a very small church located in our area that has a bank account totaling over $100,000 (That’s right–one hundred thousand dollars). It has a small facility. The congregation is quite small in number. You might ask yourself how this could happen. It may be that this happened because they did not share their financial blessings with anyone else over a very long period of time. They merely banked them “in case we need the money.”
The building is well-kept. The grounds are neat. They even have a newly designed sign out front. But they are lacking something, and it reveals itself in the few cars and trucks parked on the grass when they meet. They are so “thrifty” when it comes to spending money that, in the eyes of those who are familiar with their situation, they appear to lack generosity.
The lack of generosity in financial matters has a way of spreading to every other area of a congregation. Its insidious influence can be seen in the lack of outreach to a community. It shows up in no new faces in the worship services for months, even years. The lack of generosity is revealed in the percentage of income that is invested in local, regional, national and world missions annually. It is evident in the lack of new salvations or re-commitments to God recorded during a calendar year. It is demonstrated in the reality that few, if any, members of a congregation have ever shared their faith with anyone else.
Generosity is a mind-set. Generosity is a lifestyle. Generosity is a valued characteristic of people who understand that blessings are designed to be shared, not hoarded in self-interest.
Generosity is the opposite of a clenched fist that desperately tries to hold onto blessings in fear of losing them. Generosity is the open hand that freely gives because it has feely received.
Allow me to encourage you to teach about, encourage and promote generosity in your people. As you teach, encourage and promote, remember that generosity includes more than just money. It also includes time and talents.
You might want to present a series of messages that show how time, talents and finances were generously shared in the Old and New Testaments through the free-will offerings as well as through tithes, through working together to achieve common goals and through dedicated time investments that benefitted people. Then you might highlight examples of generosity from all three areas in your locale.
As you lead your people, provide opportunities for people to give their time, talents and money toward missions, community outreaches, local charities or joint work projects with other congregations. Encourage them to be generous toward others individually as they encounter needs around them.
Set an example of generosity in your own life. If you are giving of your own blessings toward them and others, some of them will eventually realize you are practicing what you are preaching. Examples are great teachers.
One of our pastorates involved a congregation that had learned the value of generosity. One year as I looked at what we had accomplished through outreaches into the community, I realized we had invested thirty-four percent of all our income into local, state and national missions. I know that’s not a record, but I also am keenly aware of the limited incomes of the families in that congregation. They gave in their own need.
During that same year, we volunteered to provide labor to rebuild a home that was terribly deteriorated for a single lady. The rebuild took months of weekends and vacation time to accomplish. We also fed over 300 people each month at our missions dinners. That congregation had invested themselves generously in the cause of the Kingdom of God by sharing the blessings God had sent to them.
As with all aspects of ministry, developing an attitude of generosity will take some time if it does not already exist in the people. If the attenders are already tithing, fostering generosity may be easier to accomplish. If not, the people need to understand their responsibility to the tithe, a responsibility that reflects an understanding that God already owns all our resources and that we are simply giving back into His Kingdom work that which He can acquire in any method He chooses to use. And tithing does involve generosity in general, in my opinion, because it involves giving from what we have into a need that should be met through the congregation.
If you are blessed with a congregation that understands what a free-will offering of time, talents and treasure entails, you are at a definite advantage over someone who is having to start from scratch by teaching about giving in general. Such an already generous congregation often will continue in their giving in ways that may surprise even a veteran pastor, because they are individually meeting needs that are never openly mentioned to the whole congregation.
Example: I know of someone who often has helped older people who have trouble operating a new smart phone or a new laptop to access the internet. (I suppose generosity can include sharing knowledge, too.)
A final thought that may stimulate your curiosity—take a minute to search out the word “freely” in the Bible. It can give you one starting place when it comes to promoting generosity.
Sincerely,
A Small Church Pastor