Modern Church Leader
Hear pastors share what's working in their churches. Welcome to Modern Church Leader, a show for church leaders to learn business strategies, leadership skills, church tech tips, and generosity. Tune in for powerful interviews to help you grow your church to be more effective, efficient, and powerful for the kingdom of God. For more information, visit https://www.mclconference.com/
Modern Church Leader
Building a Generous Church Community Year-Round
In this episode, Jim Shepard and Frank Bealer from Generis share their journey of transforming church generosity, raising over $7 billion while emphasizing discipleship over fundraising. We explore how the seeker-friendly movement reshaped church giving, shifting from traditional models to contemporary approaches, and the impact on discipleship. You'll also learn strategies to engage Millennials and Gen Z in giving, backed by Barna research and real success stories. Tune in for insights on nurturing year-round generosity and fostering spiritual growth within your congregation.
To learn more about Generis, please visit https://generis.com/
🎧 Tune in for an episode packed with insights that can transform your church's approach to generosity!
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Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Modern Church Leader. I am here with my new best friends. Well, we've got Jim Shepard and we have Frank Beeler, and we did figure out that this will be the very first podcast ever with two Franks on it, and especially two Frank Bees so man guys, welcome to the show yeah the upside is big, the upside is big, the upside is big, the upside is big, the upside is big, the upside is big.
Speaker 1:Someone will fact check that. They'll figure out how to use AI to search every podcast ever recorded and see if there was two Franks on a podcast.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and there probably wasn't even one in the last hour or so, so that's probably going to X-nay us right off the bat.
Speaker 1:Credibility shot right off the bat. Oh my gosh. And we've taught golf and we've shared hats and uh, are you guys both in the office? Like where do you guys? You so you know you'll tell us all about generis, but where are you guys located?
Speaker 3:I'm in the same building from john's cream, so we uh didn't have any weird audio issues yeah yeah, smart, smart move.
Speaker 1:I know it looks like we're doing the bro crush on.
Speaker 3:You know, when two guys try to crowd into one screen, no we're not gonna be too weird.
Speaker 1:I've done that podcast no, no, no.
Speaker 3:You do it once.
Speaker 1:You do it once and you'll never do it again so, uh, I mean, jim, you've been at this for a long time frank, I'm less familiar with you and how long you've been into the generosity kind of universe, but why don't you guys tell us a little bit about Generis and what you guys do for anybody on the podcast that doesn't already know?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I came here Interesting, I'm celebrating my 32nd anniversary right around now. So I'm not sure exactly what the date was in September of 1992, but I usually nail it somewhere around the 15th of the 25th. So it's right here in this time frame. 32 years ago, and you know, honestly, frank, I thought I was going to stay here for a little while and then go back to what I was doing, which was, you know, I was a financial executive in a public company, financial services, and you know I'd go back and do that. And here I am, 32 years later.
Speaker 3:It's really, I think, what, what God wanted me to do with the rest of my life. I've always said to him I'll stay as long as you want and I'll leave anytime you want. And you know, I've never felt a sense of leaving. I still, you know, at my age when a lot of guys are retiring, you know I could retire, but I just love working with pastors, love working with churches, love seeing vision come alive, with the funding that it takes to make vision happen, and so that's a big part. So that's a big part. That's what we do at Generous. You know we talk about our mission is accelerate generosity toward God-inspired vision. But what we're really trying to accomplish, frank what we don't say anywhere in print, but we're not afraid to say it, you know, in spaces like this is what we're really trying to do is change the conversation about faith and money in the American church. We feel like it's gotten off, it's become very transactional and God means for it to be transformational, and we're working to try to change that, make it more about discipleship than about funding. Funding will happen if discipleship happens, but discipleship needs to happen first, and so I came here 32 years ago, but we have these printed for our upcoming summit meeting. We have actually been in business for 35 years, since 1989.
Speaker 3:And what's cool, I think, is that how we've refreshed ourselves over the years. We've done some new things. It was starting in 2009, 2010. We started in our generosity audit and then our One Fund campaign and some of the other stuff we're doing Right now.
Speaker 3:One of the things you're going to see become very public after the first of the year is our move into what we call the culture of generosity space generosity space. So we're starting to have a lot of churches that contact us that are not looking for a campaign, not looking for a building campaign or debt retirement or whatever that might be, but just want to help their people develop in their giving. And so we have developed a framework, a seven-play framework, that we've started testing in about 15 churches and we are convinced more than ever, based on what's happening there, that this is the right move in the right time. So we're going to be seeing a lot of that. So that's kind of our most recent fresh expression that you're going to start seeing even more and more especially coming after the first of the year. So, frank, what would you add to that? You have some unique perspective in church space.
Speaker 2:Frank, I get the incredible privilege of, first of all, getting to spend a great amount of time with Jim and learn from him and his heart and posture for serving churches. I mean he didn't mention this, but I mean Generis has raised over $7 billion to help churches and faith-based organizations 3,500 different organizations. I mean massive impact, from big to small, to all different denominations really incredible work. And to see Jim's and the organization's posture just to serve churches where they're at and to help them really, really step up in this area of discipleship. We know this is a common conversation, right? Jim and I were talking earlier today on a webinar and it was all about this conversation around.
Speaker 2:The church is leaning in very heavily into the language of discipleship and what I've seen from the outside looking in and now, as I've gotten closer to Janaris and Jim, that's been the heartbeat all along. It's one of the things that's resonated. It's why churches continue to do multiple campaigns with Generis, because there's been this history of truly wanting what's best for the congregants to help them grow in their faith. And now, with culture of generosity game changer Like Frank, I mean we're seeing insane results for the forget the 5% at any given time that are doing building campaigns. Yeah, they need help and there's a strategy.
Speaker 2:I'm talking about the 99% of churches that could all have a little bit more funding to move forward in their vision and mission and they may not know the right practical steps to take to really serve their congregation well and make it become, as Jim mentioned, transformative, not transactional when it comes to giving so man, to get to draw closer to that, it's been awesome. I came from the business world and then got connected with a church called Elevation Church in Charlotte where I was on the executive team for years, and then I came down here to Atlanta where I had the privilege of getting to know Jim and some other leaders just to figure out ways to serve churches, and so that's why I'm here today and we're getting this chance to chop it up and talk. And, by the way, the fact checkers are in and there is an organization in North Carolina that's released the Learn More Podcast with Frank and Frank. So sorry, we're not the first, so we're going to have to be the first at something else.
Speaker 1:Oh geez, imagine that, imagine that. So we're going to be the first.
Speaker 2:it's something else, oh geez, so maybe we get that, maybe we get the extra letter, yeah, yeah yeah, we're, we're gonna claim that, wow, that was like live during the debate.
Speaker 1:Fact checking Pretty good, pretty good, I like it. So one of the things that is interesting about our space, like churches and the way that people give in the church, it's like fundamentally different than why people give maybe to other forms of charities, right, nonprofits and things like that other forms of charities, right, nonprofits and things like that. Cause it is, it is out of faith and obedience and love and gratitude and all of these things for what God has done for us. But you mentioned, like, a shift towards transactional versus transformative or you know. However, you want to frame it up Like, how are you guys seeing that? Like, when you say you're seeing it be transactional, like, why, from your guys' vantage point, why do you see that?
Speaker 3:I would say this, frank. So it's something that, from again my perspective, I would trace it back roughly 40 years, 40 to 44 years, right around the time when the seeker-friendly movement started in the church. When the seeker-friendly movement started in the church Hybels and Warren and all those which, by the way, I think seeker-friendly movement, transitioning the church from my parents' model of church to a new expression that would reach the boomer generation was a great idea, but sometimes great ideas have unintended consequences, right? And so in my parents' church you would have had a high value on discipleship, not as high a value of welcoming in the unsaved ones, right, even though we would say evangelism was a big part. But we just didn't do it well. My parents' church didn't do it well. So what we tried to do in the boomer movement was to open up the doors of the church, to be more inclusive to people who were hurt or weren't raised in the church or whatever had happened. They'd fallen out of the church. I mean, like me and my, you know, when I was in college. Not that that's an excuse, but that's what happened. And so the church had a new expression that was really focused on welcoming people in and making the front door a lot bigger. But in making the front door a lot bigger, we inadvertently, just slowly this is not a sudden snap of the neck, it's a slow drift into the wrong direction we became, we lost the focus on discipleship, took our eye off of the ball, and it shows up probably nowhere more clearly than in the giving conversation. So the giving conversation is more about meeting the budget than it is about developing you as a giver, and the problem with that is that that is completely opposite of what the Bible describes right Most clearly in Philippians 4.17, when the Apostle Paul thanking the church at Philippi for what they did for him they were early supporters and at one time they were his only supporters and then in verse 17, he drops this in on us and he said and I didn't seek the gift from my own account, but for the increase that comes to your account.
Speaker 3:Well, what does that mean? It means that he was thankful for the fact that they gave the gift to him. But that was not the big deal. The bigger thing that happened was how you were transformed, what you were storing up in heaven, your treasures in heaven and your rewards that you're storing up before God. As you're giving that and the transformation that happened with you. It drew you closer to God when you made a gift of my ministry, and we're just not celebrating that. We're celebrating the gift that was made, not the transformation that happened. And so it's a slow drift to a destination that no one intended to arrive at. But the roadmap just got off and we're there. And so what happens is now, when we go in and enlighten people to the fact that they've drifted over here, almost every time they're like help us get back to the center. Yes, I see that, help us get back over here.
Speaker 3:The problem with and here's where the transactional thing shows up, frank the problem with and here's where the transactional thing shows up, frank we have I'm going to go out on a limb we have the vast majority of our churches. On Sunday morning, when they're presenting the offering, when they're doing the giving moment, they look more like an organization trying to raise support than a church trying to make disciples. And that's the problem we're talking about. And that's what we talk about when I say our vision.
Speaker 3:Our bigger vision is to change the conversation about faith and money in the American church, to move it from this slow drift into transactional back over into a real life transformational conversation. So the idea would reorient the heart and it redirects the resources. It's not that we're not naive Money is going to flow into the church, but we're not shooting at it redirects the resources. It's not that we're not, we're not naive. Money is going to flow into the church, but we're not shooting at the target of the money, we're shooting at the target of the heart and then letting that take its route once it gets transformed.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, yeah. So you guys have changed, not changed. You're doing more in the area of helping, like holistically, churches in the area of generosity, instead of it just being capital campaigns and that like campaign based raising money and building generosity. It's like let's come alongside churches for the whole year or for multi-year and help them kind of build in the culture of generosity. Like what does that look like? Like how do you come into a church and help them kind of see where they're at?
Speaker 2:So yes is the answer. There's a place where, when it comes to campaigns, campaigns are still very much needed. They are part of an overall strategy, without a doubt, for schools Christian schools that need buildings and for churches to expand Absolutely. There's a place for that. Churches to expand Absolutely, there's a place for that, and it can be an incredible part of the faith journey to give sacrificially in those moments, to give generously and sacrificially. It's an incredible opportunity for that. But you're saying, hey, what does it look like to come alongside? Here's the thing, Frank.
Speaker 2:Over and over again, we can talk about the fundamentals of what it looks like to disciple people in generosity, and sometimes we'll even talk to pastors and they'll be like oh yeah, we do that. Oh yeah, we do that. Yeah, we've already done that, and all we do is ask them to open up and take a look at their own organization. And they'll be like wait, when did we stop sending first-time giver letters? When did our website get an overhaul? And now they click give and there's no instruction whatsoever about what you're giving is doing or what Jesus intends to do. It just goes straight to Tidely to go process my installment or my gift and it's like well, how did we get there? They would be shocked at that. Like we see this over and over again where people that are more than capable of doing this. It is a part of ministry. It is not all of ministry, and what we find is that the urgency from the day to day dominates the focus, and so what we can see over and over again is that people already pastors and leaders in church already have a little bit of tendency to not want to step on the landmine and complexity that is giving, so they're not going to talk about it too much. Maybe they do that one sermon series or whatever. Well, because it's not a primary focus, oftentimes some of the fundamentals get lost along the way, and I'll tell you, one of the shocking things we're seeing is we're teaching the culture of generosity. I've been in sessions with people where they're like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know, yeah, yeah, we do that, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm like no, actually, by the way, I looked at your website, by the way, this and we just open up the playbook and they're like oh, I didn't realize we drifted away from that, or I didn't want to use that language, or man, we haven't updated this in six years or whatever it may be. And so what we're finding is that what churches could use is not a checklist, it's a guide to evaluate inside their culture and their context. How do we help them get back on track where generosity is part of the discipleship conversation.
Speaker 2:It is not just cookie cutter, it's not just hey, here's an e-book, Go do this. The fact is there are probably enough bajillions of eBooks on giving out there where, if somebody at a church were to amalgamate them all together and process them and build a game plan, they could probably do some good stuff to fix some stuff. But the reality is they need a guide to figure out. How do we make this sound like us, how do we navigate this along the way and what are our sticking points? And oftentimes you need that new perspective, which is a value that generis brings that outside perspective going. Oh, you're speaking as though that is true, that that is just a reality to deal with, but you know that's not how other churches operate or that's something that you've imposed on yourself.
Speaker 2:That's not what God intended, in a very respectful way, to wrestle with those practical things from the very beginning, which we recently recorded some content on this the idea of what is your theology of giving? Is your theology of giving? We have yet to find a church where the executive leadership team can cohesively communicate what the theology of giving is for the church without saying different things. Now we talk about baptism or something our communion, they can man. It's spot on when it comes to giving. There's wildly different answers, not necessarily heretical, but they're just bringing their back perspective what they've read in the Bible, what's important to them, and they just kind of amalgamate it together, and so there's not a clear plan. So no wonder the congregation's a little confused about how all this works and what God is intending to do. Our leadership teams are a little confused around it. I don't mean to be cynical or difficult, that's just what we're seeing, and so there's room for improvement in this area yeah, why?
Speaker 1:why do people come to you guys like what's the spark, like how do I? A church wakes up one day and they're like I gotta find somebody to help me with this thing. And then they find generis like what kicks that off?
Speaker 3:felt need of some kind. It's a felt need of some kind that usually drives him to us. I think right now, you know, obviously, with a campaign, if you need a $15 million building and you don't know where the money's going to come from, your felt need is I need to go figure out how to do that. If I don't know how to do that, let's go help, get somebody who can help us. Or maybe I think I know how to do it. But let me talk to these guys and just see if they know stuff that I don't know, which we probably do, because you're a generalist and we're spending all of our time right here in this one lane, right 35 years? Right, 35 years or so, something like that. Yeah, but then there's this felt need. What we're seeing now, frank, this is the crazy thing, this felt need of. I just don't think my people get it right. I just don't think my people get it. My people are underdeveloped and there's so much I think it would be fair to say, with everything that Frank just went through there, frank, there is so much low hanging fruit. That's what we're seeing from our efforts. We're just going in with some basic stuff and it's blowing them away. They're like oh man, we tripled the number of first time givers. Our giving went up 33% year over year, I get you know. And we're just like, hey, it's not that, it's not us, we're not. I mean, we're just giving you some insight into if you wanted to develop your people and develop them better, this would be the way to do it. Right.
Speaker 3:And the whole thing starts with having this conversation in a biblical way. I said it actually earlier today stick with me because it sounds a little off when I started. But you know, the whole idea is, the conversation in money is so off that the pastor doesn't even want to talk about it. He's like, hey, I feel like it's kind of, you know, maybe I need to take a shower afterwards. So here's what I would say the conversations about sex and money in the church have something in common, and here's what they have in common there's a clean version and there's an unclean version of them. The clean version is pure and biblical. So sex outside of marriage is the unclean version. Sex inside of marriage is one of the greatest gifts that God gave, right? And then the same thing is true of money.
Speaker 3:Money in a transactional way is the unclean conversation. Money as a means that God intends to sanctify and transform you is the clean way. It's a way that you show, as you said earlier so well. I was just like maybe we ought to just hire you and get you on our generosity team. You know that it's honor and it's thank you and it's gratitude and it's worship and it's awe and it's reverence, it's all those things. That's our gift, because the thing is giving is not what separates us from the unbelievers. Unbelievers give money, and some of them give staggering amounts of money, but the why? Why do we give it in the first place?
Speaker 2:Who do we acknowledge as the one who provided it? Frank, I would throw out real quick Jim said obviously felt need is a huge factor. I would add to that the crazy momentum that Generis is experiencing right now. I mean it's off the charts, the growth and impact that's being had at Generis right now. It's remarkable, like record setting in a new name.
Speaker 2:I'm blown away by the churches that are just now finding out about Janaris or that heard, but put them in some kind of 35 years and they're like what, what is this thing called? I don't understand. I'm sure you experienced the same thing with a modern church leader, with Tide Lee of like, where have you been under a rock? Like, you know, that's our first thing to go, okay, okay, like, how do you not know? But what?
Speaker 2:What's happening now is there's been so much fruit from what god's done just over the last handful of years from generis that that fruit is showing up and people are going, oh, to large churches or denominational leaders or whatever going. Hey, how did you do that? Who helped you figure that out? And so we are in a season where I'd be like um, it's, more people are finding out and more people are going. I hear it's. It's worth the investment to get some insight and wisdom from this group. Um, and just a stunning group of of leaders that are serving the church through generous yeah, stunning group of leaders that are serving the church through generous.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. When you you mentioned kind of the playbook, give me the highlights, like when you go in and you're helping a church kind of transform their culture of generosity, and you know, going back to like real discipleship, like what do you like you come in, you do some kind of evaluation? Like real discipleship, like what do you like you come in, you do some kind of evaluation. And then here's the five things that are like most common, low hanging fruit, like just so people can grasp on. Like sometimes I just need simple, you know, like what's the simple version of what you do, knowing that it's way more complicated than just reading a PDF, right, like, but where do you start? Like what is it that you go in and do?
Speaker 3:So that's a great question. We're actually we're doing a three-part seminar on our webinar on year-end giving and we're teasing out the first three parts of the play. But we're not saying it that way. We'll say it probably Friday, but today we covered theology of giving. Wednesday we're going to talk about the pastor's giving story and Friday we're going to talk about the giving moment, the offering moment. Those are really the first three layers, and you know where people want to go, frank, is they want to just go preach a giving series. Well, giving series is in our playbook, but it's stage five, stage five. Think about that. We don't even, we don't even talk about a giving series until we get through these first three, right?
Speaker 3:So the whole idea of having a good theology, a clear theology of giving, as Frank said earlier, most of the time, if you just got your executive team in a room and you gave everybody a card and said, hey, just write down pop quiz, what does our church believe about giving? If I had a pastor and six people in the room, I'm probably going to get seven different versions of what we believe. And what I would say to the pastor is if it's that diverse with seven of us, can you imagine what it's like with a couple of thousand of us in a room on a Sunday? There's no clarity there, right? And the thing about clarity is that it gives us spiritual clarity, but it also gives us clarity about expectations. If you come into this church, this is what we believe about giving. So if this is not okay with you, you believe something else. Either A come here and just know this is the way it's going to be, or else you might want to find another church. Don't come here trying to change it. We're already clear. But it gives you an anchor, an anchor for everything else. So the pastor's giving story, the giving moment, the giving series, all of your donor communications, everything that you're going to do becomes anchored to this theology of giving communications. Everything that you're going to do becomes anchored to this theology of giving. And most people we have yet to find a church. Well, excuse me, we found one or two churches that had a good, clear statement of theology, but in both of those cases, they weren't leveraging it to really grow the congregation. Oh yeah, we got that sitting back there. I have a client. I went to the elders and I held up. I printed out from their web page. I printed out their principles of stewardship and the elders said where did you get that Right? So they had it, but there wasn't a wide awareness of it, right? So we're helping them with that right, and it was actually a really good one, frankly. So this whole idea of a theology of giving and have that clear, then what you have to do is you have to have the pastor and the executive team modeling what a good giving journey looks like. I started here. Here's where I am today. So, like for Nancy and me, we became Christ followers in 1983.
Speaker 3:Fall of 1985, god started really speaking into us about stewardship and generosity and giving, and we set our face toward a journey to get from where we were less than 2% to 10% as quickly as we could, and we got there in May of 1987. So I was actually sitting down, we had a little bit of a formula. We had several layers of income and it was different percentages on the various layers, and so I was doing that and I wrote down a number number and I was like, wait a second, we were writing checks back then, typing around back in those days. We were writing checks back then, and so I was like wait a second. And I looked at her holy cow, that's 10% of our income for this month.
Speaker 3:I got up from where I was sitting at the breakfast table. I went back to the room where my wife to the bathroom. My wife was getting ready and I said, honey, guess what we're going to do today? And she said we're going to church. And I said no, no, no, I know we're going to church. Guess what we're going to do when we get to church? We're going to do what we always do when we get to church. No, you don't get it, honey. Guess what we're going to do to give 10% of our income to our church? And she dropped her makeup and hugged me and said that's awesome, we got there finally. Right, that's a giving story, right.
Speaker 3:And then we've we've had all these moments along the way where God just been and we've never looked back on that, right. So, to have a giving journey and always freshen it up when something new happens, always freshen it up. And so here's the thing about a giving story. Once you start telling giving stories and the pastor and the key staff start telling their giving stories, you'll be amazed at how many giving stories you'll see in your congregation. It's viral. It becomes very viral, right.
Speaker 3:And then the third thing is the lowest hanging, easiest to fix thing in your church is the giving moment. Most of them just to be kind. Most of them are terrible. They're all about what to give and how to give it, right? Hey, so we got three ways to give here this morning. You go to Tidely and you can go to this and click the QR code and you do the tap and you can do this and you got your app and you know what. All of that stuff. Why don't you develop their understanding of why you give in the first place? Why is it that you get and use Bible verses to illustrate that? Use your two minutes to preach a mini sermon on giving. And here's the thing If you're afraid that people are going to send you an email on your sermon series, which is probably going to happen If you get a sermon series on Jesus coming tomorrow, you're going to get the email, so let's just talk about that.
Speaker 3:Right, you're going to get that, but you's not going to happen. With the offering moment, you can do as much as you want and be as forward as you want. Nobody's going to say a word about that. And here's the thing Every single week it's like you've got a drip strategy to speak stewardship and giving and biblical generosity into their life and they begin to absorb it and they develop it and all of a sudden change starts to happen. So those would be kind of the three that I would start with. They're easy to fix and they're low-hanging.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 3:What's the hardest part of the work you do? Changing mindsets. That'd be right, Frank, wouldn't you think? Isn't that the hardest part? The mindsets are just so ingrained.
Speaker 2:I think you're right, Jim. It's hard to get people to think differently.
Speaker 2:Sometimes they don't even know it's there. They will stay. As fact, people will never da-da-da-da-da. Whatever it is, people will always. Whatever it is, people will always. And it's wild.
Speaker 2:We hear it so consistently and we're like who told you that? Where did that come from? There's history there. It obviously formed some way.
Speaker 2:But they are making decisions not based on scripture at times, but based on a past experience that's traumatized them or caused them to be cautious, or they're concerned about this, or they have a family member they see every Thanksgiving that says all the church does is talk about money. And so what are they doing? They're running through a filter. I can never talk about money. I don't want to offend that family member. When they show up, that one time, it's well, there's room for improvement. I think that at times are I would say generis is biggest competitor by far is doing it themselves. Like, oh, we can, we can read on the internet, we can figure this out ourselves, or whatever. But here's what we know.
Speaker 2:Every great athlete has a coach that can see something that none of the rest of us can see. Right, my son. He just went off to play college basketball and he had a slump early in his senior season where he couldn't make a free throw for nothing, but his junior year he set a state record for percentage, like so this didn't make any sense at all. He just put on some muscle. Something wasn't right.
Speaker 2:We had him work with his regular head coach and all this stuff, and then a buddy of ours who's a shooting coach said hey, I'll meet you on a Sunday afternoon at this YMCA, let's figure out what's going on. And he walks in and he says start shooting. And Isaac starts shooting free throws and he goes. Well, there it is, and I'm like he made six of 10. I didn't see anything. They all look the same. And he goes well, that's what you're doing. And then he had him take the ball, lay it on his knee for a second while holding it, stand up straight and go, start with your hand on the knee on the ball and start shooting. He made 24 of his next 25. And I still don't even understand it, frank. I don't understand. It's like that looks the exact same.
Speaker 3:I don't know what he did. I'm standing there.
Speaker 2:Isaac's made a bajillion free throws and he could not figure out what was missing. I think what we find with churches as we're getting closer to them sometimes they're like oh okay, we got it, we got it. Thanks for the webinar, Jim. That's all we needed. We'll go get to work. But there's some nuances to it, some little things. Along the way that they're stubbing their own toe, or what they'll do more often than not is, if they do it by themselves, they skip a step because they don't like that step, they don't want to wrestle with that, or they deem it unnecessary, when really it's like no, we got to wrestle that to the ground, like the theology of giving. Oh, no, no, we got that part down. Great, I told everybody. Now we're moving on. It's like whoa wait, Did they embrace that? Did they agree? Are they able to communicate that back? Those little things? So, just like a good coach, they're going okay, I can see things you can't see. Jim and the team have been doing this forever, and so they just see things. They pick up on those little nuances or words or even something that's in an email communication that could undermine what they're trying to do, and they don't even mean to do it, and so they just need somebody to coach, to guide them, to help them.
Speaker 2:Now, the great thing is what we're doing now, Frank, is with this culture of generosity. We've started building case studies They'll literally be ready in like three weeks to where we can start showing you know, show our work. We're not going to list the church name or anything like that, but that church will give us permission to put the numbers together, just to go listen. This is how you move the needle. So we just want to give you some examples of churches you would know that have had massive change and yet from the outside, looking in, you would think they already had it figured out.
Speaker 2:They had lots of giving, they were doing fine their campuses or whatever it is, and when you get under the hood it's like oh, there was still room for improvement. Maybe they weren't chucking it up and throwing it over the backboard. They weren't terrible, but gosh, they were shooting 6 of 10, and they should have been 9 of 10. They could have used a little bit of help. And so what we're finding is that culture of generosity gives us this incredible opportunity to speak to those nuanced elements and really help a church along the way and, Frank, I'm not going to divulge any numbers, Let me just say it this way Double digit significant impact in their overall ties, very quickly and consistently for like prolonged periods of time. Like I mean we're talking significant impact in the funding of ministry staffing, eliminating debt without the campaign elements. The campaign has its place, but what do you do in between or when it's not a season for that? We're seeing radical, radical change.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's cool, frank.
Speaker 3:Let me just show you just one of the ideas what I had in mind for what's hard to change and frankly, it illuminates so much of that. So this is one of my favorites. You probably know about five or six years ago I started hanging around a lot with young leaders. I have a passion for mentoring them and developing them, and so when people talk about boomers and even Gen Z, I have a pretty good idea of what I'm talking about. And yet most pastors have bought into the idea that millennials and Gen Z are not givers.
Speaker 3:The Barna research is very clear in refuting that, the big giving study that they did a couple of years ago that we were a part of. So they asked this one question, two questions. The first question is have you given to a charity, including a house of worship, in the last 12 months? Interestingly, if you look at millennials, gen X and boomers right, those three generations right in there there was virtually no change. It was a plus or minus 3% error rate. All three of them were within the 3%. It was like 55, 57, 54, something like that. They were all just right there. So there was no discernible difference in their giving.
Speaker 3:And this is participation. I know the dollars could be different, but that's not the issue here. If they have the heart to give, the dollars will grow over time, right. But then? So my boomer friends would say well, jim, I didn't say they didn't give, they just don't give to the church. Oh well, let's look at the next question then who gives to a church? Who gives to a church? So the number for boomers was 32%, the number for Gen X was 36% and the number for millennials was 42% Outside, clearly outside the margin of error. So they actually have a higher participation.
Speaker 3:The dollars may be less, but you're selling me, pastor. They don't even like to give to a church and I'm telling you that is patently wrong and to every person I've shown that to. They just sit there and look at me like I just came in from a foreign country, because they don't believe that the culture wants you to believe, the popular culture. The mainstream media wants to promote the idea that millennials and Gen Z are off in this area and it's just not true. It's not true. And, by the way, the Barna research lines up with what I see when I'm in and out and among those. The problem for those churches is most of the churches that are saying that is, their language is off, their language is off. They're using boomer language and hoping to get millennials to give. Well, you wouldn't use boomer language to try to get millennials to do anything. It's completely different ways of thinking.
Speaker 3:And you've got to just shift your language.
Speaker 1:What are you guys seeing in general? Just because you're out there talking generosity to everybody? Like what do you see today, kind of many years now post-COVID, but still feeling like you have to say post-COVID versus, you know, pre-covid days? Like, are you noticing any kind of difference in church giving?
Speaker 3:Well, for one thing, you know, the churches that didn't have didn't participate in online giving had to starting in COVID, and so the participation rate in online giving is drag, ticking and screaming.
Speaker 3:Yeah, drag, ticking and screaming. It's kind of like you may not have had an online worship service before March 15th of 2020, but you do now. Yeah, absolutely Either that or you close down One of the two. That was your option, right, wasn't it so many churches flocked to the thing? The Life Church. Life Church gives away their platform. So many times flocked to it that first couple Sundays they crashed it and they had to double their capacity.
Speaker 3:We ain't doing it online. Why do we want to do it? Well, you are now. So the giving participation rate electronically has gone way up, which we love. But the blessing and curse of that is it is great when you set up a recurring gift. What we want churches to do is call attention to it every January because, out of sight is out of mind, and maybe your income grew by 40% this year but you haven't shifted your giving from last year and if you want to keep up with what God's doing, then you need to go back and look at your gift, make sure your gift is keeping up with your income, things like that.
Speaker 3:But I will say this in terms of giving participation giving participation rates have not changed. So it's still true that if you have 1,000 families in your church, probably 480 of them are giving and 520 of them are not, are not giving significantly right, and so the work is not finished there. We haven't seen that shift significantly in terms of that, and we're working on that because one of the things, one of the things too Frank in terms of engaging in this culture of generosity, is we've got to give undeveloped givers a way to get on board, and most of our language is just not helpful in that area. Hey, so you know, you know one of the things people know if you come around, we have a thousand families are in this church. You know 420, 480 of them give and 520 of them don't. Well, that might be true, but it's not helpful.
Speaker 1:If.
Speaker 3:I'm keeping up with friends. Guilt and shame haven't moved anybody recently. Not enough to matter, right? So why don't we use inclusive language like hey? So one of the things we know in a room like this on any given Sunday is that there are some of you who have not started your giving journey yet, and at our church we believe that there's three things that we want you to do. There's a starting point, a next step and a next step. If you haven't given, give something. If you started by giving something, then give it consistently. That would be set up a recurring gift. Give it consistently. And then, if you're giving consistently, grow in your giving.
Speaker 3:And it's amazing, some of the churches that Frank's talking about that have seen this crazy growth. That's their basic strategy and they're moving the needle. I mean when you talk about a large church with over $20 million annual income, over 20 million. But January to June of this year, compared to last year, frank not 50%, not 100% tripled the number of first-time givers and you and I both know that if you don't have first-time givers coming in, you're starting to flatten out and you'll start to go down at some point in time because you've got to have revitalization right. Triple. That church is so crazy in the numbers it's accomplished we don't even like to talk about it because it sets an unrealistic expectation, but it shows what's possible. It shows what's possible, frank, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 3:And so most of the giving systems that we see, including websites, are set up to service people, service givers, like the three of us we're already giving. You don't need to have a giving page for us. What you need to do is you need to have a giving page that lines up with your strategy to develop new givers. So if we have three things we want you to do, let's have button number one set up a gift. I'll make a first time gift. Button number two make a recurring gift. Set up a recurring gift and when you click there it goes to entirely the default of recurring gift, right. And then the third one would be log in and change and update your giving. So step number three so when you say it on Sunday morning and when they go to the website, they see exactly the same thing, as opposed to just giving out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, without saying that church. Do you have another church who does this?
Speaker 3:well, that way you don't have to give me that I'm not hunting for that name.
Speaker 1:I'm just hunting for a good example of something.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that the one I'm thinking of is one that a lot more churches would relate to. They're in an area of the country that you would say wait, they were able to make that work and they are very, very good at what they do, but they're not going to blow you away right off the bat. And they've seen 75% increase in first-time givers and last I looked they're at 32% year-over-year. No campaign 32% increase year-over-year. So think of this, frank, you've all of a sudden got a third more money today than you did a year ago, and all you're doing is and you really and, by the way, their church is growing, but it's not growing that fast. The giving growth is outpacing the attendance growth by several steps. Right, and that's the one where I would say you know where? Because we're looking to see.
Speaker 3:Okay, what's the breadth of what's happening? Is it happening in a more normal situation? Yes, just see. Okay, what's the breadth of what's happening? Is it happening in a more normal situation? Yes, it is. This is a church with, I think, about a $4.5 million annual income and in a smaller town, not a big town, not a super small town, but a medium-sized town and the whole strategy is working, including some other places as well. But that's what helps us to see in this beta testing, this pilot program Does this work across theological and cultural settings and all that, and it is right. Yeah, that's what's encouraging to us.
Speaker 1:Super cool. Last question Maybe you can give me some examples.
Speaker 3:What's your biggest success or biggest joy in doing this work? Seeing the light come on for the senior pastor. Bro, I'm telling you, seeing the light come on for the senior pastor and seeing him, because once he gets it, frank, here's the thing that's going to have a long-term impact. I can, I can, I can look. Raising episodic money is not the hardest thing we do. That's not hard, you know, I mean it's not a slam dunk, but it's not the hardest thing we do. That's not hard, you know, I mean it's not a slam dunk, but it's not the hardest thing we do.
Speaker 3:Changing givers' hearts is what's really hard. And when the pastor gets it, when the light comes on for the pastor, now I know it's going to get prioritized and it'll get spoken into and, by the way, that is, I think it's the common denominator around. We have a few churches where the playbook hasn't worked as well, and here's what I can tell you. The difference is the pastor is not leaning in on it as hard. He's not leaning in on it as hard. So we know that when the pastor gets it and leans in, that there's a different element of change that's going to happen there. After all these years, that still gives me a gas man. Seeing those guys have the light come on.
Speaker 1:Oh, now.
Speaker 3:I understand, right, yeah.
Speaker 1:Frank might have a different answer.
Speaker 3:He has some insights.
Speaker 2:For me it's it would be big there.
Speaker 2:Ministry, as you guys know, is really hard. It has its really long days and more often than not we run into churches that feel stretched from a staffing standpoint and a resource standpoint and they already have so many demands on them from the mess of ministry and just people, and then so many of them are also navigating the complexity of being under-resourced, and so to see those breakthroughs occur to where a church now has they're not fully funded, their vision is still bigger than their budget, but it's like they get a little relief, you know, just, I believe that that just helps. It helps with stability, it helps with the way they serve their congregation and their community. It allows them to do the things that they've been called to do. And so I think the constraints of funding have become so challenging that you add that to the complexity of the mess of ministry and it just leads to burnout and stress and burden and breakdowns. And I need to find a job that's easier doing something else, and so I don't know.
Speaker 2:I think there's something to be said about a church that feels resourced, properly resourced to do the ministry they've been asked to do is life-giving for that congregation and it's when those moments when you see them hit their goals, whether it be through a campaign, or you see them achieve their goals in the way that they can do community impact, because they have the resources to do it. It is so life-giving, frank, and so I agree completely with what jim said too, but that would be mine, yeah yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1:Well, fellas, it's been great to have you guys on the show and chat about this. Where can folks go to learn about like the new stuff you guys are doing? Is it still pilot mode or can they go to the website?
Speaker 3:We'll reveal the cultural generosity framework stuff toward the end of this year and that'll be on our resource page. But right now go to generiscom. Most everything we've got and things you've heard about here. We've got a lot of free resources there PDFs and eBooks that we've done, that we're glad for you to download and take a look at all those. Some of the things we've talked about here and anything else that we have coming along is always going to show up there first.
Speaker 1:Love it and it sounds like there's a webinar series going on. Should they register?
Speaker 3:We have a year-end webinar series that's going on right now and it started today actually at noontime, so you can actually go and register. You can get all the recordings. So we're doing it Monday, Wednesday, Friday of this week, so that is the 23rd, 25th and 27th of September. 30 minutes a shot, Frank, so we're keeping it real short and Frank and I are spending about 10 minutes talking about content, 10 minutes of Q and A and wrap up. Just get in there and fast, fire, hit hard and move out and the three together I think would be a really nice resource for a church. Yeah, I love it. I think would be a really nice resource for a church. Yeah, I love it, and you can sign up for that at our website as well, put it on the homepage.
Speaker 1:We'll send a bunch of traffic there. Guys, it's been great to have you on. Thanks, folks, for listening Great episode. Give it a like or share on the socials and we'll catch you guys next week on another episode of Modern Church Leader.