The 5 E’s to a Better Offering

Taking the 5 E’s to a better offering will guarantee that your giving will go up.  If you keep doing the same thing your offerings will never get better. Better offerings mean more money to do more missions and ministry. These 5 E’s will help you break the same old approach to your offering. Since I am a former Baptist preacher, I have alliterated each of these, to begin with, an E.  The first step is to,

Engage your staff in offering planning.  The number one obstacle to giving success is the staff of a church.  Often it is the Senior Pastor who is the roadblock!  My view is that there are a lot of reasons for this.  Sometimes the staff doesn’t want to talk about giving simply because they are not giving.  The other reason is that we ministers know talking about money is often unpopular and frankly, we like to be liked.   Sadly, the first group you have to get on board is your staff.

One simple way to do this is to build into each of your staff meetings time for generosity planning.  Every staff member needs to know the status of giving each week.  Engage them in planning and implementation of all your offering pushes and you will see your offering rise.  Your staff is incredibly creative.  Tap into that creativity to improve your offerings.  To do this you next need to,

Elevate your offerings.  The offering is the least valued time of our services.  To increase giving you must elevate your offerings to a place of prominence in your services!  To accomplish this you have to convince your staff to give the offering time in the service.  Worship time is valuable and often fought over. 

Is giving an act of worship?  Of course, it is.  Then why is it that we typically devalue you it but shoving it into the corners of our worship time?  By devaluing the offering time we have devalued the act of worshipping through our gifts.  When you elevate your offerings to a place of prominence in your worship services you will see your giving increase.  Of all my strategies this is the easiest to implement yet the hardest to accomplish.  Elevating the offering will improve your giving if you,

Energize your offerings.  How do you turn your boring offerings into meaningful, worshipful AND energized giving moments?  You need to energize your offerings with stories.  Gone are the days when we can assume that our attendees know why they should give.  Your offering time needs to make a case for why people should give.  In my view one of the best ways to accomplish this is by telling the stories of life change that your church is experiencing.  You want your attendees to see that their gifts make a difference. 

This is one reason I began years ago advocating setting up the offering time with stories.  Each week I write for you an offering talk.  These are meant as starters for you towards building out your own message.  Your church is doing amazing work and by sharing that story you will energize your offerings.  That will result in an increase in giving.

Find out how to get a weekly offering talk delivered directly to you at, https://acts17generosity.com/memberships/silver/ 

While passing the plate is still a key towards being fully funded in this 21^st century we need to,

Electrify your offerings.  Americans have moved away from checks and cash to electronic commerce.  If you are going to increase giving you must electrify your offerings.  As I write this on Thanksgiving morning, many people are shopping right now even though traditional brick and mortar stores are closed.  Commerce has changed so vastly in these last few years driven in a large part by the explosion of smart devices. 

Americans love options when it comes to how they pay their bills and how they make purchases.  A wise church offers multiple options for giving.  Providing multiple options makes it easier for people to give, which in turn increases giving.  Check out my partners at httpss://gyve.com/

This leads to my final point that to increase giving you need to,

Expand your offerings.  If Sunday morning is the only time you take up the offering you might be in trouble.  Smart charities and non-profits don’t put all their eggs in one basket.  In my plans, I advise using multiple tools and sources to improve giving.  Even with the proliferation of online giving the most money charities raise comes through good old-fashioned snail mail.  From online to social media posts, to direct mail to the physical offering each weekend, multiple options helps you achieve your budget goals. 

One reason why you must do this lies in the fact that church attendance patterns have changed.  Back in the day, most if not all active members were in attendance on a typical Sunday.  It was easier to communicate with them, and the standard offering plate was all we needed.  Now your active members are attending church less often.  Our challenge is in how to stay engaged with them.

I advise my clients to use multiple platforms to communicate their message as they know many miss the weekend announcement time.  They also work to push members to sign up for automated giving.  A robust online giving platform and strategy around that platform are essential keys to meeting this new change in attendance patterns.

All of the above takes commitment and work.  A good analogy is a farmer.  He must sow to reap yet if he doesn’t continually tend his fields there won’t be a harvest.  When harvest time comes he can’t simply lay around in bed hoping the crops get in the barn.  From beginning to end to reap a harvest he must work.  The same is true for you and your staff.  The labor you put in today will dictate where you end up.  Let’s start the year out right by implementing these five E’s for the offering.