on:

LEADERSHIP

STEWARDSHIP

MONEY

PARISH CANVASSES, and

HUMAN SPIRITUAL HEALTH

Facts and opinions collected and edited by

A. T. Mollegen, Jr.
49 Millstone Road
Glastonbury, CT 06033

860-652-9355 (home)
860-290-6665, ext. 101 (office)

CONTENTS

1.   LEADERSHIP...........................…….…............... 1

2.   STEWARDSHIP..............................……….......... 3

3.   MONEY............................................…………….. 5

4.   PARISH CANVASSES.................……................. 6

5. HUMAN SPIRITUAL HEALTH............................ 9

1. LEADERSHIP

• People respond well to being held to high standards, especially if you show them how to meet the standards, and encourage them.

• People can get very anxious when you first present them with high standards, so you must anticipate this reaction and deal with it sensitively. It will help a lot if they know that you will show them how to meet the high standards, and that people like them have used the same methods and succeeded.

• If you don't talk about money, then people won't think you are serious about getting the Church's work done.

• Don't be "cute" as a way of avoiding talking directly about money. Giving is a direct response to both of the summary commandments, and deserves to be dealt with directly and purposefully... and maturely, not trivially.

• People's giving is a significant sign of their spiritual health. Knowledge of their giving is thus a major pastoral input. A pastor who doesn't know what the parishioners are giving is like a doctor who doesn't know what the patients' temperatures are.

• Never put a token giver in a responsible position. They won't let anything get done.

• The way to tell if a designated leader is in fact a good leader is to look at what the designated followers are doing. This principle applies to their giving, as well as to many other factors.

• If you don't like what the above item says about your own leadership, try changing your leadership style. There are plenty of people who can help you with this, if you are willing to ask.

• Talk to your friends and fellow church-goers about your own approach to giving... including both the struggles and the achievements. (You don't have to mention dollar numbers, but mentioning income percentages and number of hours/week can be very communicative.)

• Rectors tend to underestimate the undercutting effect that even a very small amount of negativism on their part can have. They can kill a potentially positive situation by exhibiting even just a tiny amount of negativism.

• What lay people say to other lay people (when not criticized by the clergy) can have ten times the impact of clergy speaking alone. Fellow lay people, learn to speak up!

• Various existing stewardship statements can serve as models for a stewardship committee to select ideas from, when they are working on their own statement or plan.

• Don't ever forget: people respond well to being held to high standards.
  
  
  

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2. STEWARDSHIP

• What we have belongs to God, not to us. What we have is only under our control for a time. The position this puts us in is that of being stewards. A steward is a person who is in charge of something that belongs to someone else.

• Stewardship can be defined as:

  • all that I do

  • with all that I have

  • all the time.

• With the above in mind, Christian stewardship can then be defined as:

  • all that I do

  • with all that I have

  • after I say "I believe."

• Christian stewardship is based on a world-view, which focuses on the relationship between God and us. God has put us in charge of his world, and he expects us to use what we have control of to help him accomplish his purposes. "Thy kingdom come" is something that we are supposed to help make happen.

• In quite a number of his parables, Jesus showed that he thought of us as stewards.

• The natural response to being loved is to love back. The natural response to being given to, is to give in return.

• The biblical standard for giving is 10 percent of one's income, called the tithe. This standard is found in both the Old and the New Testaments.

• In the Episcopal Church, several General Conventions have affirmed the tithe as the minimum standard of giving for Episcopalians. "Minimum standard" means that we should all be somewhere between 10 percent and 100 percent.

• One possible way to reach (or exceed) the 10-percent giving level is to give a couple of percent more every year. Some find it helpful to make the increase each year at raise time.

• If you are going to base your tithing calculations on after-tax income, don't forget also to add back in your employer-provided non-cash benefits, such as company paid health insurance, which you receive non-cash form. (At the time of writing, health insurance for a single person costs about $4000 per year and for a family about $7000 a year.)

• Parish treasurers sometimes feel that good stewardship is simply a matter of NOT SPENDING MONEY. Nothing could be further from the truth. Peter Drucker, probably the best known writer on management, says that management doesn't consist of not spending money, it consists of spending it in the right places. The same idea is true of the Church's money.

• The 1985 General Convention suggested that a giving standard for organizational units of the Church (parishes, dioceses, etc.) is to give as much to others as we spend on ourselves. As in personal giving, it may make sense to approach the standard by a couple of percent per year. (At least one US diocese has adopted this standard, which is sometimes referred to as the 50/50 standard, for the diocese's giving to the National Church.)
  
  
  

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• Due to inflation, prices today are about half again what they were in late 1980.  They are almost four times what they were in 1967.

• The total yearly budget of the Diocese of Connecticut is about equal to the money it takes to build a quarter of a mile of interstate highway.  The yearly budget of the National Church is enough to build about 3 1/2 miles of interstate highway.

• In Connecticut, during Venture in Mission, giving beyond the parishes increased by about one third. (And many parishes didn't meaningfully participate.)  This showed that there was a lot of money which be raised if we only made the effort to ask.

• In over two-thirds of the domestic US dioceses, the average pledge is larger than in Connecticut. (And, as a state, Connecticut has the highest per-capita income in the US.) This should mean that there is a good potential for improvement.

• Money is very important to the Church. Money is important because it allows us to do some very Christian things, such as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, housing the homeless,  teaching the faith, worshiping, etc. The Church NEEDS MONEY.
  
  

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• Personal visiting in homes is by far the best way to run a parish pledge-gathering campaign. It will beat an effort based on only sermons and letters every time. Another way that is almost as good is to have meetings of small groups ("cottage groups" or "hearth groups") in homes. A parish dinner can also work.
  

• Once leaders have become aware of the differences in the outcome of the two approaches, any leader advocating a non-calling approach is probably afraid of something. In such a situation, it can be very productive to get the fear identified, although the identification may not be easy to do.

• A visiting, or calling effort, by its very nature, demonstrates that there is commitment on the part of all the workers. Calling on every parish member (except those who really don't want it), not just those who are late in getting their cards back, is important. Calling on habitual non- givers and non-attenders will sometimes touch such people, with effects that may either be prompt, or take years to surface. Put differently, it is missing the point to try to minimize the effort.

• Personal calling will generally produce about 10-30 percent more money than only a sermons-plus-letters campaign.  The longer it has been since there has been an every member visitation, the bigger the increase.

• An Every Member Canvass will also produce a wealth of people-to-people contact. You will learn what the people-out-there:

  •   need

  •   like

  •   want to change/would like to see

  •   would like to see done/do
    

• Canvassers should not know the amount pledged by the people they are calling on, and the parishioners should know that the callers won't know.

• Canvassers should be trained in what they are supposed to do, and in what they are not supposed to do. For instance, if a person has important personal problems, the caller shouldn't try to solve them: leave the counseling to those who are trained in counseling. However, do make a report back to the Rector, so that the problem can be dealt with.
  

• Explain during the in-service announcement period what will and will not occur during a call.  In doing this, you are training the callees, as well as the callers. It's important for the callers to know that the callees don't have unrealistic expectations.

• Canvassers should make their own pledges before going out to call on other people.

• Canvassers should be willing to talk about their own general approach to giving (no more specific then they are comfortable with, but let a bit of both the struggle and the commitment show through.)

• During the call, canvassers should receive the filled-out pledge in an opaque, sealed envelope which was contained in the mailing of the pledge cards to the parishioners. Canvassers should not pry into subject areas that the parishioners don't want to talk about.

• It is not reasonable to expect any caller to be able to answer all possible questions that come up. However, the callers should know how to deal with questions they can't answer; approaches for this should be dealt with in the caller training session (example: refer pastoral issues to the Rector, refer budget questions to the treasurer, etc.)

• Canvassers should report back with brief written notes on all calls: no problems, never could find the house, said no, already mailed in, have transferred to another church, hate you SOB's, etc. Probably a few previously unknown pastoral problems will be uncovered (a relative or family member has cancer, unwed daughter is pregnant, son has just said he is gay and now our friends won't like us, someone is in hospital, etc.)

• A few pledge cards may not come back until January. Don't worry, it's what's on them that counts, not how quickly they come in. (In several campaigns that I have analyzed, there has been not detectable relationship between lateness and the size of the pledge.)

• As the pledges come in, and the totals mount, report them in the newsletter and/or the Sunday bulletin, and/or during the announcement period during the service. The increasing totals give the congregation the sense of a team effort, a sense of progress and then a nice success experience.

• A few people just won't pledge, but will give. Some will give quarterly, some yearly, some irregularly.

• Make sure that all know that a pledge can be changed at any time, with no reason being needed. It can be helpful to have this printed on the card.

• About 20-25 percent of the congregation should be callers. Somewhere between 40-70 percent of the income will come from the callers' own pledges, so that the time spent in getting them involved and training them is a very good investment. Put differently, attempting to minimize the overall effort can be very counterproductive.

• Make sure that the callers know to be up front about the fact that the canvass is about people as well as money. "We want to know what you think, and we invite you to be more involved in the church."

• About mid-September of each year, newcomers should be reminded to either pledge to this parish (or to keep up their pledge to the old one).

• If you announce and/or print the above message to newcomers each year, there will be no need to assume that your actual income will be less than the unadjusted total of the pledges. In fact, a surprising number of people will give to both the old and the new parish.

• A strong autumn stewardship campaign will also help bring in overdue funds from people who fell behind over the summer.

• Remember the standard of living of the people for whom the ten-percent tithe was first suggested, some three thousand years ago. No matter how rich a king was in biblical times, he couldn't afford an appendectomy or a train ride or a television set.

• Remember the standard of living of much of the world today.  They can't afford an appendectomy or a train ride or a television set either.

• Remember that asking someone to get serious about their attitude to their stewardship is really asking them to get serious about their relationship to God. You're doing them a favor, even if the question is initially deeply unsettling.
  

• You are acting as God's ambassador; don't forget to express his love.

• Giving makes you feel freer. You feel free of the modern world's materialistic, self-centered criteria.
  

• We have a need to give.
  

• One person has suggested that if you don't want to give 10% to the church, then take it out in the back yard and burn it; only then can you feel free of the seductive power of money.

• Giving is good for your spiritual health. The natural response to being loved is to love in return. Not to love in return is to be distorted. By raising the stewardship issue with people, you're helping them to become spiritually healthy.

• Giving is good for collective spiritual health, too. A congregation can't be spiritually healthy without it.

• God so loved us that he gave...