On Friday I had a rare opportunity. I spent the day with Rev. Clif Christopher, author of Not Your Parents Offering Plate, as he consulted with a half dozen local churches. He looked at a bunch of things, like average giving levels and how they compare with the national average. He spent a lot of […]
September 11, 2012
I am so grateful for the many, many reactions I received to last week’s post about my Katrina experiences. And I watched with some degree of relief to see that New Orleans area fared much better this time around than they did seven years ago. But two realities remain: After 7 years, there is still […]
September 3, 2012
Seven years ago I, along with most of the country, watched the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and wanted to help. With the benefit of a connectional denomination, we quickly found how we could help, Antioch UMC in Laurel, Mississippi was coordinating clean up in their rural area about an hour north of the coast. I was blessed […]
August 29, 2012
You see those ice machines everywhere, big white freezers sitting in front of gas stations, convenience stores, sometimes it’s just them, plugged into an outlet on a utility pole. But there’s a funny thing about this industry. No one needs ice. Think about it, you may think you need to add ice to your cooler […]
August 27, 2012
I’ve heard it a billion times in local churches: everyone wants to give to a capital campaign or to a special project and no one wants to give to the operating campaign. In that boat? Then cancel the operating campaign and replace it with a capital campaign. There you go, problem solved. Well, except for […]
August 13, 2012
When I read the USA Today article I was hoping I had time-traveled back deep into the previous century. A few weeks ago a Southern Baptist Church in Mississippi refused to allow an African American couple to be married in its sanctuary because of their race. The bride had been attending the church for a year, the […]
August 6, 2012
Imagine it’s early December and the avalanche of end of the year fund raising letters arrives in the mail. For some unknown reason you decide to actually open one of them. The letter reads: “Use the enclosed envelope to send us your contribution. Remember to put a stamp on it before you send it.” And […]
July 30, 2012
I had an interesting conversation with a great young pastor a couple of weeks ago. In his second Sunday at his new church they did their monthly special offering. A special container was passed through the congregation with no announcement about what was happening, why the offering was being taken or how it would be […]
July 24, 2012
When I head into a church for a stewardship consultation, I used to think I could predict the situation. Afterall, a church in an affluent neighborhood was going to have plenty of money, right? A church with old Chevy pickup trucks in the parking lot was going to be dirt poor. Not even close to […]
July 16, 2012
