Do you know what the one thing every church can do to improve giving? Improve their offering time! If you will invest some time in planning out what you say before you take up the offering I can guarantee you that it WILL increase your giving. I call it Elevator Pitching your offering. The Elevator Pitch is where someone in a short thirty to sixty seconds tells you what they are about. If you take thirty to sixty seconds before you take up the offering to tell people WHAT the offering DOES you will raise more money. You MUST connect the dots for them of how a dollar given to your church changes lives.
Increasing giving can’t be that simple right? Wrong! Here is a real life testimony from a pastor in Virginia…
Giving is up 30%+ this year. We connect the dots every week, often using your ‘Elevator pitch’ from the Stewardship Coach newsletter. This has been life changing for our church as we no longer scrape around for money every week. I keep waiting for the bottom to drop out and to have giving return to the old levels, but it just stays strong week after week. Connecting the dots every week makes all the difference. Every single week, we say, “When you give, this is what you make happen here…” and we point to some kind of tangible difference being made at our church. You did that for us. Plus we quit apologizing.
All they did was change how they took up the offering. Instead of apologizing by saying, “If you are a guest, please don’t feel like you should give,” they created a desire for people to WANT to give! They worked at planning out their offering with the help I give them every week with written offering talks.
How much time do you spend on planning out the offering? Few churches ever even think about offering planning. Could that be one reason why giving is in decline? If you this week will plan out what to say before the offering it WILL make a huge impact upon your offering. Are you questioning that this is too easy. Read another testimony from a client in Pennsylvania…
While not every one of your Elevator Pitches has been specifically applicable to our context, every one of them has been an inspiration. I would guess that at least 50% of our introductions to the offering in worship have told SOME story of what God is doing with the contributions people are offering to God and the ministry. That is a 1000% change in our approach – which before your consulting has more often than not been a boring, canned and poorly thought presentation of the offering opportunity.
I can help you Elevator Pitch your offerings and you too can see an increase in giving! I have the tools that can help you. These tools are proven successes. Every week for my members I write an offering talk that is sent directly to their email account. They don’t have to go to my website and hunt down this week’s offering talk. Everything is done for them. Most personalize and contextualize the talk. Some read it exactly as I write them. The point is, every one of them has changed how the offering is taken up and that one thing has resulted in increased giving.
Get my white paper on how to improve your offerings! Elevator Pitch Your Offerings In this manual I share the basic steps you need for improving your offering time. I even give you samples that you can try this Sunday. Reading this paper will improve how you take up the offering.
Try my giving plan for 14 days for $1! $1 for 14 Day Trail offer You will get two weeks of my newsletter, The Stewardship Coach. This will give you insights into current giving trends, samples giving letters, emails, Social Media helps AND a weekly offering talk. You also get access to me so that you can have your own Minister of Giving for only $1 a day!
How important is it to have a giving coach? Here is what a pastor in Texas wrote…
Last week our church had a sudden opportunity arise. To make it work and not to distract from our annual campaign just over a month away, I emailed Mark for help. I received an immediate reply and we quickly scheduled a conversation. Mark gave prescient advice and insight to give form to this opportunity in less than 24 hours!
So, let me help you do the one thing that WILL increase giving this Sunday, improve your offering time!
Mark Brooks – The Stewardship Coach