Are your offerings boring your attendees?

Stop and think about this, is your offering the most boring part of your worship service?  My contention is that in the vast majority of churches the offering is indeed the most boring part of worship.  Why is that?  One major reason is few if any leaders spend any time thinking about how to make the offering worshipful and impactful.

The number one reason for this is that too many don’t see the offering AS worship.   Yet, giving is worship and the offering is not some interruption of your worship service it is a vital part of worship.  Believing this will change how you approach the offering.  If you don’t truly see the offering as worship it will lead you to the next major mistake and reason why most offerings are boring.

The other reason offerings are boring is that most churches never plan out their offerings.  Church staffs plan for hours the make up of their services from the music to the preaching.  Be honest, how much time did you spend this week thinking about the offering?

So, what is the impact of this?  Giving declines.  Since 1968 church giving has been in a continual decline.  How is it going at your church?  Could changing how you view and approach the offering make a difference?  Here is a testimonial from a church that started using my offering talks…

“Giving is up 30%+ this year.  We connect the dots every week, often using your ‘Elevator pitch offering talk’ from the Stewardship Coach.  This has been life changing for our church as we no longer scrape around for money every week.  Connecting the dots, telling people what their gift does, 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 PCC.  You did that for us.”

Pastor Brian Hughes PCC Powhatan, VA

How can you rethink your approach to the offering?  Let me give you a couple of easy steps…

  1.  Rethink your attitude about the offering.  I actually had a staff member tell me once that the offering interrupted the flow of worship!  If that is your attitude then you will not put the needed focus on the offering.  Change your attitude about the offering and you will see your churches attitude change.
  2. Spend time planning the offering. Most churches never plan out the offering.  Most planning is simply to make sure we have enough ushers to collect the offering.  Yet I believe that we need to put some thought and effort into the offering.  Why not set aside fifteen to thirty minutes every week to plan out what to say during the offering time?

I read a book called, “The Influential Fund Raiser,” in which the authors talked about what they called the elevator pitch.  The elevator pitch is that short statement you can make in less than one minute.  The authors stated that every elevator pitch needs three elements, think, feel and do.  Here are the three elements as they relate to the offering…

Think – You want to get them thinking about the offering.

Feel – You want to touch their heart as to why the offering is important.

Do – When it comes to the offering you want them to reach into their pockets and give!

With my help your offerings will never be boring again!  Let’s get started Elevator pitching this week’s offering.

Mark Brooks – The Stewardship Coach