Transforming Designated Giving into Mission Opportunities

Submitted by the Rev. P. Lance Ousley

Anytime we start talking about Designated Giving in the Church
The Theological Question is raised, “What about giving without strings attached?”

Well, I must admit that I have struggled with this question, too.
But I had a change of heart about 10 years ago with the convergence of several things in my life. As I studied generations more and more I understood that people give for very different reasons. And in the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate, post-Iran Contra, post-Lewenski, and now post-Enron/Anderson world, trust of authority had broken down for the largest segments of our population. Notice I didn’t even touch on any number of financial improprieties across denominations throughout our country. I realized that in today’s world many people really needed to know what was being done with their money. Somehow for me that equated into an even deeper theology of involvement for the baptized. But I’ll get to that a little later.

Another event that was going on at this time was the rolling out of a new way of doing our Diocesan Missionary Asking. I can’t tell you exactly how they were doing it at the time, but I can tell you what I thought it was and my perception was what moved me about it. As I understood it then, it was a plan for a congregation to have a face to face experience with the mission group they were choosing to fund. It was a way to DESIGNATE where their money went. But more importantly, it was a way to make these ministries real for the people that were giving. They were able to put their hands into the hands of those they were supporting. I called this making the ministry Incarnational. When I was serving at St. Dunstan’s from 2001-2004, we invited some of these groups to come a speak to us so we could have this face to face encounter and feel a part of their ministry more than just writing a check. The next year we designated our Missionary Asking to several of these groups.

Another thing that happened ten years ago, is I had a phone conversation with my good long-distance friend Jerry Kramer. At the time Jerry was a stewardship director for many Roman Catholic dioceses here in the US. As we talked about the struggle of a patronal Roman model of Stewardship in the Spanish speaking Americas Jerry revealed that in the Catholic Diocese of San Antonio they had achieved the same level of percentage giving from their Spanish speaking congregations as their English speaking ones. Naturally, I asked him how they had done this.

Jerry said that they had done it by pointing out the obvious funding needs they had and directly asking for persons to give toward these specific needs – loosely translated by me, Designated Giving. In addition to this they let them know that the congregation would probably respond abundantly and that they would use the excess funds for other ministry needs. It WORKED!

So as I further studied the third world countries and their mode of giving I realized we had much to learn from them in addressing our younger generations of Boomers, GenXers and beyond, with their suspicions and needs to give and really, to be involved with what they were investing themselves.

I began to talk about the need for the church to offer more opportunities for persons to give other than the annual pledge – I called this Cafeteria-Plan giving.

As you can imagine people argued the afore mentioned question. They also argued, “But people won’t pledge they’ll just designate their gifts and then the light bill won’t get paid.” In short, what will that do to our pledge income?

The truth is some people will never pledge, but they will give to a ministry where they have been serving or one that has touched their lives in some way. Others do not tithe on their pledge because they know they want to give in other ways to the church. We need to give them the opportunity! By the way, did you know the average pledge for the Diocese of Texas in 2006 was $2971? The last time I checked the average income of the households in the Episcopal Church was much higher than $30k.

If it is done intentionally, and with the vision and mission of the church in mind, Designated Giving will not diminish the annual pledge; and not only will it not diminish your annual pledge, it can multiply your congregation’s mission opportunities, increase your missional reach, and help to transform lives in the process.

The truth is that I really don’t think stewardship is about money; I believe it is about mission and ministry – it is about sharing the love of Christ and as Jerry said last night
It is about living instead of dying.

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What I would like to do now is tell you a little of how this has worked at St. Thomas’ in Wharton over the last few years of implementing Designated Giving for Mission. And as I speak make some notes about things that can be done in your congregations.

And let me preface this with we are not perfect, we have made and continue to make mistakes, but we make our mistakes by doing mission and ministry, not by doing nothing.

In January of 2004 when I came to St. Thomas’ there had been a part-time interim rector, Hoss Gwin, serving for a couple of years who wonderfully had empowered them to do ministry and awakened a sleeping giant.

During the time period with an interim, St. Thomas’ Rector’s Discretionary Fund had been administered by a couple of the parishioners, due to Hoss’ living out of town and having another full-time job. This was the way that St. Thomas’ could be responsive to the needs in their community. And quite frankly there was a little anxiety over whether or not this new rector would take back, or really seize, the Discretionary Fund. So when I showed up, I was asked if I was going to take that over by the Outreach Ministry. My thought was, “Why would I do that? These folks have been doing ministry and they also were on the front lines to invite people to join the St. Thomas family.” What we did work out was a system where I handled any assistance needs in the parish and they handled those of the surrounding community. It was not long before we had to implement an appointment system for doing an assistance intake. The more we told people about what was going on in helping people each week the more Designated Funds came in to support this ministry. This ministry has grown today to serve several hundred people a year in a town of only 10,000. In fact, FEMA caught wind of our program and has given us a grant of over $14k to supplement what we are doing in housing, utilities and food assistance. And by the way now there is an Outreach Emergency Assistance Fund and the Discretionary Fund – and both have grown exponentially since that first January.

That first January in 2004 as we were finalizing our budget I visited with our Outreach Ministry Chair about what social service ministries we were funding in the community, I asked the question about each one whether or not we had anybody serving in each particular ministry. In essence, we took a Ministry Inventory of these groups we were funding. If we had somebody involved in that ministry, we kept funding that group. And if we didn’t have somebody involved we didn’t fund that group. Now let me explain the difference between a check writing ministry and a ministry patron. Don’t get me wrong writing checks for ministry is important. If it wasn’t none of us would be here trying to figure out how to get our people to do more of it, and with more digits before the decimal points. The difference is between really being connected to what is happening in ministry and just blindly giving to get the person off your front stoop with a check in an envelope taped to the door. So, how do you make these connections I’m taking about?

Well, the idea for us was to have all the ministry organizations we funded to be an Incarnational ministry for us. In addition to this, the Outreach Ministry Team visited each of the outreach organizations that we had funded or were funding. From this we had a face to face encounter with those whom we were supporting, putting our hands in their hands – Incarnational Ministry! People see and experience first hand the difference their ministry makes. The results we have seen from this is greater hands-on ministry involvement and increased giving toward these outreach ministry organizations. And that is just a by product of the transformation that is happening to those who are involved. And isn’t that really what we are supposed to be about in the first place?

Now this Incarnational Approach was just the start of something that has blossomed into several different inspirations to meet the needs of our community. Since most of these Mission Opportunities do not conveniently fall during budget planning time, they have to be funded by Designated Giving because they are “off-budget.”

And a big part of this is that these mission Opportunities fit into the core passions of our church family. They were part of the vision we already have for whom God is calling us to be in our community. They fit our identity in Christ.

This Incarnational Approach across the board at St. Thomas’ has been abundantly fruitful. We started a Medical/Dental Assistance Ministry and host the Matagorda Episcopal Health Outreach Program’s mobile clinic, weekly. After our school closed in 2003, we started a Van Ministry the next fall to take students from Wharton to Calvary Episcopal School in Wharton. All of these are ministries for us that have been started through Designated Giving. We have a Thrift Shop that all of its revenues are Designated to Outreach Ministries. And the surrounding community has responded resoundingly. Both the sales and merchandise donations there have tripled since taking this Incarnational approach in early 2004. And we announced last Sunday that we were looking for a new building to house our Thrift Shop, with the addition of a Soup Kitchen, Food Pantry, and to be the place where we do our Medical Assistance and our Outreach Assistance. We can see God doing all kinds of things in a facility like this. Amazingly, we already have some donors ready to support us in this new Designated Ministry endeavor of St. Thomas’ Episcopal Outreach Center. Just imagine the possibilities. We are! And we know that whatever we imagine it does even come close to what God has in store.

Now one might ask a couple of questions – one might be “Yeah but what has happened to your average annual pledge?” The answer is that it has steadily increased when those outside St. Thomas’ said it couldn’t get higher. The truth is that the Designated Giving toward new mission Opportunities has grown our budget. This is because as many of these mission opportunities bloom they are incorporated into the budget.

And another question is: “But what about St. Thomas’ Diocesan Missionary Asking? Is that fully funded?” The answer is yes. We believe strongly in supporting these missionary efforts and we work to fund those groups with whom we have a direct connection. But we also leave some up to the discretion of the Bishop. After all we have a face to face and hand in hand relationship with him.

So here are the real nuts and bolts for you:

How can you approach the Transformation of Designated Giving into Missional Opportunities?

First of all I think you have to know what Jesus has put on your heart as a church family – where are your gifts? What are the core passions of your congregation? You have to know these things before you ever begin to ask the question, “Can this mission opportunity even be seen in our corporate vision?”

Whatever you do this is critical, otherwise you will be frustrated. And disconnected and lifeless, because there won’t be the passion to put it into action or support it.

So obviously the next step after knowing your corporate identity in Christ is to ask the question, does this fit in the scope of whom we are called to be?

Another thing that is critical is to take an inventory of your current mission outreach programs that your church is funding. Ask the questions:
Is anyone here involved in this ministry? Is this a mission where we have a face to face and hand in hand relationship, or are we just writing a check?

Now the next step is to follow up on the answers you found in the previous step. In Gulf Coast Texas we have a saying for this step, “It’s either time to cut bait or fish.”
This means its time to take a real hard look and decide what you are going pour your heart and soul into and what you are going to give your farewell blessing to.

Remember what we have been called to catch is more precious than anything with fins and gills, Jesus has called us to be fishers of men and women. If we aren’t giving it our best some would call it ministry malpractice. Isn’t Jesus worth our best; …we are worth his everything.

Okay so now you have decided what mission and ministries you are going to keep doing and what you are going to leave for some other church that has the passion for them.
Now is when you start to celebrate these ministries every chance you get. What I mean is to share the successes that God is blessing in those ministries with the congregation and the people doing those ministries. Encourage one another in what God is doing through you together. You know none of us get enough praise in our lives, why can’t the church give praise to those who are doing Christ work?

We celebrate or mission with ministry appreciation luncheons or dinners, in sermons, in feature articles in our newsletter, on our website, by taking pictures and telling the stories. Have ministry team members preach on a Sunday from time to time. Many of you already do an EYC Mission Sunday. This is the same concept just that it is not reserved for kids. We also don’t do the same old humdrum annual meeting which in most parishes is really a contest to see who can stay awake the longest through the budget presentation. Annual Meetings should be Celebrations of Ministries with persons sharing how being involved in a ministry transformed their life. Are we a community built around a budget or are we a community built on the love of Christ?

The more we talk about the ministries we are doing the more people know about them and the more they want to be involved. Develop a vocabulary of mission and stewardship; don’t call the people doing the mission work volunteers, call them ministers. Use video like those we already seen today – call the newspaper tell them you have a human interest story. Or how about a classified add in the Sunday bulletin? The point is if people know about them they can join the effort if not they can cause they don’t know!

All of these things I am suggesting really help us to flesh out the ministry. Do you see where I am heading? Incarnational ministry.

Okay, so what about the annual pledge campaign – because I know at least before last night that’s what you all came here to figure out how to do better. Well, Designated Giving can be and often is turned into annual pledges, however it is not because of any annual giving gimmick, but rather it is because the people giving have been Transformed by giving and serving in the ministry face to face and hand to hand, sold out for Jesus.

Designated Giving can be transformed into mission opportunities but first we have to put the flesh and bones on it and make it real for us and for our church family.

So really the question is not, “What about giving without strings attached?”
The real question is,
“What difference would it make to your surrounding community if your church wasn’t around tomorrow?”