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MasterClass: 9 Reasons Why Pastors Struggle To Raise Money

Welcome to this webinar on 9 Reasons Pastors Struggle To Raise Money and How You Can

Change That.

In our church we raised a lot of money, including for a building program. We did a multi-

million dollar building program so that was over many years of raising funds and shifting our

building from one place to another place and also shifting our church's generosity.

We were able to lift our missions giving 500%, that’s fivefold over a number of years and

over a journey of learning how to raise money and do that in a way that really does help

people.

Also as a consultant I’ve been able to help churches increase their giving. One of the most

remarkable ones was a church in Sydney, Australia where their faith promise pledge that

they did every year, it went up 400% in one year after I consulted with them and gave them

some ideas. They had a good culture going but they raised a lot more money in their faith

promise in that year.

So I have a lot of experience in this area and it is one of my passion areas because I want to

see churches do better in raising money.

Who will benefit from this MasterClass?

People who are struggling with raising money So pastors and leaders who are struggling to raise money, especially for vision projects. A lot

of churches are viable, they get by their day to day operation expenses ok but sometimes

with raising vision projects, people are not really kind of not doing that well in those areas,

so if that’s you, this is going to help you certainly in terms of vision projects.

People whose vision fulfilment is hindered We’ve already been talking about that where you’ve kind of got the operational, the day to

day going ok, you’re viable, you’re getting through but you’ve got some big projects maybe

some missions projects, maybe a local high school project, maybe a building renovation

facility or something you just want to do in the community and you want to raise more

money for that - this webinar will help you with that absolutely.


People coping with a lack of income So maybe your operational day-to-day is just not working and you’re trying to figure out

how to do that and how to get more income flowing, this will help you as well.

What will you get from this MasterClass?

Next steps I’m going to give you some next steps, things that you can put into practice, into action

immediately.

Increased clarity If you have been around any of my Facebook lives or in any of my scenarios with any

situations then you know that I am a huge fan of clarity.

Useful resources Here in the Hub I put resources in pretty well every week of the year and keep building and

there is a huge amount of resources there.

Actionable solutions You are going to get actionable solutions and especially if you dive into the hub I’m going to

give you access to my whole faith promise vision builders program that you can roll out and

it will show you how to do that step-by-step.

OK, let's jump in the 9 Reasons Pastors Struggle To Raise Money.

1. The fear of failure

I think this is a real thing that Pastors face and I think there’s two topics that I found when I

was pastoring 30 years in our church, two things that most Pastors really have to wrestle

hard with to preach on - one is money and one is sexuality. I’m not diving into the sexuality

one but both of those territories are peppered with landmines and you could just put a foot

wrong and kaboom it blows up in your face.

So pastors know when they weave into the area of money that you’re really touching an

area that’s very private. Like people's sexuality and their whole life, their world around

sexuality is very private, it’s very inner and it’s not something you share just with everybody.

Money's the same thing and you just worry about gee if I sound the wrong note, if I go a

wrong angle on this how's that really going to work out for me so I think a fear of failure is a

is a real thing that Pastors wrestle with.


2. Avoid being that guy

I think a second reason is that Pastors and church leaders want to avoid being that guy.

Now you know as well as I do that the whole thing is the church is only after your money is a

big deal right around the world. It’s a big deal in Australia but also I know in countries

around the globe. This kind of proverb the church is only after your money which is not true.

Do churches want your finance to flow into their church? Absolutely, of course. I think

unashamedly I'd say that churches should want people to give generously to the mission

and the vision of the church. But Pastors struggle with raising money because they don't

want to be that guy, that guy who's always talking about money, that guy who’s always

doing lengthy offering talks and seem to go on and on and on about it and we don't want to

get that shadow of prosperity stuff on us and all that.

We don't want those labels, so one of the responses Pastors do is instead of running to the

battle they kind of go no I don't want to get that label so I’m not going to go there at all. I

think it is a real reason why Pastors actually struggle.

3. Lack financial intelligence

The third reason why Pastors struggle to raise money is that generally the Pastor's that I

know and my background as well, is Pastors generally are not super savvy about finance. We

didn’t join the ministry, Pastors don’t join the ministry to make money.

Generally most Pastors don't come from a background of running a business or from a

background of financially savvy families and so I call this a lack of financial intelligence. Now

that’s not emotional intelligence, that’s not IQ and the ability to think well, I am not talking

about integrity.

It’s just that Pastors don't always know all about money. They've studied theology,

scriptures, pastoral leadership but generally haven't studied financial management so they

have a deep desire to help people to preach, to minister the gospel, to bring people to

Christ and baptise people.

But then they realise as they grow a church they realise I actually need some money around

here to make this thing work and then I get a vision of this thing working at a higher level

and a better level and it is kind of like ah, OK I’m really going to have to now raise money.

How do I do that? I feel ill equipped for it and a Pastor might be emotionally intelligent,

spiritually alive, and theologically sound but not have a huge number of clues about this and

so a lack of financial intelligence can become a real issue for Pastors and I will talk a bit more

about the solution side on this as well not just the problem side.


4. Fear of rejection

Generally you as a Pastor, and maybe you’ve battled with this like I have, I don't want to be

rejected. I don't want to be disliked, I want people to like me, I want people to kind of pat

me on the back, I want people to encourage me. I don't want people to block me like I've

got in this photo here, I don't want the big hand coming up and don't talk to me about that.

And if you’ve ever preached on there of money you’ll know that there'll be intimidating

reactions from people and some downright hostile so that can be a real challenge for

Pastors as well.

5. Naïve idealism

I bump into this occasionally in all the consulting and coaching I do is that Pastors can say

and have read stories of great men and women of the church history who have just prayed

and the Lord has provided. Just miraculous provision again and again and again and their

framework of reference is Israel in the wilderness where God supernaturally for 40 years

provided food and water.

A frame of reference is the promised land where you have to go in and actually work the

land. Sure there’s a grapevine already there, might be some corn planted or wheat planted

and you get that crop but it’s not going to supernaturally just develop by itself you have to

work the land.

So some pastors have a frame of reference that is the wilderness. I’m just going to believe

God and pray and I think its naive idealism, I got a fairy here in the bottom of the garden. I

think it’s a bit fairies in the bottom the gardens sort of response.

The Lord can provide supernaturally, absolutely, I've seen that in our building program when

we were half a million dollars short on what we needed, we were at our max in borrowings,

max in what we’d raised, maxed in what we could set our current building for back then and

we were half a million dollars short and I’m going oh my goodness I’m going to have to build

a smaller building, I’m going to have to leave carpets out. What we are going to do.

And then the builder put in a tender process that was $450,000 less than what had been

estimated the building would cost and that half a million dollars was a supernatural

provision from the Lord for us, which is remarkable.


God can provide supernaturally, I have no doubt about that and have seen His provision

again and again in our own lives but also in our church's life and in various organisations I've

been with but I think it is naive idealism just to rely on that.

And Pastors can get quite disappointed because they've prayed and prayed and believed

and things have not come through for them.

6. Personal finances in chaos

Their own personal finances are in chaos. So a Pastor can be in a place where his own

personal finances, their own personal finances can be a mess. They are kind of trying to

work their way through some credit card debt or they don't have a budget or their

expenditure is out of control.

And you know whenever you preach on a topic as a Pastor you can’t just present the kind of

black and white truth in the Scripture. You have to weave into it your own journey around

that otherwise it lacks that authenticity, it lacks that sense of a punch that can come with

preaching, I don’t mean a physical punch, but it can lack that sense of oh you know what I've

kind of worked through some stuff in this area.

I remember years ago, this would be 25 plus years ago, when Di and I were really struggling

with credit card debt and we just had to make a commitment in our own personal financial

world that we are going to clear this debt, we are going to get rid of this debt and then we

are going to make sure that we get our financial house in order, which we did over a period

of time. It took us a while but we got it.

Pastors can go I don't think I want to preach on this topic because you know what I've got a

bit of a challenge myself at a personal level.

7. The Bible posits opposing views

I think this is an interesting one about the Scriptures. You have in the Scriptures people like

Abraham and David and Solomon who are exceptionally wealthy and so you see massive

blessing financially in certain heroes of the faith and then you look at Paul, the great church

planting apostle of the book of Acts making tents to get by.

So you have this guy getting really blessed financially, it’s obvious, you can see it in the

Scriptures and here is this guy having kind of bi-vocation stuff and is making tents to get by

and that can be a bit hard.


You’ve got that scripture in Proverbs 30 “You give me neither poverty or riches but give me

only my daily bread, otherwise I may have too much and disown you, say who is the Lord? I

may become poor and steal and so dishonour the name of my God” and that is a bit of a

put-down of poor people and rich people in that scripture.

I don't take that as just now that’s where I've got to be, just my daily bread because if get

rich I mightn’t cope with it, if I get poor I mightn’t cope with it. I think that’s an interesting

insight into someone's heart about money. My personal thing is I don't think that’s the floor

that you build on so you have to work through where you sit theologically on this and I think

that can be a challenge for Pastors with those different views.

8. Uncertain how to present a need

It’s a bit of a fog for some Pastors and church leaders. How do you actually present a need?

How do you actually put a need in front of people that moves them to be generous, that

moves them to give? That doesn’t feel like a pressure.

I think one of the things that I found in my journey, and as I share some of the solutions I’ll

share a bit more on this, but I found I was able to get into a place of talking about money,

preaching about finance, discipling people about finance and raising the significant sums of

money in a relaxed almost laid-back but confident way.

That I didn’t feel like I had to whip people into a frenzy, I didn’t feel like I had to pressure

them into doing it. I had a level of faith about in a relaxed manner and I got into that over a

period of years of doing this, and I’ll talk a bit more about that in the solutions side.

Sometimes Pastors and leaders just don't know how to present a need they either apologise

for talking about it or they just do it very nervously and move on quickly, we don't want

anyone to get upset about the money.

9. Lack of training

I was never trained in preaching about money. I never had someone sit down and mentor

and coach me through this area and that’s one of the reasons that I actually really enjoy

coaching pastors around this area and helping churches do better and that’s why I will put

resources in The Hub and also help Pastors with this.

I’ll talk to them about stewardship teams and processes and how you can get yourself into

this and just even encouraging Pastors to do an annual finance series.


So to actually be able to train Pastors and church leaders how to raise money has been a

real joy for me because I find when churches have more money flowing in they can do more

visionary things, the visionary projects that are in the hearts of the leadership of the church

can get done because of that.

Solutions

Let’s go on to six solutions. I want to get on the solution side here and give you six solutions

that I think can really help you. I want to help you today with things that will actually shift

and some of them are heart things and some of them are pragmatic steps you can take.

1. Get money to, not from, people

A key thing that I've found is how do you position yourself when you come to disciple

someone one-on-one or a small group or a church about money and this is an issue of

discipleship.

It’s not just about getting people to be more generous to the church. You don't want to

position yourself to “how do I get people to give more money”. That’s not a good place to

sit positionally.

Positionally where I sit, and I remember hearing this many years ago interestingly from

prosperity preacher guy, but it struck me and this truth has never left me, get money to, not

from people.

So when you come to disciple your church individually, small group or whether it’s

preaching a finance series, position yourself in the place of I want you to do better in your

financial world. I want you to learn how to handle worldly wealth in a way that honours

Christ, that provides for you and if you have one, a family, that enables you to help poor

people and needy people, that helps you to live a good life as well within your current

scenario and within your demographic.

I think this proverb alone has helped me do far better in discipling our church, in raising

money yes, but also in helping people get to a better place with their money.

One of the things I’m passionate about is I want people out of credit card debt. A lot of

people struggle with credit card debt so one of the things I position myself is how can I help

you get out of that credit card debt?


Because I also know if you are in credit card debt that you can’t be generous, it does not

work so how can I get you into a position where you are doing better and I think that’s a

disposition, a framework, set yourself there and I think you will find that will be really

helpful.

2. Get financially intelligent

Here’s a guy looking at the business section of the newspaper and it’s one of the things I

started to do because I was not raised in a family that was really savvy about money. I'd

never run a business, I worked in various jobs in different places and never really in a

finance connected industry and so I was pretty financially unintelligent.

So I started reading the business pages of the newspapers not because I was particularly

fascinated by it, I just wanted to improve my knowledge. I started reading books - Rich Dad

Poor Dad is a great book to read to get more financially savvy. I also read The Richest Man In

Babylon, books along that genre of wealth creation and how to do well with finance just to

broaden my understanding.

I looked at what Jesus said. You know studying the Bible, looking at what Jesus said and

looking at what Solomon said. Proverbs is full of interesting angles about money because it

was written by one of the wealthiest guys on the planet, so that’s a great resource to jump

into.

I also did things like I bought some shares personally. I laid out some money in speculative

shares, blue chip shares. I wanted to see what it felt like, that greed and fear that comes

with owning shares.

I got involved with talking to small business owners, talking to investors, I eventually did

some property investment. I did a whole range of things to broaden my financial intelligence

so I could talk in a way that was intelligent about money and I've made myself over the

years far more financially intelligent.

One of things I would encourage you to do is read a book like “Rich Dad Poor Dad”, “The

Richest Man in Babylon”, study what Jesus said, jump into Proverbs, let that pour into you.

Find someone in your church who trades shares and talk to them about it. Whether you do

it or not, I always encourage people to do at least one trade of shares just to feel it and

experience what it’s like. Talk to people who invest in property, the ups and downs and the

risk and the blessings and the joys and the pain of doing property investment.

G


Get yourself more financially intelligent so that when you talk about money and you preach

about it you’re coming with a wealth of material that will really help you in this area.

3. Increase prayer

The third solution I want to present you to you is the increase of prayer.

I think the two biggest battlefields in spiritual warfare are evangelism and raising resources.

So whenever you step out to see an increase of evangelism, and we’re coming up to Easter

when I’m doing this webinar. To get people into church for Easter services you’re reaching

out maybe into schools, you’re planting churches and doing missions. Whenever you step

into the arena of increased evangelism in your church with various strategies, you will go

into the frontline of the battle.

I think it’s exactly the same whenever you look to raise financial resources for vision

fulfilment - whether it is missions, buildings, and special projects whatever it is, whenever

you go we are going to raise extra income.

I would love for you out of this webinar to have a look at the hub of the resources of how

you can actually start a fundraising program that will see the fulfilment of the vision, the

dreams that God’s put in your heart and as you step into that arena you must increase

prayer because it’s the front line.

Evangelism and I think raising financial resources and increasing stewardship, discipleship in

your church you are on the frontline of the battle and you need to be putting on the armour

of God, Ephesians 6 and you need to gird yourself for the battle with prayer and prayer

yourself as a church leader but also getting more people praying for you and the church as

you move into a zone and a season of talking about money discipling the church, raising the

profile of increased generosity in the life of your church.

Can I can just say this, you cannot neglect spiritual warfare through prayer when you enter

this arena because you will find it’s a battle and it’s a battle that the Devil does not want you

to win it. It’s a battle that he wants to knock you out and disappoint you and dishearten you

through this process.

I remember the first time I did a money series and I mentioned this in some of the promo

material, the first time we did a money series in our church, the very first message and the

phrase I used the promo was that it felt as cold as an Arctic winter.


The full story of that is that when I started this first message, in the first money series that

I’d ever done in our church, it felt like to me, and this might be too dramatic, but it felt like a

spirit of death came into the meeting. It just went “whew”, the atmosphere was cold, I was

kind of taken aback and oh my goodness what is going on here and I could almost see and

feel shutters closing in people and people closing down on me and I realised at that moment

this is a battle, this is a fight, this is a war because wherever your treasure is that is where

your heart is. If your treasure is flowing into kingdom advancement your heart will be there.

If it’s not your heart’s somewhere else and so this is a battle of the heart so don't

underestimate the importance of prayer in this whole process.

4. Get your own financial house in order

Make sure that you’re a generous church leader, that you’re giving at that 10% minimum

base. To me the tithe 10% is a floor that you build from. I have a message that I preach

about why I stopped tithing and people go oh you’re not tithing? I say yeah I've given above

the tithe for decades. I say every now and again I want to reduce my giving down to the

tithe! It’s a bit of a joke, a bit of an angle.

Make sure you’re generous, make sure you’re budgeting your finance knowing what you’re

spending, where it is going. Look at times reducing your expenditure, can you find another

income stream into your world, if you have credit card debt - get out of credit card debt.

Wend your way out of it.

If it takes you a year or two that’s OK set your sail for it because you will disciple people far

better when your own financial house is in order. When you’ve got things set right in your

world you’ll find that it'll work a lot better for you in discipling in other people.

5. Lead an annual faith promise program

This is where I think the material in The Hub can be so helpful for you. I've got a whole

process in the hub of how to set this up, how to run it, how to follow it up and I've helped a

lot of churches in this area and our church does an annual faith promise program.

What is an annual faith promise program? Over about 2 or 3 weeks you do some financial

series and at the same time you present a vision to your church and generally I encourage

churches to call this a vision builders program and you present visionary things the church.


It might be about missions, local high school evangelism, overseas missions. It might be

about a building project or a facilities renovation whatever, visionary things and you present

that vision and at the same time ask people to make a promise of what they are going to

give over the next 12 months.

And this is how I present it. I say look, make a commitment that’s your promise. Give that

money monthly, just commit into it or weekly whatever it is or a one-off and then use faith

to believe God to provide for all your needs. It’s not a faith promise where I’m believing the

Lord will give me $3,000 and then I’ll be able to give it. No that’s not a faith promise, a faith

promise is a commitment that I will fulfil then I’ll believe God to provide for all my daily

needs.

You set that program up, you launch it, you get people to make their faith promise

commitments and I show this all in The Hub, the process of how to do this and then you

have a feedback loop every month of what their money is achieving in fulfilling vision in the

life of the church.

So many churches don't do this. Our church has done this for many years now. It’s in the

culture of the church and we actually got up to 40% of our regular Sunday giving being given

again into our missions program, so what I mean by that if your annual giving is a $100,000,

just your general Sunday giving, our church was giving another $40,000 into missions above

and beyond that $100,000. These aren’t our numbers, I’m just using them to explain it.

So many churches don't do this and they’re missing out on significant discipleship moments

and significant fundraising moments by not doing this. I’m a huge fan of faith promise

programs.

If you don't have one in your church or if it’s a bit of a sloppy one, The Hub will help you out

with that.

6. Overcome opposition

You have to set yourself to be courageous and strong like the Lord's exaltation to Joshua in

Joshua 1. Be strong, be courageous in what you’re doing when you are going to raise

money.

You’ll have opposition. You’ll have opposition from people in your church, you’ll have

opposition from the enemy of our souls, you’ll have opposition even from leaders in your

church. People get stirred up about this stuff and you have to decide as a leader, I’m going

to take courage.


I’m praying for you right now that you’ll find the courage and the strength in Jesus that you

will find the courage and strength that Jesus wants to give you to be a leader who raises

resources for vision fulfilment in the life of your church.

Testimonials

Let me talk to you a little bit about what I do as a consultant and coach to help churches in a

whole range of areas but one of them is raising finance. Here’s a few of the folks that I work

with Chris Carmody an Australian pastor. In the last twelve months he is seen 19% growth

in his congregation size implementing recommendations from our consulting.

David Hooper pastors here in regional Australia, “I keep coming back to the Hub for the

valuable resources that help us become cutting-edge”.

Pastors Jacek, a good friend of mine in Poland “The Hub is an invaluable help in my journey

of pastoring the church. The content is totally practical”.

Pastor Jim Yap here in Australia “The Hub is my virtual coach containing nuggets that help

me realign with my church's vision”.

Pastor David in Australia “the wealth of experience found within The Hub has already

proved invaluable, not just for quick wins but helping us to sustain into the future”.

What have we discovered today?

What we have discovered today is that solutions abound but nothing changes if nothing

changes and I want to give this offer to you because you’ve turned up for the webinar, you

registered for the webinar and turned up. You might be watching the replay, I have the

exact same offer for you as well. I want to give you a hub membership free for one month,

so I want to give you all the resources that are in the hub.

They’re going to be free for a month and you can sign up. You can cancel at any time. You

can stay in the hub for a month for no cost at all because I want you to see the advantages

that will come to you through The Hub.

When you go to the dashboard on The Hub you’ll see these various elements:

- I want superb Sunday services

- I want to raise more money


- I want to survive the rigors of leadership

- I want to develop leaders

- I want to grow my church

These are all key portals that you go into. When you dive into the portal, say the one “I want

to raise more money”, when you dive into that portal you will find a whole range of

different things here. You’ll find :

- a road map which I will show you a bit about in a minute

- MasterClasses about Building Vision Centred Budgets

- a range of Quick Wins which go for about 5, 6, 7 minutes about various aspects related to

finance

- interviews, one of my great friends Dale Hewitt, I did an interview with him. He’s a great

fundraising guy who’s able to raise hundreds of thousand dollars for missions. I’ve done an

interview with him that is in The Hub that you can access as well.

When you dive into something like the roadmap which is a step by step, how to raise more

money roadmap this is what it looks like. You’ll find there’s about 10 or 12 lessons. They go

for about 5 – 7 minutes each and you can wend your way through them at your own pace.

You can watch it on video, you can listen to the audio, you can download the PDF notes, you

can download the PowerPoint slides, you can download all that and that’s yours to keep and

use as you want to and you’ll find within that that roadmap, the last four lessons are “How

to set up and establish and continue to thrive with a vision builders program” I've been

talking about.

So when you join The Hub free for a month you can get in there, grab all that material and

you can cancel at any time. I think it’s a crazy offer to be honest with you but these are my

resources and I want you to be able to use these resources to help you in all areas of church

life. Not just raising money, there’s heaps of different areas there of church life that you can

dive into and enjoy.

We also have a private Facebook group for hub members as well you can jump into. There’s

all sorts of different things.

I’m wired very practically and so my material is very step-by-step, how to do something and

you will find that material helpfully.

There are interviews as interviews. There’s one with Carl Vaters a great friend of mine in the

States, an interview with Dale Hewitt about raising money – a fantastic interview there, it

will give you some ideas as well.


There are Book Reviews in The Hub. Book reviews about all sorts of topics related the

church life.

There is also a monthly live webinar that I’m just about to switch into doing it through

Facebook live and the Facebook group that you become a member of, when you join The

Hub we add you into that group, I do a monthly webinar for hub members only and it’s

called Ask John Anything. Throw any question at me that you like and you can jump in and

enjoy that as well.

Thanks so much for joining me here on this webinar 9 Reasons Pastors Struggle to Raise

Money and how you can change.

I really appreciate you being here. I hope this has been helpful and jump in and enjoy that

hub free for one month.

God bless you, thanks for joining me.

master lass: õ reasons why pastors struggle to raise money · to raise money welcome to this...

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