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Table of Contents

An Overview

3 Historic Churches Face Unique Obstacles & Opportunities

Embrace Emerging Capital Campaign Trends to Fund Their Vision

On Their Way to Achieving Their Goals and Reaching More People

Conclusion

Next Steps

Related Resources

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An Overview:

While there are numerous challenges when it comes to reaching people with the Gospel, a church’s facilities can be a significant factor in decline and an impediment to growth. Yes, people – especially families with small children – leave churches because the impression may be that the facilities are unsafe, not clean, depressing or a host of other factors. Likewise, visitors have the same impressions, which is why they don’t come back.

This case study highlights leaders from three historic churches who recognized the need for new facilities to transform their ability to reach more people for Christ.

While the denomination, location, and demographic makeup of each of these churches are different, they all share a common trait. Each church faced unique challenges when it came to raising money through a capital campaign that would help them fulfill this mission.

Fortunately, church leaders recognized the need to embrace new trends in order to overcome their unique challenges and fund their God-given vision for ministry. By partnering with RSI, these leaders were able to develop a plan to address their specific challenges and adapt to their unique culture. As a result, each church is well on it’s way to reaching its campaign goal and reaching more people with the Gospel in the process

Participating Churches:

Christ Memorial Presbyterian Church Columbia, MDwww.cmpcusa.org

Lawrence Wesleyan ChurchLawrence, KSwww.lawrencewesleyan.com

Crosswater Community ChurchPonte Vedra, FLwww.crosswaterchurch.net

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3 Historic Churches Face Unique Obstacles & Opportunities

Christ Memorial Presbyterian Church, located in Columbia, Maryland, between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, was founded 50 years ago. It is strategically located in an internationally diverse community of professionals. However, the church has not added a new building to its property or undergone a major renovation since the 1970s. There was very little appeal, said its pastor.

“No question we could easily spend $1.5 million dollars on improvements and you’d never see it,” said Scott Hoffman, pastor at Christ Memorial since 2011. “The infrastructure desperately need to be updated and brought up to code. Spending that money still would not change the building aesthetically. We knew we were needing a significant amount of capital to accomplish what we felt we need to do.”

The congregation and leadership of the church agreed that a major capital campaign needed to be launched if the church was going to have a viable ministry in the community. A final budget of $3.4 was approved and the capital campaign goal was set to renovate existing space and create some new space. However, there were some doubts that the church could undertake it all. The leadership at Christ Memorial Presbyterian recognized the need to embrace some new strategies in order to reach their goal.

Lawrence Wesleyan Church is another historic church founded in 1936. Today, Lawrence is a city with a high percentage of unchurched people, including college students at the University of Kansas. The opportunity is a constant reminder of the church’s vision to see people worship Christ, grow as disciples, and serve the people of Lawrence and the world.

However, their current space constrained the church and was limiting growth. A renovated office building that served as the church for 14 years had reached capacity and it was time to move. The church was crowded and becoming less and less functional.

Lawrence Wesleyan’s leadership team recognized that it needed to get into strong financial position to purchase the right property when the opportunity presented itself. Lead pastor Nate Rovenstine made the decision to interview three different stewardship consulting companies, even though several people on the leadership team felt that an outside partner was not necessary.

“We had people on our team who felt we could probably undertake a capital campaign and do it successfully,” Rovenstine said. “But the truth is I was familiar with campaigns and I know they absorb a lot of internal energy. It is the ongoing details that somebody has to oversee and stay on top of or the campaign won’t get to the finish line.”

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Crosswater Community Church and lead pastor Jack Millwood also faced some unique challenges for funding a capital campaign through traditional strategies in light of emerging church trends. Since 2008, Crosswater has grown from an average attendance of 60 to reaching anywhere between 800-1500 on a Sunday. The age demographic is mostly between 35 and 55 with a burgeoning number of small children and teenagers. And that is what prompted its most recent building campaign.

Because of their rapid growth in reaching young families, space for children and youth was a priority and based on the church’s vision. However, the church had abandoned the idea of collecting money by passing an offering plate every Sunday.

“Most of our growth is coming from new Christians, people who have never really been in church,” said Jack Millwood, lead pastor of Crosswater Community Church, Ponte Vedra, Fla.“We have a lot of people coming in who we don’t want their impression of us to be that we arejust after their money.”

The leadership team at Crosswater recognized that in order to achieve their goals, they would need to leverage the intentional focus on online giving and needed a guide who would help them navigate through this unique approach to achieve their goal.

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Embracing Emerging Capital Campaign Trends to Fund Their Vision

Trend #1: Connecting and Communicating with Financial Leaders

Christ Memorial Presbyterian realized that a lack of communication with key leaders is one of the reasons capital campaigns most often fail. This leads to lack of understanding, and where there is a lack of understanding, there is a lack of financial commitment. Hoffman said part of the process was involving key financial leaders in the church to play a role in identifying the needs.

“One of the things RSI pointed out to us was the importance of how we initially presented the plan to the church,” Hoffman said. “We could either present it as, ‘Here’s what we can afford,’ or, ‘Here’s what it’s going to take to get this done.’ The church rose to the challenge of doing what it was going to take.”

When the plan came back, it was clearly visible where the needs members identified were included in it. “In a sense it became their plan,” Hoffman said. “ We communicate on everything. We make sure everybody is in the loop, like we’ll continue to give updates during this period where we are working with architects and contractors and you don’t really see progress. We know those updates are important to make sure people stay financially engaged while there is no construction going on.”

Trend #2: An Intentional Focus on Campaign Follow Up

Lawrence Wesleyan chose RSI, because they felt the team recognized the circumstances of the church better than anyone else. “We picked RSI because we felt like they heard what we were saying,” Rovenstine said. “We needed a plan that was going to fit us, not one that was an out-of- the-box program.”

The church was reaching a diverse demographic across the spectrum of age, socio-economic status, and previous church involvement. The leadership knew it would be important to engage each group in personal and relevant ways during the campaign and fulfillment process.

RSI helped the leadership team at Lawrence Wesleyan realize the need to develop an intentional follow up strategy for the fulfillment process of the campaign. Together, they worked to answer questions such as: How can we continually engage people in a way that builds momentum throughout the fulfillment process? What can we do to ensure every person who made a pledge feels like they’re an important part? How can we connect church members who joined after Commitment Sunday to the campaign?

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Trend #3: Optimizing Fulfillment Through Online Giving

Crosswater Community Church recognized that partnering with RSI could help them develop a strategy that embraced online giving.

“I’ve been involved in a number of building campaigns over my years as a pastor and I know the challenge they can be,” Millwood said. “I’ve used RSI a number of times because of the expertise they bring so there was no question we were going to bring them into the equation and rely on them to guide us through.”

Fortunately, Crosswater has done a tremendous job of incorporating online giving best practices. The church also has a very intentional discipleship model that includes stewardship as part of being a disciple of Christ. RSI worked with Crosswater to leverage this foundation to maximize the emerging trend of online giving.

“As previously in the multiple campaigns I’ve worked alongside RSI, they did an exceptional job in helping us reach our financial goals of our capital stewardship campaign,” said Millwood. “They provided some new and innovative tools for our latest effort that really helped us track what we were doing.”

This intentional focus in cultivating online gifts would make a significant impact in the church’s ability to reach its mission.

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On Their Way to Achieving Their Goals and Reaching More People

As a result of involving financial leaders within the planning and development process, Christ Presbyterian received an extraordinary lead gift to advance the fulfillment the campaign. This generated a wave of momentum for their campaign as the whole church bought into it.

“Our church is known for its hospitality and our building, the way it currently is, overshadows that a bit.” He said. “We are excited because the new space is going to be more family friendly in every way. It is going to enhance ministries we currently have and will allow us to expand our ministry to meet other needs in our community.

“The timing of this has been perfect. Our church body is unified and we are heading in the right direction. I believe we are going to be a church in which people are going to feel very comfortable.”

Because of their customized strategy and intentional focus on fulfillment Lawrence Wesleyan collected $485,000 from their First Fruits Offering. Within six months of the campaign launch, receipts totaled more than $953,000 of the $2 million pledged on a three-year commitment.

“We were able to pay off our property, contract with a design build company and move forward with our architectural plans,” Rovenstine said. “It’s been a healthy give and take with Mark and we feel very good about where we are in relation to the goal we’ve set. It’s been a long road to get to this point but we feel very confident about the church’s future.

For Crosswater Community Church, an intentional focus in fulfilling their pledge through online gifts paid off. In fact, more than two-thirds of the church’s receipts have come through online giving or direct deposits. Millwood reports that the church saw $1.2 million in its regular giving for 2015 come in through online giving and $1.1 million more in contributions received toward its campaign. Fourteen months into the campaign, Crosswater had received 84 percent of its pledges and is projected to finish at 115 to 120 percent of its goal.

Millwood jokes with the congregation that with the growth of the church and the need for additional space ever-pressing, he is going to title their building campaign, “Forever We Build.” Most church leaders would agree that is a good “problem” to have.

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Conclusion

The way churches fund ministry through capital campaigns has evolved since RSI first started helping church leaders connect resources to vision in 1972. It’s constantly evolving, really. What used to work will not necessarily work today.

It’s important as you set out on your capital campaign journey that you have an understanding of this new landscape and how it uniquely impacts your church. At RSI, we’re passionate about helping church leaders develop a plan that is specific to your church’s needs and responsive to the changing dynamics of ministry. This has enabled us to find new ways for church leaders to embrace a comprehensive approach that eliminates the guesswork and minds the gap between Commitment Sunday and the end of the fulfillment period.

Our hope is that having knowledge of the landscape and the trends that are shaping today’s capital campaigns will make it easier for your church to move forward and make the most of the opportunities in front of you.

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Next Steps

1. Learn more about the emerging trends church leaders are embracing to fund their God-given vision for ministry: www.RSIstewardship.com.

2. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

3. Subscribe to our blog on RSIstewardship.com.

4. Sign up for our e-newsletter.

5. Call us at 1.800.527.6824.

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Related Resources

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Related Resources

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