It is important to celebrate and encourage generosity within our services. During our intercessions we need to thank God for his generosity and the generous acts of others. Notices can be a great opportunity to highlight the generous initiatives and activities within the life of the church. Generosity needs to be embedded within our mission plans and strategies, not just implied but named. We need to be clear about the ways we want to develop our generous lives, and the plans we will put in place to achieve this. We need to ensure that new members of our church understand how important it is for us to be a generous community, and to encourage them to be a part of that.
Embedding generosity in these ways enables the culture to change, and for it to become part of the character and behaviour of our church. Periodically it is really helpful to focus on generosity over a period of weeks so that we can all see its importance to the church’s ministry and mission. Giving programmes can be a really helpful way to do this. They offer numerous resources for services and activities, and ordinarily can be accessed for free.
Ways to embed generosity
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Giving in Grace is a comprehensive giving programme, ideal for medium and larger churches. It has many excellent resources including sermon notes, service liturgies, youth activities, templates for letters and so on. It is a well-structured and extensive programme, and there is also a lighter version for churches that want something simpler to implement.
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The Simple Giving Programme for Smaller Churches is just that – a stripped down programme, particularly designed for smaller or rural/village churches. As well as communicating with church members, this programme encourages the church to consider whether it should hold a presentation event, and possibly approach the fringe or wider community. Resources and templates are provided for you to adapt.
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The Parish Funding Programme works well with most sizes of church. It’s particularly strong at helping develop and communicate a church’s vision, and encourage church members to support that vision. It has a wealth of resources, templates and tools that you can use.