Asking the Congregation for Money

7 Things Lead Pastors Don't Like to Do · Part 2

Asking the Congregation for Money

I have watched pastors preach with total freedom about forgiveness, marriage, suffering, sin, and then go strangely quiet when the subject turns to money. The bold communicator shrinks a little. The annual message on giving gets scheduled, dreaded, half apologized for, and rushed through. I understand the instinct. Behind it is a specific fear, and many pastors can say it almost word for word: "I don't want the congregation to think all the church wants is their money."

The fear is real. The conclusion is backwards. Teaching a congregation to give is not the church taking something from people. It is one of the most important acts of discipleship a pastor will ever lead. A church that is never taught to give is not being protected from materialism. It is being left alone with it.

Giving Is Discipleship, Not Fundraising

We tend to assume generosity runs in one direction. People give to what they already love, so a generous heart produces generous giving. Jesus said it runs the other way. In Matthew 6:21 He tells us, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." The treasure goes first. The heart follows it.

That one sentence changes the whole conversation. Money is never only money. It represents our time, our work, the hours of our lives we traded to earn it, a piece of who we are and what we believe. So when people give toward the mission of the church, their hearts move toward that mission. The giving forms the giver.

Which means the pastor who invites people to give is not fundraising. He is shepherding their hearts toward the Kingdom. To withhold that invitation, out of fear of how it might sound, is to withhold a piece of their formation. The most generous thing you can do for your people may be to teach them to be generous.

A Generous Church Is Also a Resilient One

Here is where the spiritual and the financial meet, because in a church they always do. The majority of churchgoers give a small fraction of what they could. Research on church giving consistently puts the average member somewhere around two to three percent of income, and only about one in twenty gives a full tithe. The generosity in most congregations is largely undiscipled, which means the room to grow is enormous, and most of it has nothing to do with how much wealth is in the room.

At the same time, the giving a church does receive usually rests on a thin base. Analyses of church giving data find that the largest gifts, a small share of all gifts, make up roughly a third of the dollars. In plain terms, a handful of households quietly carries much of the budget. That is a discipleship gap and a financial risk at the same time. Most of the congregation is not really participating, and the church sits one or two job losses or relocations away from a budget problem.

A culture of generosity speaks to both. When giving is taught as discipleship and practiced across the whole body, more hearts are engaged in the mission and the budget stops leaning on a few families. The healthiest churches I have served are not the ones with the wealthiest members. They are the ones where giving is normal, expected, and quietly understood as part of following Jesus.

Make the Ask, and Make It About the Mission

None of this means turning the platform into a pledge drive. It means a few changes in posture.

Teach giving the way you teach everything else, regularly and without apology, not once a year in a tone that suggests you are sorry to bring it up. Tie every invitation to mission and changed lives, never to a budget gap, because people give to vision, not to deficits. Tell them plainly what their generosity makes possible. And model it. A congregation can sense whether the person asking them to give is a giver. The ask carries weight only when it comes from someone who has already answered it himself.

What You Are Really Protecting

The pastor who avoids the subject of money usually believes he is protecting the relationship, keeping his people from feeling used. In practice he is doing the opposite. He is leaving them to form their own relationship with money, unguided, inside a culture that disciples them toward it relentlessly every other hour of the week.

Generosity has to be taught, because the heart follows the treasure, and someone is always teaching people where to put their treasure. It may as well be the person who actually cares about their souls.

You are not asking for their money. You are inviting them to move their hearts. That is not a pitch. It is discipleship.

Kerry Jones is the founder and CEO of Healthy Church CFO, a firm providing fractional CFO services to the local church. He has served churches as both pastor and CFO for more than 30 years.