Annual Review

It’s good to help church members review their giving once a year.  Why that often? – because that’s the way that money works for most of us. Whether we have a pension, salary or stipend, it is likely to be adjusted once a year;  it’s helpful to review our giving and our spending at least once a year, both as individuals and as churches.

Many churches find it’s helpful to do this at a similar time each year.  However, this doesn’t mean that it’s always done in the same way. Sometimes, it will be a light touch review, other years it may need to be a full giving programme – helping people engage not only with the level of their giving; but with the theology and link with discipleship as well.

There are three great online resources to help you with this. Notes on these are at the bottom of the page, but here’s a short video clip to explain why this is such an important area.

Giving Programmes available online

   Giving in Grace is a great tool, particularly for medium and larger churches.  It has loads of excellent resources – for preaching, for all-age services, for youth and so on. At it’s core is a well-structured full programme, but there are sections for a lighter annual review as well.
There are a large number of tools, templates, sermon outlines and so on – everything you need to run your giving programme. 
  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.
   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’s available on the parish resources website, and has a wealth of resources, templates and tools that you can use.