• Personalize a sample estimate of giving card for use in your church. (Meaning: who cares what this means.)
• Distribute and collect the cards to plan and implement an increased, realistic church budget, year after year. (Meaning: well, this is the first time I have seen the word realistic used in the contest of giving.)
Step 10: Teach Stewardship in New Members’ Classes. (Meaning: You can't be a member of this church, unless you FIRST understand your financial commitments to God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and Us.)
• Learn how to use your new members’ classes to get giving commitments from newcomers throughout the year. (Meaning: Leaning how to use the classes will enable you to better use the new members from now on.) • Teach from a sample stewardship lesson outline in your new members’ classes. (Meaning: which we can send you for a cut in the take from the Sheep.)
If you faithfully implement all ten of these steps in your church, you will be thrilled with the results. (Meaning: If you do what we tell you, YOU, but maybe not the members will be thrilled with the results, but we cannot guarantee the membership will be.)
Ok, I'm being a bit cheeky here but teaching the Pastor how to mine the "gold in them thar pews," is offensive and insulting to the integrity of good people who really want to have a treasure worth giving to where their heart is. I have seen this "give til it hurts for the Church" mentality played out and if you are not careful you end up with short term gain and long term pain. There is a fine line between the impression we are asking for what we need to do our work for the Lord and Fleecing the Flock with "how to" methods that are "tried and true." Be careful you don't leave a flock of naked, shivering sheep in your endeavor to enforce tried but often untrue in practical fact ideas upon them. You'll find that Sheep can grow teeth.
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