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Run 4 Experiments This Summer to Help Find Changes in the Church This Fall

Test Changes in the Church to Your Offering Talks

Most churches take an offering at some point during their services. Churches looking to make an impact in their communities invite people to join their mission by giving back to God. How you deliver this part of your service is one of the pieces of the generosity puzzle. Do it poorly and the finances at your church will suffer. Do it well and you will see a rise in the giving at your church.

What if this summer you tested an assumption or two about how you do the offering talk? There might be a better way to do this element of your service. Maybe there is a way to do the offering talk that would encourage more generosity from your people. There could also be a way to do it that feels more in line with the mission and vision of your church. Here are a few different offering talk tweaks you could test this summer:

3 Offering Talk Tweaks to Test
Before or After the Message – Some churches have seen a change in giving depending on the placement of the offering during the service. Specifically, why not test its placement before or after the message? This data might be helpful for you down the road as you’re looking to make-up small financial shortfalls that can happen from time to time.

With or Without an Offering Talk – The best practice is to take the two minutes before the offering to slow down the service to thank people for giving and to connect their gifts to the vision of the church. But what if you could quantify the difference this is making in the life of your church? Take a month to craft pitch-perfect offering talks and then do another month where you don’t emphasize the offering at all. What difference does it make both to the revenue and the feel of the service?

Digital Giving – What if you took a month to specifically show people how to give digitally? Maybe you have a new “text-to-give” service that you want to test out as one of the changes in the church. Try pitching that option for a month and see what difference it makes; then don’t mention it for a month and see what happens.

Examine What Happens if You Try Changes in the Church

Stop and think about how much of your time is spent meeting during an average week at your church. Now do some quick math to calculate that across your team. That’s a lot of time! Although it can seem like a “plumbing” issue of how the church does its work, in many ways the meeting culture of your church could be a make-or-break aspect of what is either pushing your ministry forward or holding it back.