People often think their church’s financial problems require technical solutions: more cash in the bank, more members in the pews, says Grace Duddy Pomroy. But she argues that even congregations experiencing worry, grief and fear about their financial situation need to step back and look at the bigger picture first.
“Looking at both the money and the mission really matters, and looking at the broader community needs comes into play,” she said. “That allows us to begin to see a future of what God has for us.”
Pomroy is the director of the Stewardship Leadership Program at Luther Seminary and author of “Funding Forward: A Pathway to More Sustainable Models for Ministry.” The book is based on the findings of a research project involving 200 congregations in the United States and Canada. Using surveys and interviews, researchers examined the conditions and practices that help a congregation shift its financial model.
Each chapter includes Scripture and a prayer as well as questions and practices for church leaders who want to put the ideas into action. An e-book version is also available. A second phase of the study, focused on rural and small-town congregations, is currently underway.
Pomroy spoke with Faith & Leadership’s Sally Hicks about the research findings and why spiritual practices are such an important part of stewardship. The following is an edited transcript.
Faith & Leadership: It’s surprising how far into a book about funding you get before you actually talk about money. Why don’t you start with fundraising ideas?
Gracy Duddy Pomroy: That’s on purpose. I get in conversations around this issue all the time, and congregations assume this is a technical challenge that is solely financial — that if they can figure out how to get this magical pot of gold in the sky to come down and solve their finance issues, then everything will be fine. And that’s not the case at all. I do a lot of reeducating to help people understand that there’s usually a bigger issue behind the scenes, and often there’s more than one bigger issue behind the scenes.
Another reason I don’t start with money is that many pastors don’t see financial challenges as in their domain. They’d rather have someone else take on this challenge because they weren’t trained how to in seminary.
Many seminaries are beginning to address this, which is wonderful. But regardless, if you care about your congregation and you feel the tug of God’s mission, then this challenge is for you as well. You might actually have skills and gifts to bring to it, too.
F&L: You name three things that need to be in alignment: God’s mission, community need and underutilized assets. Why do those three things have to be aligned first?
GDP: This was not something that we had originally expected, but it was a key insight that came through the interview process. When these three things come together, we tend to see the most success, both missionally and financially.
What’s fascinating is that most church leaders will say to me, “Well, Grace, I don’t want to think about my mission until the money thing is resolved,” or, “We just need more people in church. Then we can figure out this whole asset situation.”
I think those are distractions that actually keep us from focusing on the main thing. It depends on the site, but usually underutilized assets aren’t as much of the issue as we think they are. It’s knowing what the mission is and knowing what the community actually needs.
Our neighbors want to be in conversation with us no matter how much money we have in the bank. Yet we often assume we need to be in a position of power in order to have that conversation; we’ve become accustomed to that dynamic between churches and neighborhood. This is one of the unlearnings. We need to be able to meet our neighbors on common ground.
F&L: For the pastor or lay leader or congregant who says, “That all sounds great, but the roof is leaking,” what do you say to them?
GDP: It might need to be repaired tomorrow, in which case, OK, we’ve got to do that.
But sometimes churches are dealing with financial issues where they do have a bit more runway. Getting to know the exact length of that runway is very, very important in order to consider what’s on the table today and what might be on the table tomorrow.
The other challenge is that discernment takes time. If we want to get everything fixed and then start a discernment process, we actually have a longer timeline. Discernment does not happen overnight.
F&L: Are there different challenges for different-sized congregations? Or is it more that every church is different in the way they approach this?
GDP: Yes and yes. I would say every church is different — and that’s actually the beautiful part of this; each church has a unique identity entrusted to them by God.
However, there are some patterns that we’ve seen. In my experience, it’s actually less about size and more about context. We have seen some real differences across urban, suburban and rural/small-town contexts. And while there are distinct similarities, I think, between urban and rural contexts, suburban seems to be something that’s entirely different. Many suburban congregations haven’t even run into some of these same concerns yet because they often have a higher membership and a little more money in the bank at the moment. Other suburban congregations are beginning to see a pattern of decline, though. It’s just not quite as far along as what we’re seeing in some urban and rural sites.
F&L: The pattern of need is different.
GDP: It is. Urban and rural communities, particularly if they’re smaller congregations, tend to have a lot of similarities to each other in terms of their connections with their community. Their assets may be different, and the assets available in their community might be different.
People have often assumed, for instance, that in a rural or small-town site, you can’t do housing, there are no grants available, all of that. Yet even just at the beginning of our research, we’re beginning to see how those projects are emerging.
They might take different shape. For instance, a community might have land that’s been donated to them, which is something entirely unheard of at an urban site. Imagine having multiple acres of farmland donated to your church. You’re deciding, should we have a solar farm? Should we rent this out to a local farmer? Should we sell the land?
F&L: You say that assets are more than money. What are the less obvious assets?
GDP: Assets include everything. It includes the tangible and the intangible. And you’re right, it’s really easy for us to focus on the financial and property-based assets. However, even when it comes to property, we often miss some pieces of the equation.
For instance, my congregation has some underutilized space right in front of our church. It was overgrown for a long time. Nobody really paid attention to it. I guarantee you, if the congregation made a list of its top property assets, this space would just completely be ignored. Yet that is still a property asset — imagine using it for something like pickleball.
Similarly, we often don’t think about what the gifts and skills of people in our community are. We have someone in my congregation who formerly worked as a florist. No one on their time and talent inventory is thinking about the flowers! But one of the beautiful things that this member has done is helped people in our community understand how to better care for the flowers at their own homes.
F&L: How do outside partnerships work in terms of stewardship? What’s the alternative to the charity model you referred to earlier?
GDP: It can be wildly challenging for us to change our own financial mindsets about actually needing something from our outside partners. But the beautiful thing is when we both receive and give, that’s when we lean into mutual relationship. That’s when we live into beloved community together. That’s when we undo some of these dangerous power dynamics.
I think a lot of churches have assumed that outside partners won’t want to support our work because we are a religious organization, because we would be seen as proselytizing. Being clear about the variety of work that your congregation does is vital because an outside partner may want to support some of those items and not others, or they may want to give to the project as a whole.
Beyond that, in this rural and small-town project, we have seen a lot of congregations receiving grant funding from larger foundations as well as from regional bodies, denominational bodies. It’s been fascinating to see how receiving those funds has opened up space for creativity that they could never have imagined before because their budget was solely focused on keeping their doors open and the lights on. They just needed that creative spark.
Sometimes we don’t need a huge gift. Sometimes all we need is a little bit of runway to get us started. And that’s often how outside partners can help us, in addition to creating more sustainable funding. In the book I share a lot of stories about how outside funders can open doors in ways that we can’t.
F&L: What about the offering plate? It still is the primary source of money for congregations.
GDP: I think it’s really important that we define the goal of the offering. So many of us take this for granted, because the offering plate has always been a part of the worship service. We don’t really know what it’s about. Is the offering plate about supporting the congregation? Maybe. Is the offering plate about connecting in my relationship with God? Absolutely. Is it an act of worship? Definitely. That is why so many congregations include it in the liturgy.
How might we live that out differently if the offering plate wasn’t our last-ditch effort to get enough money in to support the bottom line? Diversification of funding actually frees us to do offering in a different way.
The other important thing to remember is that when you bring in different sources of funding, congregation members will assume that you are making way more than you actually are.
They may think, “OK, I understand offering is an act of worship, but I could give this money anywhere. Why should I give it here?” When you start doing these projects, it’s imperative that you bring people along. Hopefully they’ve been a part of structuring and discernment around this project, so they’re along for every step of the way.
My suggestion is always to put outside sources of funding toward the least sexy parts of your budget. For instance, if you have in tenants, the money that they pay in rent should be going toward congregational infrastructure — toward that leaky roof that you mentioned earlier, and other deferred maintenance projects.
That allows other people who are giving through the offering plate to say, “Wow, I know my money is going to support the youth mission trip, and it’s paying that pastor’s salary, and I just heard this amazing sermon. It’s allowing us to have new small groups. It’s allowing us to do social justice work in our neighborhood.” That’s the broader story that can be told.
But if you don’t do the work of being clear about that, people assume, “Great, this tenant is a godsend — they’re solving all of our financial problems.”
F&L: You identify 20 spiritual practices in your book, including clearly pertinent practices like generosity, prayer and discernment. But some of them, like anti-racism, sabbatical and laying on of hands, aren’t obviously related to fundraising or stewardship.
GDP: This was one of our most unique findings from the survey: Spiritual practices came up again and again. It was something I never would have expected, yet it makes so much sense. Because if the process is ultimately about God and not about money, why wouldn’t spiritual practices be a centerpiece?
It’s also important to remember that these projects take a long time to complete. So how do we stay focused on the mission? How do we keep patient in the midst of struggle? And our faith traditions have so much to teach us about that.
We have spiritual practices ready to help us on those long journeys. If we have to let go of a certain asset, for example, we have spiritual practices to help us through a process of grief. In those moments where God’s presence feels cloudy, where we’re not exactly sure where to go, we have practices.
These congregations were often drawing on practices that they had used for a long time — they were just using them in a different way, which leads me to believe this is actually one of the assets that a congregation might have at its disposal.
This reminds us that the entire congregation can engage in this process together.
F&L: What else do you think our readers should know about your work?
GDP: I would love for folks to keep an eye out for the rural and small-town pieces that are going to be coming soon. We have seen a really beautiful group of folks come together, and it’s been a surprising journey. We want to represent the diversity of the rural experience.
The last thing I’d share is that in the last couple years, I’ve had the chance to work with an organization called Relèven that works to preserve church properties and to create affordable housing and community hubs. So it’s been fun to take ideas from the book and put them into action in real communities and to see these conversations play out in real time.
