As a church leader, you’ve undoubtedly heard how important it is to be a good steward of your church’s resources; among other areas included are your financial resources. No matter the size of your church – whether your weekly attendance is 50 or 5,000 – it’s crucial to the success of your ministry that you, your staff, and other church leaders understand how to be good stewards of the gifts you’re given.
Biblically speaking, stewardship is defined as the responsibility Christians have to use the gifts they’ve been given in the most effective way possible. Let’s turn that around and face your church; how are you making sense of the financial gifts provided to you by your congregation or visitors, so you’re using them to further your ministry?
Churches who are good stewards of their resources are using tools to make sense of their financial world. Many churches are accomplishing that goal by moving to Realm church management software and utilizing its integrated accounting and online giving solutions as well as other built-in analytics and reports.
Regarding online eGiving, it’s one of the best ways you can help your congregation or visitors be stewardship-focused. When you have a solution for online, text, and mobile giving, as your church can get in Realm, you’re streamlining the giving process and removing roadblocks. This makes it both easier and more effective for your congregation and visitors to give to your ministries.
But thoughtful stewardship is so much more than your just congregation giving to your ministries. It’s also about you making sense of their gifts and using them effectively to grow the Kingdom.
First, through Realm’s integrated ministry accounting solution, your staff can save time, and other resources as everything about your finances are under the single umbrella of Realm. For example, as your congregation is giving online and supporting your ministries, those gifts automatically post to Realm Contributions and funnel directly into Realm Accounting.
Secondly, how do you measure if your church is using those gifts effectively? What tools should you have to help make sense of the giving coming through your doors so you can use them to help further your ministry? Churches using Realm have adopted its reporting and analytics tools, most notably the giving and pledge dashboards.
Church leadership especially love Realm’s giving dashboard because it allows them to quickly and efficiently see how their congregation is tithing from a wide lens view but also be able to drill into particular funds. This helps them make decisions about which funds they need to raise to help support the growth of their ministries.
Churches also love Realm’s pledge dashboard as it helps leadership and staff to understand who’s on track or ahead of their pledge commitments and who might be falling behind. The church can then reach out to better understand what’s happening in their lives and shepherd them to prosperous giving.
With Realm, your church can provide tools for your congregation so they can be good stewards of their resources and help your staff and leadership better understand your finances. Click here to find out more about how Realm can help you make more informed decisions about the future of your ministry.
Use this free resource guide, Gearing up for Fall Giving, to educate and encourage your members to engage in this Biblical stewardship of tithing.
David is an Associate Product Marketing Manager and has been an ACS Technologies team member since 2011.
