You just returned from an amazing mission trip. Your team members say they’ll never be the same. Your partner on the mission field says your team was the best short-term team they’ve seen.

But then what? How are you going to keep the momentum going?

That’s why we put together Mission Trip Follow-Up: Keeping the Momentum Going After the Trip. This free guide will walk you through a seven-step follow-up plan that ensures the impact of your trip keeps going long after you return.

After you apply the steps in this guide, you’ll be able to:

• Plug mission team members into similar ministries back home. 
• Help your partners build on the successes of your trip.
• Build a lifelong missions mindset into your team.

Most churches do incredible work throughout the year, but their ministry often goes unnoticed by the people who make it possible—their congregants. When churches don’t communicate what they’re doing, it’s easy for members to feel disconnected from the church’s mission. 

Over time, this lack of communication can erode trust, lower morale, and create a disconnection between your church’s leadership and the broader congregation. 

That’s why we’ve compiled a new guide to help you create an end-of-year impact report to share your story compellingly. After you read this free guide, The Ultimate Guide for Creating a Compelling Year-End Impact Report, you’ll be able to:

• Build deeper trust and transparency with your congregation as you reinforce your church’s resource stewardship.
  
  
• Inspire deeper involvement in your church as congregants learn more about what God is doing in your church.
  
  
• Transform your annual data and stories into powerful narratives that reflect your church’s ministry in the community and worldwide. 

FREE: 12-Day Outreach Guide to Reach More People, Mobilize Your Congregation, & Create Lasting Connections This Christmas

Every Christmas, your church has a unique opportunity to connect with your community and engage them in the greatest story ever told. But it’s tough. With the busyness of the Christmas season, even the most effective churches can fall short of their Christmas goals. 

• Is your church finding it challenging to engage new people during the Christmas season?
• Do you feel overwhelmed by the thought of planning effective outreach activities?
• Are you struggling to get all your congregants together to reach your community in fresh ways?

If that’s you, our new FREE guide can help! In The Power of 12 Days: An Outreach Campaign to Share Christmas Hope, we’ll provide you with a simple guide to building a 12-day outreach campaign during the Christmas season. 

Get this free guide, which includes 12 Christmas-themed outreach ideas and tips on praying, mobilizing volunteers, and spreading the word. 

FREE Guide: Budget Today for Tomorrow’s Growth

Is your church’s budget more of a stumbling block than a stepping stone to future growth? Without a budget that builds growth into your plan, your vision of engaging new people and new communities won’t happen. 

Frankly, a budget that isn’t aligned with your church’s vision is a recipe for missed opportunities and stalled growth. 

That’s why we put together Budgeting Today for Tomorrow’s Church Growth, a new free guide designed to help you create the budget you need. 

After putting into practice the insights from this guide, you’ll be able to:

• Build a budget that turns your vision into reality.
• Strategically allocate resources for maximum ministry impact.  
• Navigate an uncertain economy with confidence. 

Get a simple, step-by-step guide to creating a memorable church getaway.

Are you struggling to plan a fall retreat that truly engages your congregation? You’re certainly not alone.

Imagine spending countless hours planning a retreat only to have very few people show up.

Or picture this: you arrive at the venue for the retreat and everything is a complete mess.

Or you return from your retreat and realize you didn’t achieve any of your goals.

Our new FREE guide, Season of Renewal: Creating Impactful Fall Retreats for Your Church, can help you create an unforgettable Fall retreat minus all the drama. In this guide, you’ll learn to:

• Define your retreat goals so you can accomplish what you’ve set out to do through the retreat.
• Put together an all-star volunteer team.
• Get the word out about your plans so more people attend.

In the Appendix of this guide, you’ll also find an assortment of planning worksheets to help you do everything from budgeting to picking a venue to evaluating your retreat once you’re done.

Talking about stewardship can be tough for church leaders. Everyone feels some level of discomfort when discussing money. To help you and other leaders with this important topic, we partnered with Vanco to share with you a detailed guide that covers everything you need to know to improve financial stewardship, including…

• 8 rules of financial stewardship every church should know.
• 100+ great church fundraising ideas.
• 36 giving messages leaders can use to inspire greater generosity.
• 11 revenue sources churches shouldn’t ignore and how to use each one to generate funds.
• 17 key components for creating the perfect stewardship plan.

Are you ready for your church’s best fall yet?

September and October may be the two most important months of your church year. If your church is like most, your summer has been tough. You’ve had lower attendance, lower giving, and lower volunteer involvement. 

That makes the fall season critical. As school begins and family re-establish schedules, it’s important they make room in their schedule for church activities.   

You’ll need the right playbook to make that happen. Our new free guide, The Fall Church Communications Playbook: The Ultimate Guide to Re-Engaging Your Church Family is designed to help churches like your create a communications plan to help you reconnect with your church family this fall.

This guide helps you:

• Create a compelling message.
• Strike the right tone for your communications.
• Develop a campaign that grabs the attention of congregants. 

Uncover the secrets of saving time and stress in your church’s accounting processes.

Church accounting keeps growing more and more complex. You need to manage multiple designated funds, each with their own specific donor restrictions. Annually, you must create clear and detailed donation receipts for your donors’ tax documentation.

All of this complexity often leads to errors and inefficiencies that drag you away from the mission God has given your church.    

That’s why we created our new FREE guide Simplified Accounting: A Church Guide to Financial Clarity and Compliance. This guide will take you step-by-step through how you can simplify some of your most complex church accounting tasks.

When you apply what you learn in this guide, you’ll:

• Cut time from your accounting processes so you can invest your time in your church’s core ministry functions.
• Relieve stress from overworked staff and volunteers.
• Reduce costly errors in your church’s financial management. 

As summer nears so does a familiar challenge for churches—declining involvement. Even the most effective churches see declines in attendance, small group involvement, giving, and more. Members head off on vacation. Plus, they often want to spend more time outside and less time inside a church building. 

This isn’t just a frequently shared myth. Research shows attendance during the summer typically drops by 20%. Some churches, including those in college towns, see an even bigger decline.

But the summer slump isn’t just about numbers. It’s about missed opportunities. When engagement drops, relationships don’t get built, marriages aren’t saved, and brokenness doesn’t get healed.  

And your church’s momentum stalls—maybe permanently.

But what if we told you the summer slump was avoidable?

In our new free guide, 7 Habits of Highly Engaged Churches in the Summer, we’ll introduce you to the habits that drive engagement during the warm months of the year and beyond. This guide provides:

• Summer-specific strategies for growing (not merely steady) involvement.
  
  
• Engagement ideas for churches of all sizes.
  
  
• Involvement strategies that bring together every key area of your church.