Giving Away the Weekend Offering

 

Note: This article was written by Pastor Keith Speaks of Hales Corners, Wisconsin. It was written at the request of GenerousChurch after Hales Corners Lutheran Church gave away an entire weekend’s offering as they integrated generosity as a key value in their congregation.

Generosity is a heartbeat that has energized the bloodstream of our core leadership, but it has not yet entered the entire body.  As a result, we were prayerfully searching for a catalyst.

During this searching process, we asked the question, “What if we did something ‘radical?’  What if we had a church-wide study called, ‘Radical Generosity’ and tied it to an initiative where we gave away the entire weekend offering?”  

To put this in perspective, a typical weekend offering was around $70,000-$90,000 at our place.  This was no small initiative!  So, we continued to pray and we began to plan.  

During this process, there were a number of questions that surfaced.  At the forefront of those questions was, “Who would receive the offering that we were going to give away?”  As we prayed, God inspired our focus around the following words and concepts: Mission efforts effectively meeting human needs.

We wanted this outward focused offering to be Christ centered, local and given in such as way that it would provide no tangible benefit to us.  We wanted to serve people struggling with issues like drug abuse, homelessness, human trafficking, and special needs. Therefore, God led us to three local ministries that were already working in these areas.  Hope Street was serving individuals and families that were impacted by drug and alcohol abuse. Inner Beauty Center was ministering to women in prostitution and enslaved through human trafficking.  And finally, Lutheran Special Schools was preparing students with unique learning challenges to maximize their God given spiritual, academic, emotional and social potential. 

These ministries would be the recipients of whatever God would inspire.

We began to talk about it in worship and throughout the ministry and the anticipation began to grow.  Two different couples came to me and said, “Pastor we are really excited about this thing.  We think you are nuts, but we are really excited about the Give Away!  We’d like to come behind the Give Away and make sure we still have enough income to pay the bills for the week.” Those two couples ended up giving approximately $55,000 to cover our budget expenses for the week.  Then, Give Away Sunday came and we prayed over the offering.  There was a palpable excitement over this opportunity!  Imagine that!  When the offering was counted, approximately $147,000 was received from wide-open hearts of generosity.

The next weekend was incredibly fun.  We had representatives from each of the three mission efforts with us for all of our worship services.  During our time together, they each received one of those golf-tournament-sized-checks as cheers went up to God from the people of God!  It was awesome!

Since that time, we have continued to grow the mission partnerships with each of these agencies and our story in the community has been reshaped by the generosity of God!

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To see how Pastor Keith introduced this idea to the church and to learn about one of the ministries they supported, watch the five minute videos from the website