Take the last three months of your church's life and count every time money came up. Include offering appeals, building updates, budget reports, special collections and sermons. Then sort each item into one of two columns: money as something to collect or money as something that can rule a person. In many congregations the second column stays nearly empty, even where money is mentioned every Sunday. Keep that sheet. Everything that follows starts from it.
A church that wants to fill the second column can work in a particular order. First, name greed as a rival master. Next, count what the church already owns. Then build carefully. Last, give in a way that turns the people you serve into partners. That order comes from five practitioners who talked with Lisa Fields on the Jude 3 Project podcast. Dr. Malcolm Foley is a co-pastor of Mosaic Waco and wrote a book on greed. Oye Waddell pastors Sojourn Village in South Phoenix and leads Hustle Phoenix, which helps people in marginalized communities start businesses. Bishop Vaughn McLaughlin founded the Potter's House International Ministries in Jacksonville. Dr. Heber Brown pastors Pleasant Hope Baptist Church in Baltimore. BJ Thompson directs Build Better Us. None of them hands a church one program. Each supplies the skill a congregation needs at one stage.
Every stage ends with a decision, not a mood. You will keep a single running record, the decision ledger, and add one line to it at the end of each session. By the end it should read like a plan your church could carry out: what you will say, what you will put to use, what you will build or join, and how you will give. Four honest lines will move a church further than forty inspired notes.