Puzzled. Perplexed. The coach tried responding to the questions that came after losing what was a very winnable game. Everything on paper said the team should have won. They had the players, the game plan and the home field advantage. Yet in spite of the setup for an easy victory, the game was a painful loss.

Many church leaders have these same feelings when looking at their church giving patterns. They have the biblical truth, the staff and the local church as the home field advantage. Yet giving rarely reflects what it should be.

As we coach churches in giving, the data we see consistently shows a default pattern. In spite of great leadership intentions in giving, the patterns predictably show that less than 8 percent of households give 10 percent or more of their household gross income. Most of a church’s income typically comes from no more than 30 percent of its households. New givers are rare. Those with greater giving capacity tend to give more outside the church. 

How, then, do we move from great intentions to a flourishing giving culture? How do we break the common church giving patterns that yield the same dismal results? 
Best results come when church leaders make two simple but challenging decisions.

1. Intentionally craft a normalized conversation concerning faith, finances and your church. Church leaders rarely disciple people in giving principles. We tend to have committees that oversee expenses, but no team that energizes the income side. As a result, churches keep yielding the same results.

Being intentional does not mean preaching a sermon or series on giving. It means creatively and wisely normalizing the biblical conversation. It means consistently doing the following:

• Informing the congregation about why giving is vital to their spiritual growth.
• Inspiring the congregation with the church mission and the Kingdom impact.
• Modeling generous giving.
• Providing encouragement and tools to help people get started giving. 

Leaders must be ready to demonstrate that their personal giving aligns with the church. Pastors and deacons can keep one another accountable in their personal giving. Leaders cannot ask people to do things they themselves are not doing. The pace of leadership really does set the team’s pace.

Being intentional does not mean preaching a sermon or series on giving. It means creatively and wisely normalizing the biblical conversation.

Leaders can then declare and model for the congregation that they are giving consistently. Never give a financial number, but do provide a snapshot of the process. One deacon simply said: We give 12 percent of our gross income to this church because of our love for our mission and because of what God is doing in our lives. We give another 3 percent to missions because of the need to reach the world.

2. Work toward a robust giving culture. When leadership celebrates generosity, it helps normalize vigorous giving. Consider these suggestions:

• Creatively highlight the offering moment each week.
• Acknowledge in writing first-time givers.
• Regularly provide communication informing givers of the ministry impact of their offerings.
• Leverage social media to highlight the ministry impact of giving.

One church leveraging these best practices has seen a 40 percent increase in their per attendee giving. The takeaway? People are eager to learn how to give.

To assist with creating a thriving culture of generosity, Generis offers a free downloadable resource, Accelerating Generosity: How to Grow a Culture of Generosity in Your Church or Ministry, available at generis.com/influence.

One year from now, you, as the coach of your team, can declare that you have won the game. You broke free from typical church-giving malaise. You scored big in two vital areas: Your people have grown in their faith, and you have invested significantly in eternity and what matters to the heart of God.

Brad Leeper serves as president and principal at Generis, an organization that seeks to cultivate generosity in the Church. This article originally appeared in the April/May issue of Influence. For more print content, subscribe here.