[This post is adapted from Greg Gibbs' book, Capital Campaign Playbook. Greg has successfully led close to 200 capital campaigns in his career and is proud to work with the team at ministryengine. If you are looking ahead to a Capital Campaign, schedule your free consulting call today.]
Where should you start the discovery phase of a capital campaign? The goal? The need? The strategy?
Step one has to be gaining clarity.
Being clear is uber-critical in any organization—especially in the church.
The Cost of Being Fuzzy
And if things have been fuzzy for a while about a church, its mission, its effectiveness, its future, its focus, or anything else, a capital campaign will expose that lack of clarity. There is nothing that exposes our organizational soft spots like a campaign.
Members of the church will put up with being a bit in the dark regarding church leadership and their intentions most of the time. We love our church and for good reasons. But, when church leaders start to say things like, “Let’s pray about giving the largest gift we’ve ever given” or “Please consider supporting the church with a financial gift beyond your current support” all of a sudden people care deeply about clarity.
They are asking themselves, “Why would I give even more to my church? What is so important that I should be praying audacious prayers about my increased giving? I’m not even sure I understand what’s going on anyway.”
5 Key Questions to Gain Clarity
The discovery process in a campaign starts with clarity. It requires uncovering (or being honest about) how much clarity exists in our congregation. Do people know the answers to the five irreducible questions of clarity: What? Why? How? When? and Where? In other words, before we start measuring for curtains in the new fellowship hall, we need to find out if people know where we are headed. Some churches need a bit of a clarity “time out.”
Before moving forward with a capital campaign, a church may need a time of refining and honing their vision and mission. Then, they may need to clarify and communicate this to the congregation. Then, and only then, will the congregation be ready to hear about projects that support that clear idea of a God-inspired future together.
I recently worked with a church in Oklahoma who originally hired me to help them conduct a capital campaign. As we started to ask the Five Irreducible Questions, it became evident that capital improvements were the least of their concerns. With a senior pastor in succession, an aging congregation, a struggling second campus, and no clear understanding of the next steps for their organizational health, there was more murkiness than would allow for an effective campaign. We took a needed time out from campaign talk and began to chip away at their real need for organizational clarity and a focused plan for the future of their ministry.
What about the generations?
Another important aspect that is critical to understand is that many of our churches are still made up of people from several generations, including the Builder generation, of whom many are financially supportive of the church. Barna and other researchers have revealed the differences in generational views of “building buildings” as well as giving behavior in general. The over-representation of the Builder generation in the positions of leadership and influence often leads the church to equate progress with building construction.
At the same time, so many churches are wondering why they aren’t connecting with the younger generations, Generation X and Millennial leaders. There are books written about this (this is not one of them) and this is an important pursuit when it comes to understanding the best direction for the church. Knowing the language and perspective of the generations in your church is critical. Some readers may need to put this book down and not consider pursuing a capital campaign until there is a better understanding of these dynamics and how they will play out at their church.
Church leaders should have solid and clear responses to questions like:
What is our vision for the future?
Who are we and who are we becoming through God’s help?
How will the projects being considered in this campaign help get us to that destination?
When we have a sense of how much vision “equity” we have with the people, we will know better how to communicate the importance of the capital projects in light of that.
For this post, I wanted to help you see that there is more to a Capital Campaign than the public phase and introduce you to the Discovery Phase. In subsequent posts we will continue to unpack each of these three phases - Discover, Design, & Disciple - to help you think through how God might lead you to steward the resources in your congregation.
