Show Notes

In this solo episode, Joy Suzanne Hunt discusses the importance of teaching your church about personal finance, and shares six practical ways to talk about money at church:

Teach on tithing and offering during weekly services, using resources like generosity calendars. Offer Financial Peace University, a 9-week biblically based personal finance course. Incorporate financial teaching into discipleship programs. Teach finances to kids and youth using age-appropriate resources. Plan a sermon series on finances as part of the annual preaching calendar. Provide financial coaching by connecting with trained coaches or equipping someone in the church.

Joy also shares a personal story highlighting the importance of community and support in financial journeys, and recommends the Fly on the Wall Podcast with Chris Sonksen (Episode 118) for insights on cultivating generosity in the church.

She invites listeners to access a free 60-minute Money Talk Planner at pastorsandmoney.com/moneytalkplanner to assess current practices and plan future financial teachings in the church.

Resources:

• Free 60-minute Money Talk Planner
• Fly on the Wall Podcast (coaching for pastors)
• Tithely Church Offering Talks
• Financial Peace University
• Free Financial Peace University for Pastors
• Foundations in Personal Finance curriculum
• Find a Financial Coach to Work with Your Church Members

Full Transcript Introduction

Joy Suzanne: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Pastors & Money Podcast. I’m Joy Suzanne Hunt, pastor and financial coach, bringing you conversations about personal finance, church finance and how we disciple our churches in the areas of finance and stewardship. You can find the episode show notes and more at pastorsandmoney.com. And here’s the show.

Hello there. I’m Joy Suzanne Hunt, and this is episode number six of the podcast and it is Thursday, June 6th, 2024 as I record this. Today’s episode is a solo episode, and we’ll be talking about six ways to talk about money at your church.

The Importance of Community for Pastors

But before we get there, I wanted to share something that came up in one of my financial coaching groups last night. One of our members came back after having missed several weeks and she was struggling [00:01:00] with feeling like there was no end date to her getting out of debt. And so we talked about her numbers for a moment and the reality is she could be debt free within the next year or so with some focus and intentionality. The only thing standing in the way is herself, and that’s a factor she can control.

We had some great conversations last night about making sure you set yourself a goal to work towards, and some small, quick wins that you can celebrate along the way, and just the importance of remembering why you’re working on your finances in the first place, and just the importance of staying connected together with a group. It was a change in perspective. And my client left the call feeling hopeful and encouraged and motivated.

And here’s what stood out to me: we are not meant to do this alone. Each person in our group added value last night by sharing their experiences. And offering ideas and encouragement. Even being vulnerable, in the right context, adds value to the rest of the group and makes it a safe place for others [00:02:00] to be authentic.

As pastors, we aren’t meant to do life alone either. Sometimes we feel like we can’t share with anyone because of the position of leadership we’re in. And it can be a lot of pressure, but we need that community.

Don’t Do Ministry Alone

I’m reading the book of Acts right now. Do you think the apostles got discouraged as they launched the early church? Of course they did. We know, partly because we watched them get discouraged even when Jesus was physically with them on the earth. But they weren’t alone. They had the Holy Spirit, and they had the community, a community that was united, devoted to each other, praying for each other and really doing battle together.

So my challenge and my invitation to you is this: don’t do life alone. Don’t do ministry alone. Get some people in your corner: people in your church, but also people outside your church. That’s really important. It’s going to take work and it may take several tries to find the people that are going to be your people, the ones that you click with. But it’s so worth it.

We need you to stick with it, Pastor. The work [00:03:00] you do to serve, to reach the lost, to build God’s kingdom; It’s so important. Don’t do it alone. And if you need someone to talk to, please reach out to me. I’d love to have a conversation with you. I’d love to even connect you with some of our other pastors. Pastors need friends too. That is the real deal.

Podcast Recommendation: Fly on the Wall Podcast

So this week I was listening to the Fly on the Wall Podcast with Chris Sonksen from Church Boom. And if you have not listened to this podcast, definitely put it on your list. The episodes are pretty short, short enough for your quick commute. It’s actually a live coaching call where he’s talking to pastors about the different challenges that we face.

Episode 118 has a great conversation about cultivating generosity in your church. And so I wanted to share that with you. He talks about putting together a generosity calendar, which we’ll actually discuss in today’s episode. And he has some great suggestions for following up with first and second time givers and splash givers, those folks that go in and drop a big gift every once in a while. So you can find the podcast at [00:04:00] churchboom.org or on your favorite podcast app and I’ll drop the link in the show notes as well.

Personal Updates and Listener Appreciation

In personal news this week, I started studying the book of Acts again in preparation for writing my next Real World Bible Study guide. Acts is one of my favorite books to teach and I’m really enjoying getting to refresh and just soak it all in before I get into the writing phase of this project. I find myself reading through these stories of the early church and challenged to pray for my own church and for our generation in a different way. So I’m having a lot of fun with that, and I’m sure I’ll share more with that as the book gets further along.

And thank you for your emails and your comments. You can leave a comment on the podcast show notes at pastorsandmoney.com/podcast or on the YouTube channel or message me on Instagram or Facebook @PastorsandMoney. You can also email me joy@pastorsandmoney.com. I love to hear from you. It makes us more of a conversation.

How You Can Support the Show

This show is supported by my community at patreon.com/pastorsandmoney. If [00:05:00] you join the community, you get access to my monthly Q & A, where I answer questions about personal finance, church finance and more. The Patreon is a monthly subscription for $5 a month. Or if you’re feeling generous, you can do $20 a month and you’ll be able to join a monthly group coaching call. So if you feel you get value from the show and you want more come join us at Patreon.com/pastorsandmoney. And now let’s get to our main topic for today. ​

Why Do We Need to Talk About Money at Church?

Personal finance or money in general is one of those topics that it’s a little bit awkward, right? We don’t usually like to talk about it in public or sometimes even in private. Sometimes even with our families, we’re a little bit nervous to talk about money. And especially in church, we worry that people think we’re going to have an ulterior motive or we don’t feel confident enough in our own skills or in how we handle money to be able to teach somebody else. Sometimes it’s just that we don’t have a plan on how we’re going to do it.

But the Bible talks a lot about [00:06:00] money. So it’s important for us to teach about money in our churches. Roughly 2000 verses in the Bible are about money. And it’s really a discipleship issue. Matthew 6:21 says where your treasure is there, your heart will be also. And so if we’re discipling our people, we’re talking about heart business. And so we have to be able to tackle this really key area.

Money is a lot like a mirror. If you look at your calendar or your bank statement, you can tell where your priorities are. And a lot of us struggle to get those priorities in line with God’s priorities. And so teaching about money is just so crucial. But like I said earlier, a lot of times we don’t really have a plan for how we’re going to do it, or we just feel awkward or uncomfortable. So we don’t know what to do.

Free Strategy Planner to Help You Talk About Money at Church

So, in this episode, we’ll talk about six ways we can talk about money at church, but also I will have a free resource available to you. It’s at [00:07:00] pastorsandmoney.com/moneytalkplanner, and it’s a free 60-minute strategy planner (Think like a workbook, right?) to help you figure out how you’ll talk about money at church. So that’s pastorsandmoney.com/moneytalkplanner. Let’s go ahead and get started.

#1 Talk About Money at Church by Teaching on Giving During Weekly Services

So the first place that we can talk about money at church is in our weekly services. So we can teach on tithing and offering in the weekly services. It’s important to make sure we have that time in the service to be taking the tithe and taking the offering because it becomes part of the regular rhythm, just like prayer should be part of our regular rhythms of our life and our discipleship.

But it’s also important to use a little bit of that time to teach about it. And it can be language that you use, that you choose to speak both to new people and to regular attendees. You could talk about giving consistently and we really want to build a healthy financial culture within the church.

[00:08:00] So, our church members need to understand that this is part of our regular discipleship. And the great thing about doing this in a weekly service is somebody who may never show up to a class is going to hear this and they’re going to hear in little bite-sized pieces. And if you actually go to the Tithely website, they have a really great resource that will give you money talks that you can use throughout the year in your church, just to give you some fresh ways to be able to share about giving during that time.

Use a Generosity Calendar to Plan How You’ll Talk About Money at Church

Another thing that might be helpful in your services is to use a generosity calendar to encourage regular giving. A generosity calendar basically means you’re planning throughout the year what you’re going to do in terms of generosity. Maybe you’re going to have a special goal for a ministry. Maybe you’re going to have a special event or a fundraiser. Or maybe it’s just the calendar of the teaching that you’re going to give, but making that calendar allows you to be really intentional about it. It also allows you [00:09:00] to sort of delegate to yourself or to your team, right? You spent the time to develop that calendar, to pull in the resources, and then you can focus on other things because you’ve already got it taken care of.

So that’s number one is to use your weekly services to incorporate teachings on tithing and on giving.

#2 Offer Financial Peace University

The second way we can talk about money at church, and this is really one of my favorites, is Financial Peace University. Financial Peace University is a nine-week biblically based personal finance course. It’s offered through Ramsey Solutions. There’re a couple of different formats: there’s an in-person format, or you can do a virtual format, and they provide video lessons so you can use this completely out of the box. If you’ve never done it before, and you’ve never offered a personal finance course at your church before, you can use Financial Peace straight out of the box.

What does Financial Peace University Teach?

It’s going to cover everything from getting out of debt and avoiding debt in the future, to how to do a budget, to dealing with things like insurance and investing and planning [00:10:00] for retirement. And the best lesson of all, I think, is lesson nine. At least at the time of this recording, lesson nine is the generosity lesson, and it’s really powerful.

But what I love about this course is that it really gives your church members an opportunity to learn end to end what biblical personal finance can look like. And they can do it in the context of a community because personal finance is really only 20 percent “head knowledge.” The rest of it is the behavior part; it’s the personal part. And so I would encourage you to bring Financial Peace University to your church. The Ramsey team is really great about helping churches get started with this program. I’m also willing to help anybody who wants to get started with this program.

Set the Example: Pastors Should Take Financial Peace University, Too.

And I would encourage you, as you feel comfortable, to participate in the course alongside your church members. Set an example. This is not a thing for you. It’s a thing for us. You’ll grow in your own understanding or sometimes it’s something that you already know. Maybe you’ve even already been through the course before. [00:11:00] But in each season of your life, something different will stand out to you.

Also, if you go to the Ramsey website, they actually have Financial Peace University available for free for pastors to take on their own. And sometimes they’ll have different coaching cohorts or things like this for pastors to be able to have open financial conversations without your church members there, which can be really valuable as well. And it can help you get an idea of what the course looks like before you bring it to your church.

So that’s our second one, Financial Peace University.

#3 Incorporate Financial Teaching into Discipleship Programs

The third way you can talk about money at church is to incorporate it into your discipleship program, whatever that looks like. Most churches, or many churches, have a formal discipleship program or a course that you have. If you don’t, you should definitely do some research and get that going. But look to see if your course that you have offers a personal finance component. It’s part of the regular rhythms of our walking with God, just like any other [00:12:00] part of our behavior.

And if say your curriculum does not have something like that, then you can build something in. Even, you know, I know pastors who offer marriage counseling, but they also require people going through marriage counseling to go through Financial Peace. So you can use something like Financial Peace, or even just some pieces of those lessons to be able to talk about spiritual growth as it relates to our finances in your discipleship program. And it can open the door to point people to a more in-depth program like the Financial Peace class.

#4 Teach Finances to Kids and Youth

So the fourth way that you can talk about money at church is with your kids and your youth ministries. And this is really important because a lot of us as adults, financially, when we start to learn these principles, we really have a lot to clean up. We have a big mess. But if we can instill these principles with our kids and with our youth at a young age, they won’t ever have to clean up that mess, or at least they’ll be equipped with the tools to avoid it.

Resources for Talking About Money with Kids at Church

And so there are some [00:13:00] different resources that you can use for this. Ramsey Solutions has a Foundations in Personal Finance curriculum for high school students. It is a school curriculum and they have a homeschool version of it. So this may not be something that you use directly in your youth group, but it can give you some ideas for how you can incorporate this discussion.

You could have a series, you could have different activities or a guest speaker come out to teach financial principles to your kids and your youth. I did this with a church recently. And just like you’re regularly teaching about prayer and you’re regularly teaching about reading the Bible with your kids or with your youth, you should be regularly teaching about giving and managing our finances.

And so this might look like a short five or 10 minute activity or an offering talk maybe a couple times a year. Maybe it looks like the fact that you are regularly taking an offering in your kid’s church, in your Sunday school or in your youth ministry.

The other [00:14:00] thing you can do there is there’s a Financial Peace Junior. It’s not a full length course, but it has some books and some tools that parents can use. And so that’s something that you can use with your parents that are in your church, but also with the kids’ programs that you have in your church.

#5 Plan a Sermon Series on Finances

So the fifth way that you can talk about money at church is to have a sermon series and you can incorporate it into your annual calendar. There’re a couple of different ways to do this. So I spoke to a pastor who, rather than doing a series, he said the second Sunday of every month, he would talk about something finance-related because it was a big need in their church.

River Valley, in their Generosity Accelerator training, they talk about having a series once a year, that’s three weeks. And they talk about tithing and outrageous generosity and biblical personal finance. You may do something like that. You may develop your own, but build it into your annual calendar. So as you’re planning out your preaching for the year, [00:15:00] decide how you’re going to preach about finance, because it is important. And we’re missing a huge part of our discipleship, not building this in. And let’s be honest, most of us will avoid talking about it. So we need to put it on the calendar, have a plan to do it.

#6 Provide Financial Coaching

And finally, the sixth way that you can talk about money at church is to have financial coaching available for members of your church. Financial coaching is a little bit like a personal trainer for your wallet. It’s somebody who’s going to work with an individual or a couple or even a family to develop a customized plan for their particular situation, help them set the goals that they want to set and then be able to work a plan to reach towards those goals.

A coach can also be a really great resource for somebody who’s going through a crisis situation or even who’s struggling and maybe they’re going to marriage counseling, but they also have this financial component of it as well. Financial coaching really deals with the [00:16:00] behaviors that we have around money.

How to Provide Financial Coaching in Your Church

So with this, you want to have a coach that’s ready, that you already have a connection with, so that you can refer your members to them when needed. There’re a couple of different ways that you can do this. You may already have somebody in your church. You may send somebody in your church to get trained as a coach, or you can reach out to us and we can help you get connected with a coach. If you go to pastorsandmoney.com/coachfinder, there will be a short form for you to fill out, and we can help you connect with a coach that you can refer your members to.

There are different ways that you can set this up. Sometimes it’s just a straight referral program. Sometimes they might come and also speak or do something else.

But it’s a good person to already have in your back pocket, because when you have a person that is struggling or is in crisis, maybe they need more than Financial Peace University can offer, or maybe they need help at a time that class is not meeting, you want to have that resource already in your back pocket.

So again, you can go to [00:17:00] pastorsandmoney.com/coachfinder if you need help finding a coach that can be a resource available to your church.

Let’s Talk About Money at Church: Free Strategy Planner

So to summarize, the six ways that we can talk about money at church are during our weekly services, using Financial Peace University, incorporating finance into your discipleship programs, teaching about finance in your kids and your youth ministries, having a sermon series, or maybe a once a month or once a quarter rhythm of speaking about finance as a sermon and also financial coaching.

And if you want to be thinking more about this, “how do I continue to talk about money at church?,” I would encourage you to sign up for our free 60-minute strategy planner to help you figure out what your plan is going to be, where you have gaps in your current process, and where you want to make those changes.

Again, you can sign up for that at pastorsandmoney.com/moneytalkplanner. That’s [00:18:00] pastorsandmoney.com/moneytalkplanner. And this is really a workbook, and it’s a guided experience. It’s a guided self coaching experience where it’s going to ask you questions to be able to see what’s our current state and then how can we get where you want to go from there.

Closing

So I look forward to talking to you next time. Have a great week.

Thank you for listening to today’s show. I’d love to know what you think about it. You can leave a comment on the show notes at pastorsandmoney.com/podcast, or email me at joy@pastorsandmoney.com. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, share, and leave a review. This helps us to get the word out and invite more people into these conversations.

If you’d like to connect, you can find me on Instagram or Facebook @PastorsandMoney. I can’t wait to talk again [00:19:00] soon.