Nelson Searcy and Jennifer Dykes Henson, Maximize: How to Develop Extravagant Givers in Your Church. Baker, 2010. Also, Nelson Searcy and Jennifer Dykes Henson, The Generosity Ladder: Your Next Step to Financial Peace. Baker, 2010.
Referenced in: Giving and Financial Stewardship
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
These are two of the many resources authored by Nelson Searcy, the founding minister of the Journey Church in New York City, and based on their success in reaching over 1,000 new people (primarily twenty- and thirty-somethings) in a relatively short time. Before summarizing each of them, here is a brief list of other works by Searcy. Most are summarized on LifeandLeadership.com:
- Nelson Searcy and Jennifer Dykes Henson, Fusion: Turning First-Time Guests into Fully-Engaged Members of Your Church. Regal, 2008.
- Nelson Searcy and Jennifer Dykes Henson, Ignite: How to Spark Immediate Growth in Your Church. Baker Books, 2009.
- Nelson Searcy and Kerrick Thomas, Activate: An Entirely New Approach to Small Groups. Regal, 2008.
Maximize describes the essential philosophy of Journey’s stewardship program that came about when Searcy and his team realized they had to raise their giving significantly in order to operate without outside support as a church plant. Through intense study and prayer, he devised a process that increased giving over 60% during a six-month period. Churches Searcy has coached have averaged an increase of 33%.
The authors divide the book into five parts. Part 1 discusses the concept of biblical stewardship and how to create a culture of generosity. Parts 2-5 present specific strategies based on four different types of givers along a stewardship continuum (figure 19):
- Part 2 – First time givers: Including a very helpful section on eliminating unnecessary barriers to giving.
- Part 3 – Systematic givers: Teaching people to give when they are paid, including a section on providing five options for people to give (e.g. Sunday service giving, mailed-in giving, online giving, credit/debit card giving, automatic bank debit giving) and how to use quarterly giving statements.
- Part 4 – Tithers: Stressing the importance of educating people on tithing, and then challenging them to take God as his word and adopt a habit of tithing.
- Part 5 – Extravagant Givers: Moving people to give sacrificially over and above the tithe on a regular basis. It is best used as a way of drawing tithers deeper into a life of generosity by teaching them that the tithe is merely the jumping off point for a life of generous giving. The focus is not on promotion or arm-twisting, but education.
The Generosity Ladder is designed as a companion to Maximize, primarily for congregational use as a tool to help people progress from non-givers, to first-time givers, to systematic, to tithing, to extravagant, etc. Even if it is not used congregation-wide, church leaders may draw from it helpful suggestions on how to communicate these concepts to their members.
From the Publisher on Maximize
Turn First-Time Givers into Generous Stewards
Maximize is the ultimate how-to book for pastors and church leaders who long for their churches to be fully resourced and able to carry out ministry initiatives without financial strain. Pastor Nelson Searcy provides an innovative, step-by-step plan for turning first-time givers into extravagant stewards of God’s resources. Shining a light on the often taboo subject of money, Maximize offers an innovative, step-by-step plan for systemizing and maximizing financial gifts while growing strong disciples. You’ll learn how to”
- Cultivate first-time givers
- Challenge people to tithe
- Develop an ongoing stewardship system
- Follow up with givers the right way
- Develop multiple giving options
- Shepherd the five types of givers in your church
- Educate people to grow in the grace of giving
Stewardship is an essential part of discipleship. This revolutionary, biblically based guide will chase the money discussion out of the darkness and bring it the attention it deserves.
From the Publisher on The Generosity Ladder
The Generosity Ladder is the quintessential guidebook for anyone who desires to handle money with excellence. Written as an answer to all of the questions and misunderstandings that surround the intersection of God and money, The Generosity Ladder clarifies, once and for all, what the Bible really says about honoring God with our finances and details a step-by-step plan for attaining financial excellence.
Published alongside Maximize, Nelson Searcy’s much-anticipated stewardship guidebook for church leaders, The Generosity Ladder will allow laypeople to fully grasp God’s plan for their finances, acknowledge their current level of stewardship, and chart out the steps they need to take in order to handle money in a way that honors God.
About the Authors
NELSON SEARCY is the founding pastor of The Journey Church of the City in New York, New York, which reaches more than 1100 twenty- and thirty-somethings each week. Over the last three years, Nelson has personally trained more than 1100 church planters through his own seminars and training events with Saddleback Church in California. In addition, he has produced a wide range of successful church planting resources through his website churchleaderinsights.com and has co-authored Launch: Starting a New Church from Scratch. Nelson is an active church planting coach, church growth consultant and publisher of the semi-monthly online resource Evangelism Online, which is distributed to 16,000 pastors each month. Prior to starting The Journey, he was the founding director of the Purpose Driven Community at Saddleback Church.
Jennifer Dykes Henson is a freelance writer based in New York City. Prior to moving to New York, Jennifer worked with Dr. Charles Stanley as the manager of marketing communications for In Touch Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
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