M3 Money · Lesson 2 of 4

Lesson 2 — Giving Health and Generosity Culture

Evaluate giving patterns without reducing stewardship to fundraising.

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Nine M curriculum version 1.0 · Nine M methodology, content, exercises and deliverables by Pastor Lee Jenkins.

Where this lesson sits

Curriculum version 1.0 · Pastor Lee Review

Module purpose: Strengthen stewardship, financial visibility, giving, budgeting, cash flow, controls, reserves, and long-term sustainability.

Official outcome: Church Financial Health and Stewardship Plan

This lesson produces: Giving Health Analysis

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Learn

Participant study reading — approximately 90 minutes of learning and shared work.

Learning objective: Evaluate giving patterns without reducing stewardship to fundraising.

Recommended participants: Pastor, treasurer, generosity or stewardship team lead, and one board member

Estimated teaching time: 90 minutes

Success indicators

• Leadership can state the church's participation rate, average gift and recurring-giving share using aggregated data only
• Three specific opportunities and three specific risks in giving health have been named
• The team can describe lapsed-contributor and top-household concentration patterns without referencing any identifiable individual
• A plan exists to connect giving-health findings to a generosity teaching emphasis rather than a fundraising appeal

Materials and evidence you will use

• Stewardship Nsites Connect aggregated giving report
• Prior-year giving comparison, if available
• Aggregated data source cited for each metric
• At least one confidentiality-respecting pastoral response drafted

What you should be able to produce

• Leadership can state the church's participation rate, average gift and recurring-giving share using aggregated data only
• Three specific opportunities and three specific risks in giving health have been named
• The team can describe lapsed-contributor and top-household concentration patterns without referencing any identifiable individual
• A plan exists to connect giving-health findings to a generosity teaching emphasis rather than a fundraising appeal

Foundational ministry principle

2 Corinthians 9:6-7

6 But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. 7 Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.

King James Version (KJV) · Public domain

This passage is proposed here because it frames generosity as a matter of the heart and cheerful choice rather than compulsion, which sets the tone for analyzing giving data pastorally instead of transactionally.

As draft framing only, the facilitator might note that measuring giving health is meant to help the church cultivate cheerful, growing generosity, not to pressure individuals, pending Pastor Lee Jenkins' review of this application.

Understand the concept

Your work in this lesson focuses on this outcome: Evaluate giving patterns without reducing stewardship to fundraising.

Giving health data, read in aggregate and with pastoral care, helps a church cultivate generosity rather than merely chase it.

Why it matters for your church

High concentration in a small number of households creates real financial exposure if any one of them steps back.

Lapsed contributors who go unnoticed represent both a financial and a pastoral relationship risk.

A low recurring-giving share makes monthly cash flow harder to forecast and budget against.

Examine the evidence

Use Stewardship Nsites Connect aggregated giving report, and Prior-year giving comparison, if available to compare your church's present practice with its stated intentions. Look for documented patterns, missing information, and differences between what people assume and what the evidence supports.

Your completed work should be supported by Aggregated data source cited for each metric, and At least one confidentiality-respecting pastoral response drafted. Record uncertainty honestly so your team knows what still needs to be verified.

Prepare for the shared exercise

Evaluate aggregate giving patterns and translate them into specific opportunities and risks for leadership action. The Giving Health Analysis produces the Giving Health Analysis, which contributes to the module's principal deliverable.

Before working with your team, consider this reflection: What would change in how I personally talk about giving if I saw it primarily as discipleship rather than fundraising?

Key terms

Participation rate: The percentage of active giving households that made at least one gift during a defined period.
Recurring-giving share: The portion of total giving that arrives through scheduled recurring gifts rather than one-time gifts.
Giving concentration: The share of total giving contributed by the top-giving households, used as an indicator of financial fragility.

What this means for a church

• High concentration in a small number of households creates real financial exposure if any one of them steps back
• Lapsed contributors who go unnoticed represent both a financial and a pastoral relationship risk
• A low recurring-giving share makes monthly cash flow harder to forecast and budget against

Common failure patterns

• Using giving data only during a capital campaign rather than as an ongoing health check
• Discussing individual givers by name in a full board or committee setting, which undermines confidentiality
• Treating a dip in giving purely as a fundraising failure rather than exploring pastoral or communication causes

Ministry case

The Quiet Cost of a Concentrated Base

A congregation discovered, using an aggregated giving report, that a very small share of giving households accounted for a large majority of annual income. No one had run this calculation before because the church had simply never asked the question.

Rather than treating this as alarming, the stewardship team used the discovery to launch a broader recurring-giving invitation aimed at increasing participation across more households, reducing dependence on the small group at the top over the following year while still honoring and thanking every giver appropriately.

Lesson takeaway

Giving health data, read in aggregate and with pastoral care, helps a church cultivate generosity rather than merely chase it.

Discuss

Guided discussion for the leadership table.

With opportunities and risks named from the data, let's talk about how we want to respond pastorally, not just financially, to what we've found.

What surprised us most in the six giving metrics, and why?
How should our approach to lapsed contributors change based on today's findings?
What would it look like to increase recurring giving without pressuring anyone?
How does our current giving concentration affect how we should plan for the next budget cycle?

Discussion notes

Practice

Applied exercise — produces the Giving Health Analysis.

Giving Health Analysis

Evaluate aggregate giving patterns and translate them into specific opportunities and risks for leadership action.

Estimated time: 50 minutes

Participants: Pastor, treasurer, generosity or stewardship team lead, and one board member

Artifact produced: Giving Health Analysis

Required inputs

• Trailing twelve-month aggregated giving report from Stewardship Nsites Connect
• Prior-year comparison figures, if available

Instructions

Pull the aggregated giving report for the trailing twelve months.
Calculate participation rate, average gift, recurring-giving share, digital versus cash mix, lapsed-contributor count, and top-household concentration.
Record each metric with its supporting figure on the worksheet. Complete it online
Compare each metric to the prior year where data allows.
As a group, name exactly three opportunities the data reveals.
As a group, name exactly three risks the data reveals.
Draft one pastoral or teaching response for each risk named.

Complete it online

Giving Health Analysis

Church name: ______________________
Reporting period: ______________________
Prepared by: ______________________

Metric	This year's figure	Prior year figure	Opportunity or risk	Proposed response

Your response — Giving Health Analysis

Worked example

A fully completed sample using a fictional church. This is illustrative teaching material, not any church's actual data.

Cedar Valley Fellowship (illustrative example — not actual church data)

Cedar Valley Fellowship is a fictional congregation of about 340 attendees used here to model a completed giving health analysis.

Metric	This year's figure	Prior year figure	Opportunity or risk	Proposed response
Participation rate	58%	54%	Opportunity — rising trend	Highlight in generosity month teaching
Recurring-giving share	41%	33%	Opportunity — stability improving	Promote recurring option at year-end
Top-household concentration	top 8% give 47% of total	top 8% gave 44%	Risk — rising concentration	Broaden participation campaign next quarter

How this leadership team reasoned

• Cedar Valley's team noted that rising participation and recurring share are genuine strengths worth celebrating publicly without naming individuals.
• The team also recognized that concentration rising alongside participation meant the top givers were giving even more, which is a risk worth watching even though overall giving looked healthy.

Decisions recorded

• The stewardship lead was assigned to design a spring teaching series on everyday generosity aimed at broadening participation beyond the top-giving households.
• The treasurer agreed to flag lapsed-contributor names, using an illustrative estimate of 22 households, to the pastoral care team for private, confidential follow-up rather than a public giving appeal.

Completed artifact extract — Giving Health Analysis

Giving health summary: participation and recurring share are both trending upward, a genuine strength. Concentration is also rising and should be monitored over the next two reporting cycles alongside continued efforts to broaden the giving base.

Illustrative exercise score: 18 of 20. Cedar Valley's team calculated every metric accurately, tied opportunities and risks directly to the data, and proposed specific, confidentiality-respecting responses, with only minor room to sharpen the digital-versus-cash analysis.

Score

Transparent 20-point exercise rubric: four criteria rated 0 to 5 with observable anchors.

Criterion	0 — not evident	3 — acceptable	5 — exemplary	Sample
Completeness (0–5)	Fewer than three of the six required metrics were calculated.	All six metrics were calculated but prior-year comparison was skipped.	All six metrics were calculated with prior-year comparison and three opportunities and three risks fully recorded.	5
Use of evidence (0–5)	Opportunities and risks were stated without reference to any calculated metric.	Some opportunities and risks referenced metrics, others were general impressions.	Every opportunity and risk is explicitly tied to a specific calculated metric.	5
Alignment to the module purpose (0–5)	The analysis focused only on raising more money rather than understanding generosity culture.	The analysis balanced financial and pastoral framing but leaned heavily toward fundraising language.	The analysis consistently framed findings in terms of discipleship and pastoral care alongside financial stability.	4
Actionability and ownership (0–5)	No responses or owners were proposed for any risk.	Responses were proposed but owners were vague.	Every risk has a specific proposed response with a named owner.	4
Worked sample total				18 / 20

Completeness: Cedar Valley recorded all six metrics with comparisons and completed the full opportunity and risk set.
Use of evidence: Each entry on Cedar Valley's worksheet cites the specific metric behind it.
Alignment to the module purpose: The response plan is pastorally framed, though the teaching-series proposal still leans slightly toward a campaign mindset.
Actionability and ownership: Both major risks have named owners and concrete next steps, though target dates were not yet set for the teaching series.

Lesson-exercise scores (20 points each) demonstrate learning and artifact quality. They do not automatically overwrite the official Nine M module assessment, which remains a separate 100-point rating of five module dimensions.

Submit evidence

What must be submitted for this lesson to count as complete.

Submit

• Completed Giving Health Analysis worksheet with all six metrics, three opportunities, and three risks

Attach this evidence

Aggregated data source cited for each metric
At least one confidentiality-respecting pastoral response drafted

File upload is not implemented in this prototype. Ticking a box records that the church can produce the document; it does not store a file.

Contribute to official outcome

How this lesson builds the Church Financial Health and Stewardship Plan.

Artifact produced: Giving Health Analysis

Becomes the giving-analysis section of the Church Financial Health and Stewardship Plan and informs the giving-health dimension score.

Open the module deliverable assembly

Participant reflection and notes

What would change in how I personally talk about giving if I saw it primarily as discipleship rather than fundraising?

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