George Thompson

In August’s episode of the CSN Podcast, our Host George B. Thompson welcomes special guest, Chris Willard. As Keynote Speaker for our CSN Forum Dallas in February, Chris presented a message titled, “Accelerating Generosity In Your Church.” In this conversation, you’ll hear George and Chris talk through biblical stewardship strategies and practical approaches to help people take their next steps in discipleship in the areas of stewardship and generosity. We hope you find this discussion helpful as you a build healthy stewardship ministry and develop new ways to connect with people in your church. If you have questions or to provide feedback on this podcast, please contact us at info@christianstewardshipnetwork.com. We would love to hear from you!

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Contagious Generosity: Creating A Church Culture of Stewardship and Generosity

Chris Willard

Chris Willard is a connector, consultant and communicator and is the co-author of Contagious Generosity, Creating a Culture of Giving in Church.  He has more than 30 years of ministry leadership experience and served as the executive pastor of Discovery Church in Orlando. During his tenure there, Discovery launched three multi-site venues and experienced a season of unprecedented growth.  Chris also is a member of the team of elders at Discovery. Currently, Chris serves as director of generosity initiatives for Leadership Network and as a senior generosity strategist for Generis. He has consulted with the leaders of many of the largest and most effective churches in America and Europe, helping them to accelerate growth, spiritual health and a culture of generosity, stewardship and giving. Chris and his wife Susan live in Orlando and are the parents of three young adult children.

Want to read more about this month’s episode? Here’s our transcript*:

George: Welcome to the Christian Stewardship Network. We are here to empower pastors and leaders in the local church to be the best they can be for their congregations and to be kingdom builders in the community. You can learn more about CSN by going to christianstewardshipnetwork.com. My name is George B. Thompson, your host for the Christian Stewardship Network. I serve as pastor of stewardship and finance at Faithful Central Bible Church in Los Angeles, California. It is my honor to host today’s conversation. “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalm 118:24 ) We are honored to have Chris Willard with us here today. Chris is the Co-Author of “Contagious Generosity.” Welcome, Chris.

Chris: Thanks, George. It’s really good to be with you.

George: I want to ask you a question. What made you write the book “Contagious Generosity”?

Chris: That’s a great question. It started with someone inviting me to speak at a conference, a pastors’ conference. I was asked to speak on some of the things that I have been learning in working with so many churches on this topic of how do you accelerate generosity and stewardship, how do you create a culture of giving. So, I put together an outline and delivered that breakout session. Someone in the room said, “You know, that’d be a good book.” I thought, “Well, it wasn’t even really that good of a breakout session, but; maybe it could be one day.” Then, I got smart and invited my dear friend and colleague Jim Sheppard, who is the CEO of Generis, to help co-write the book with me. That’s when it turned into something that we think can be helpful to pastors. Essentially, the book “Contagious Generosity” just answers the questions: What does it take to create a culture of generosity, stewardship and giving in the church? Jim and I have had the privilege of working with hundreds of churches over the years, and we’ve learned an awful lot from them. We share this in the book.

George: I want to talk about how to make a church have contagious generosity. When I listened to your session at the Christian Stewardship Network Forum, one of the things I realized is that you have a very extensive background. You’ve worked inside of churches for over 25 years, you’re an executive pastor, have been in Orlando for quite some time, and you’re also setting up satellite churches. So, my question to you is, “How does a church get contagious about being generous? How do you start a generous church?”

Chris: Well, I would say that it starts with the church figuring out what they believe the Bible says about generosity, stewardship, and giving. Meaning a church has to identify what they want to teach, what they want to preach, and what they are going to communicate about what they think the Bible says. And I’ll tell you George, one of the fundamental questions that a church is going to need to answer is, “Are we going to teach generosity and stewardship in giving because we wanna raise money? Or are we going to teach it because we believe that stewardship is part of discipleship? That giving is part of growing, and this issue is fundamental to spiritual formation? Because that answer will dramatically change the way, a church tackles this issue. If they’re trying to raise money, they’ll do the fundraising strategies. If they’re trying to grow people, they’ll do discipleship in this area of stewardship. So I would say that’s the place they start.

George: My hands are raised right now because I’m so excited about what you just said. I think there’s been a big change in the decision are we doing fundraising or are we growing disciples? So, how do you differentiate the two and do you think fundraising works without doing discipleship?

Chris: Yeah, you know what? Fundraising works actually. If all you want to do is raise money, then you can just borrow the tactics that are used out there in the world, apply them in the church, and you’ll raise the money. But I don’t think you’ll do it in a way that helps people’s hearts be expanded and assist them to grow spiritually. So, yeah, it works. I’m not going to tell you it doesn’t work because it does, but it’s so much better for us that we use a more spiritually-minded approach to this and think about helping people take whatever their next step is in discipleship in the area of generosity and giving. That’s the approach from the churches that we like, respect, and have worked with over the years. We have seen that approach works best.

George: It appears when you work with churches that you have a very specific strategy as to how it works and how you do it. What are some of the biblical-based strategies that help grow people in areas of discipleship? How does that work when you collaborate with a church, or when you start a church, and you want them to have a culture of generosity?

Chris: Andy Stanley framed this up nicely some years ago. He said if you want to inspire generosity and stewardship in the church, I’m paraphrasing now, but essentially he told me you have to do four things. You have to preach it, you have to teach it, you have to celebrate it, and you have to model it. So, preaching is what we do on the weekend, what we do in our printed stuff, on the web, in a video. Teaching is what we do in small groups. If life change happens in circles not rows, then we have to teach generosity and stewardship in small groups. You preach it; you teach it, you celebrate it—you say thank you, you tel