Encouraging people to give tithes and offerings can be uncomfortable, but coming up with a compelling message will help you connect with your congregation and raise more money for your church. In this blog, we share the importance of short and personalized messages that connect with your church’s mission and tools to make it easier to give.
Tithing is an important part of supporting your church, but more than that it’s an important way for your congregation to feel connected to their larger community. They want to provide offerings – but they might be more inspired to give if asked with the right tithes and offering message.
Asking for tithes and offerings the same way every service can quickly become stale. That’s why it’s important to think of some new ways to make your ask that can also enrich your service with a new take on why tithing is such a valuable act for all involved.
In this article, we’ll look at 15 tithes and offering messages and meditations for churches. But before that, let us have a look at how you can come up with the most compelling tithes and offerings messages for your church.
Let’s face it: church giving is harder now than it ever was. You have to use every tool you have available to you to make the most out of your fundraising efforts, whether that’s online giving, text-to-give, or the more traditional, in-person act of collecting offerings.
Gone are the days of just sharing bible verses. Although bible verses share vital stories about tithing and making offerings, it is up to you to convey their full meaning to your congregation and connect those stories to our modern lives. This goes hand-in-hand with growing giving for your church.
The key to coming up with a compelling tithes and offerings message or meditation is to:
A great tithes and offerings message is specific, short, and sermon-ready. Bonus points for getting your congregation to think about tithing in a new light. After all, your job is to inspire your congregants on their journey toward real connection with God.
Your tithes and offerings message is an opportunity to build meaningful long-lasting relationships with church donors to bring more value to your church.
Keep this in mind as you plan your next sermon! Without further ado, let’s dive into some tithes and offering messages.
Consider these messages as a jumping-off point for you to personalize and specify. They are not complete, but they present key ideas that you can use to present a compelling tithing message to your congregation.
Ultimately, we tithe to support our church and our community and to thank them for the support they give us. But tithing is also a way to thank God for blessings and make room for more blessings in the future. It is a way to sow, to invest in the church, so that all may reap the blessings to come – pressed down, shaken together, to make room for more.
We tithe to show how awesome our God is. Lord, your God, owns all—everything on Earth and beyond is holy to Him. When we tithe, we offer up to Him what is His, and show that we recognize this ownership as a constant blessing upon us all. After all, God loves a cheerful giver.
Remember that giving is the ultimate way to ensure the true richness of spirit. Without giving and thus becoming richer in spirit, you become watered down, lost in the flood of your own greed. Give to enrich your life while you are on this Earth so that you may avoid becoming watered down, lost floating in a sea of empty belongings.
Giving is the anchor that holds you through a stormy night.
There is no treasure on Earth like the treasure that awaits us in heaven. Isn’t that ultimately the most important treasure? Shouldn’t that be where our heart lies?
That’s why we must practice tithing to show God that our heart lies not in our wealth on Earth, but in a wealth of spirit and faith. Nothing we own is as great as that which we will one day inherit in heaven. This humility is holy to the lord.
Like prayer, tithing is a kind of communication with Lord, your God. It’s a way for your congregation to show that they know the value of your church; that through giving, they are remaining close to God and His teachings.
Tithing is an action—a physical, decisive action that one takes out of the goodness of their hearts. And through this action, those who tithe are offered something very valuable in return: a kind of greatness. Ask your congregants to meditate on the way their giving brings them closer to God. God loves a cheerful giver!
None of us ever do anything great on our own. It is God who gives us what we need to thrive. Without His support, we would have nothing. That’s why you should ask your congregants to remember where their wealth came from—and how important it is to thank Him.
By tithing, we can remember God in our weekly activities, and thus remember all He has done for us.
We all have cravings because we are human and fallible, says the Lord.
Being righteous means it’s okay to acknowledge that as a human, you have cravings. It means that you make up for those cravings with giving—in other words, you release yourself from the clutches of greed by giving back to the church and thus finding righteousness.
Giving thanks is an important part of living faithfully. When you ask your congregants to tithe, they are showing gratitude for how your church supports them. Remind them how grateful you are for this support. How, without them, your mission to spread God’s word would be impossible. Encourage them to thank each other for their support and community.
Churches are ultimately a force of good in the community. When your congregants tithe to your church, they know their gifts are supporting important programming efforts to make life better for all. Churches give to the needy and serve as a pillar of hope in the community. That’s why they should feel good being generous; because each tithe will be repaid even more in blessings.
We don’t often talk about the rewards of a life of service to God as one of “repayment.” But this is an excellent way for you to put your congregants’ tithing into perspective. Their reward is to support the church and the community the church supports—but it is also an act to support God.
Tithing and offerings are actually acts of giving worship to God. Like prayer and singing, tithing shows God your appreciation and awe.
With all that God provides for us, the least we can do in return is share what we have with our community and those that instruct us in the word of God.
We’ve all heard it before: nobody’s perfect. And it’s true. As humans, we are fallible and so far from perfect. But through being generous, we can experience a kind of perfection afforded to us by Jesus.
Giving generously to others brings us closer to perfection in the eyes of God. Ask your congregants to meditate on what their offerings mean to them and how they might bring them closer to Jesus.
When it comes down to it, we must remember that we reap what we sow—and so we must sow goodness and generosity wherever we can.
Ask your congregants to consider what they hope to get out of their service. Do they leave with full hearts? Do they leave with something to consider, something to mull over? What value do they find in attending the service?
Remind them that just like their blessings, they reap what they sow when attending service. They will get out of it whatever they put into it in terms of effort, care, and attention.
It doesn’t take a lot to remember God in your everyday activities.
By setting aside a small offering, you are showing God that you understand that your wealth is all possible thanks to His grace. Even the smallest offerings honor God and show Him that you acknowledge His guidance in your day-to-day life. After all, we enjoy the fruits of the kingdom of God.
Giving is sometimes hard work—we feel we don’t have enough, or we can’t do any more than we possibly already are. Do not overwhelm yourself and take into account Jesus’s words, that all of your hard work will pay off. Remember that it is noble to help the weak and through your help, you will receive even more blessings.
It’s a simple idea, but sometimes simple ideas really stick: if you put good into the world, you will get good back out. This is especially true when considering tithing.
When you give tithes and offerings, be prepared for your generosity to come back to you in equal or greater measure.
Ready to put these messages into action? Check out this webinar with special guest Dr. Stan DeKoven to learn how to cultivate a culture of generosity in your church.
Now it’s your turn to take these tithes and offering messages and make them specific to your church, your church members, your message, and your need.
It’s all about finding creative ways to show the importance of tithing to your congregation–as an act that benefits them, your church, and your community.
For more helpful tips and resources, check out the rest of our nonprofit blog. Also, here you can find our blogs dedicated to churches and church fundraising. We hope they’ll enable you to engage your supporters better and ensure your church’s growth.
If you need help with fundraising or currently looking for an affordable fundraising solution, Donorbox is there for you. We’ve helped thousands of churches across the globe accept tithes and offerings with our recurring donation form, text-to-give feature, crowdfunding campaigns, donor management tool, and more. Check out our website and our features to know more.
Lindsey spent years wearing many hats in the nonprofit world. Whether she was helping arts nonprofits with their messaging and content, planning a fundraising gala, writing an NEA grant proposal, or running a membership program with over 400 members, she learned how to navigate – and appreciate! – the fast-paced world of fundraising. Now, she loves sharing those hard-earned lessons with the Donorbox community.
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Lindsey Baker Bower