FINAL Capital Campaign Case Study
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Summary Four churches redefine the form and function of a capital campaign by doing more than construction, building, or renovation to new or existing church facilities. Each church utilized a capital campaign to create an infusion of cash that was intentionally used for on-campus and off-campus ministry to expand each church’s capacity for outreach, missions, and life change.
Participating Churches 1. Reynolda Church, EPC (Winston-Salem, N.C.) Normal Sunday Attendance: 1,000 www.reynoldachurch.org 2. Venture Church (Hattiesburg, Miss.) Normal Sunday Attendance: 2,600 www.venturechurch.org 3. Granger Community Church (Granger, Ind.) Normal Sunday Attendance: 4,500 www.gccwired.com 4. Gateway Church (Austin, Texas) Normal Sunday Attendance: 4,000 www.gatewaychurch.com
An Overview Church leaders often find themselves tugging at the door of opportunity, yet lacking in the financial resources to walk the church through that door. Instead of missing the opportunity, it may be time to initiate a capital campaign to seize the opportunity.
But here’s the conventional argument: Capital campaigns are only for building improvement or construction. Not true. In fact, the length and nature of capital campaigns within churches is evolving rapidly. More and more church leaders are discovering that funding ministry looks different today than it has in the past. People are more interested in funding impact and less concerned with whether or not that ministry happens exclusively on the church campus. This requires a new approach to capital campaigns and church giving. Churches are beginning to use capital campaigns as vehicles to provide the necessary funds to do much more than on-campus construction projects. This case study focuses on four churches whose leaders partnered with RSI Stewardship to cultivate financial resources to accomplish ministry vision, both on-campus and off-campus.
Four Churches Recognized Unconventional Ministry Opportunity Reynolda Church is located in Winston-Salem, N.C., and has been a fixture in the
community for 100 years. Across the street from Wake Forrest University, it has a strong student attendance, yet the church also has a growing number of young professionals. Reynolda Church is an intergenerational church with a contemporary worship style. The growing church was at a definite crossroads. It needed additional space. However, it had just been through a capital campaign from 2006 to 2009 to raise $3 million for new buildings to increase the size of its existing campus and now, just four years later, it needed additional space. “Building square footage is expensive,” said Chris Lawson, executive pastor. “We were looking at $7 million to build the worship space we needed. Nobody was overly excited about it.” The church’s leadership was open to other ideas and saw a multi-site strategy as an alternative.
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“We believed God was giving us a vision to start multiple campuses in existing spaces such as schools.” Lawson said. “We knew we still needed money to pursue that vision, but we knew we could do it for considerably less money than what we were initially looking at.”
Venture Church in Hattiesburg, Miss., is similar to Reynolda in that it is a historic
church founded in 1887. The church, formerly known as First Baptist Church, was located in the heart of the city, but the church was “landlocked” on eight acres at that location and attendance had plateaued. The church’s median age was in the 40s and was mostly upper middle-class. “The problem was we weren’t reaching as many people with the Gospel,” said Jeff Powell, director of worship programming. “We knew something needed to change, and we were open to whatever it was that God wanted us to do. We were a little surprised it was as drastic as it was.” The church completely relocated when it had the opportunity to purchase 38 acres about 10 minutes to the southwest from its historic location. It launched what would eventually become three building campaigns, constructing a student center, then space for children. The worship center was the last building constructed. However, when the church faced another capital campaign targeting $6 million, donor fatigue had taken its toll, especially with the change in demographics. “We only reached about $3 million of our goal,” Power said. “And were a bit concerned that we had missed what it was God was leading us to do.” However, the capital campaign was absolutely on track for what God had planned and soon led to a God-ordained opportunity.
Granger Community Church, in Granger, Ind., is a 27-year-old church facing a
similar challenge of expanding ministry. Although the church is located in Granger, only about 25 percent of its members live in the white-collar, suburban bedroom community. The rest come from “Michiana,” the metro area including cities in Indiana and Michigan. The recreational vehicle (RV) industry and Notre Dame University are two of the area’s largest employers. Granger Community Church has a diverse socioeconomic demographic, ranging from very low income to extremely wealthy.
4
The church is now in its eighth consecutive capital campaign since 1992. The earlier campaigns were focused on facilities, but the two most recent shifted focus completely. “This campaign was more about programs and staff to help us reach more people,” said Tim Stevens, executive pastor. “It is less tangible [than buildings], but important nonetheless. In 2011, we finalized this 2016 Vision, and then began to focus on these campaigns to raise money toward our new vision.”
Gateway Community Church, Austin, Texas, was founded in 1998. The church
had completed a building campaign, but then the congregation grew rapidly from 1,500 to just more than 4,000 that now meet every week on four area campuses. With the expansion of people, Gateway’s leadership believed there was an even greater opportunity to reach Austin―and the world―for Christ. “We wanted to mobilize our church in the city and world around us,” said Charles
Dishinger, executive director. “This got our leadership dreaming about what it would look like to meet physical, spiritual, and relational needs of those around us. It also got us thinking about how to serve our neighbors so we decided to reorganize our staff so that we were focused geographically on our area of the city.” However, hanging over that vision was also $11 million of building debt that needed to be retired to free funds to reach ministry goals.
Changing Expectations Required a Different Approach Seeing the cost of construction, Reynolda Church’s leadership decided to look for alternatives to accomplish its vision. It didn’t want to tie up large amounts of money in facilities that could be better spent reaching out. As the leaders prayed through the options, it became clear the multi-site approach was the most strategic and costs could be greatly reduced if existing structures―such as schools―were used. “The guys from RSI Stewardship originally asked us the question, ‘What would you do if you had $5 million?’” said Lawson. “We couldn’t answer. It caused us to really focus,
5
and through that process we settled on where we are now. Our vision became launching four new campuses over three years by investing $250,000 in each campus, with each of those campuses becoming financially solvent in 18 months. The goal of the capital campaign with RSI Stewardship became to raise $4 million, of which $1 million would go to launching four new campuses. With the clarity and the capital we were able to move forward with our first launch.” Venture Church’s leadership was concerned it may have missed its vision when it was obvious that it wasn’t going to raise the $6 million needed for the next building project. It raised half of that. “We thought we’d misunderstood what God wanted us to do,” Powell said. “We were reaching a lot of people for Christ who were unchurched; we really thought we were on the right track, but the plan changed dramatically.” A divine opportunity dropped in the church’s lap with the chance to purchase the Hunt Club, a massive building that housed a bowling alley and the largest―and most notorious―bar in Mississippi. City officials closed the bar after a series of high profile shootings. The property was valued at $9 million; the church purchased it for a fraction of that. “We went back to the people who’d given and asked if they had any issue redirecting the money they’d given for the development of that opportunity,” Powell said. “There became an enthusiastic response for seizing this chance to take something that had been so destructive in our community and making it a place where God’s grace will repair people’s lives. Our capital campaign became a people campaign.” Granger Community Church faced the challenge of accelerating the capital campaign to complete it in two years rather than three. “This took a ton of energy and focus,” Stevens said. “The RSI Stewardship guys believed we could accomplish those goals, so we forged ahead. We had a huge response with our top-end donors. They engaged in a bigger way than ever before.” Stevens said the vision consisted of completely restructuring the entire facility and the church’s ministries to be community friendly. The infusion of capital funds positioned the church to be more outreached focused.
6
Gateway Community Church wanted to pursue its community with the same intensity. Dishinger said a research project revealed 300,000 people in the Austin area who have no faith in Christ but who are open to exploring what that means. The project also revealed 48 percent of single moms with young kids struggle below the poverty line, and thousands of at-risk elementary school kids who can’t read and/or depend on school meals, but don’t eat all weekend. Also, there are also 5,000 refugees in Austin who receive no financial or medical support after eight months in the U.S. “It is an amazing opportunity to bring life and freedom to our neighbors,” Dishinger said. “It was time to resource the vision so that we could participate with Christ. We knew it would take every Christ follower relationally connected and intentionally growing, using our gifts to serve, and investing resources to fund this vision.”
Capital Campaigns Used to Fully Fund Ministry In each of the four churches, capital campaigns provided the funds necessary to position the church for greater ministry effectiveness. Reynolda Church is reducing existing debt, launched its first multi-site venue, and is using funding to staff the location. It has also been able to extend an already influential radio ministry and begin the process to develop a comprehensive wellness ministry. Venture Church’s Hunt Club location opens in 2014 and will be “seeded” with 550 people from the parent church. There has been some remorse over the possibility of a strong church fellowship experiencing such a “loss,” but Powell said that has been offset by the excitement of the congregation realizing they are playing a role in a much larger vision. He said the financial giving has enthusiastically followed understanding the vision for reaching such a large segment of Hattiesburg’s unchurched community. “I believe commitment to the vision by leadership was a big key,” he said. “Moving from downtown was a huge step for us and a leader has to have the courage to ‘do’ the vision. The people have caught it now and God has decided to put His hand on our church.” The capital campaign has significantly shifted Granger’s ministry strategy because of the available resources, Stevens said. Granger overhauled its emphasis on discipleship priorities, hired staff, and developed and initiated new programs to help people grow spiritually. The church also replaced an aging roof, positioned its Early Learning Center
7
so that it is self-sufficient, and launched an additional multi-site location. Granger also refocused its main campus toward the community and began using the facilities for community events. Gateway, too, has seen significant results in the wake of a capital campaign to advance ministry objectives. The additional funds have allowed the church to pay down over $1 million in remaining debt, hire a pastor for the Austin refugee community, mobilize a volunteer medical clinic for refugees and Austin ’s impoverished, mobilize 600 Gateway volunteers to respond to crisis needs in the community, provide training for 377 churches in Austin to reach their neighbors through ExploreGod.com, and accomplish a number of other key ministry goals. “You have to do the hard work to research what the leaders and people in your church
see as needs in the community around them,” Dishinger said. “It may seem easier to resource a brick-and-mortar project, but people will resource a strong, compelling vision. RSI Stewardship guided us through the process of getting our vision from ‘concept’ to a solid plan that people can engage with. RSI Stewardship then got us to simplify it so people would understand and be moved to take action.”
Conclusion It is true that every growing organization needs infrastructure development, but raising capital isn’t reserved exclusively for infrastructure. Capital campaigns can also provide churches with the necessary capital to accomplish key ministry objectives, even if those objectives take you beyond a building. The four churches featured in this case study discovered that capital campaigns are fully funded when ministry opportunity and needs are clearly articulated. They learned that their congregations were eager to accomplish ministry and were less concerned whether or not that ministry happened exclusively on the main church campus property. This type of thinking frees leaders and believers alike to strive together for impact, outreach, and life change in traditional and non-traditional ways.
RSI Stewardship specializes in helping churches and Kingdom-minded organizations
take the next step in accomplishing their mission and vision through strategic coaching, capital and annual fund campaigns, and effective communication and technology-based solutions. Get regular updates by subscribing to their blog and monthly e-newsletter . You can also follow RSI on Twitter and Facebook .
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Summary Four churches redefine the form and function of a capital campaign by doing more than construction, building, or renovation to new or existing church facilities. Each church utilized a capital campaign to create an infusion of cash that was intentionally used for on-campus and off-campus ministry to expand each church’s capacity for outreach, missions, and life change.
Participating Churches 1. Reynolda Church, EPC (Winston-Salem, N.C.) Normal Sunday Attendance: 1,000 www.reynoldachurch.org 2. Venture Church (Hattiesburg, Miss.) Normal Sunday Attendance: 2,600 www.venturechurch.org 3. Granger Community Church (Granger, Ind.) Normal Sunday Attendance: 4,500 www.gccwired.com 4. Gateway Church (Austin, Texas) Normal Sunday Attendance: 4,000 www.gatewaychurch.com
An Overview Church leaders often find themselves tugging at the door of opportunity, yet lacking in the financial resources to walk the church through that door. Instead of missing the opportunity, it may be time to initiate a capital campaign to seize the opportunity.
But here’s the conventional argument: Capital campaigns are only for building improvement or construction. Not true. In fact, the length and nature of capital campaigns within churches is evolving rapidly. More and more church leaders are discovering that funding ministry looks different today than it has in the past. People are more interested in funding impact and less concerned with whether or not that ministry happens exclusively on the church campus. This requires a new approach to capital campaigns and church giving. Churches are beginning to use capital campaigns as vehicles to provide the necessary funds to do much more than on-campus construction projects. This case study focuses on four churches whose leaders partnered with RSI Stewardship to cultivate financial resources to accomplish ministry vision, both on-campus and off-campus.
Four Churches Recognized Unconventional Ministry Opportunity Reynolda Church is located in Winston-Salem, N.C., and has been a fixture in the
community for 100 years. Across the street from Wake Forrest University, it has a strong student attendance, yet the church also has a growing number of young professionals. Reynolda Church is an intergenerational church with a contemporary worship style. The growing church was at a definite crossroads. It needed additional space. However, it had just been through a capital campaign from 2006 to 2009 to raise $3 million for new buildings to increase the size of its existing campus and now, just four years later, it needed additional space. “Building square footage is expensive,” said Chris Lawson, executive pastor. “We were looking at $7 million to build the worship space we needed. Nobody was overly excited about it.” The church’s leadership was open to other ideas and saw a multi-site strategy as an alternative.
3
“We believed God was giving us a vision to start multiple campuses in existing spaces such as schools.” Lawson said. “We knew we still needed money to pursue that vision, but we knew we could do it for considerably less money than what we were initially looking at.”
Venture Church in Hattiesburg, Miss., is similar to Reynolda in that it is a historic
church founded in 1887. The church, formerly known as First Baptist Church, was located in the heart of the city, but the church was “landlocked” on eight acres at that location and attendance had plateaued. The church’s median age was in the 40s and was mostly upper middle-class. “The problem was we weren’t reaching as many people with the Gospel,” said Jeff Powell, director of worship programming. “We knew something needed to change, and we were open to whatever it was that God wanted us to do. We were a little surprised it was as drastic as it was.” The church completely relocated when it had the opportunity to purchase 38 acres about 10 minutes to the southwest from its historic location. It launched what would eventually become three building campaigns, constructing a student center, then space for children. The worship center was the last building constructed. However, when the church faced another capital campaign targeting $6 million, donor fatigue had taken its toll, especially with the change in demographics. “We only reached about $3 million of our goal,” Power said. “And were a bit concerned that we had missed what it was God was leading us to do.” However, the capital campaign was absolutely on track for what God had planned and soon led to a God-ordained opportunity.
Granger Community Church, in Granger, Ind., is a 27-year-old church facing a
similar challenge of expanding ministry. Although the church is located in Granger, only about 25 percent of its members live in the white-collar, suburban bedroom community. The rest come from “Michiana,” the metro area including cities in Indiana and Michigan. The recreational vehicle (RV) industry and Notre Dame University are two of the area’s largest employers. Granger Community Church has a diverse socioeconomic demographic, ranging from very low income to extremely wealthy.
4
The church is now in its eighth consecutive capital campaign since 1992. The earlier campaigns were focused on facilities, but the two most recent shifted focus completely. “This campaign was more about programs and staff to help us reach more people,” said Tim Stevens, executive pastor. “It is less tangible [than buildings], but important nonetheless. In 2011, we finalized this 2016 Vision, and then began to focus on these campaigns to raise money toward our new vision.”
Gateway Community Church, Austin, Texas, was founded in 1998. The church
had completed a building campaign, but then the congregation grew rapidly from 1,500 to just more than 4,000 that now meet every week on four area campuses. With the expansion of people, Gateway’s leadership believed there was an even greater opportunity to reach Austin―and the world―for Christ. “We wanted to mobilize our church in the city and world around us,” said Charles
Dishinger, executive director. “This got our leadership dreaming about what it would look like to meet physical, spiritual, and relational needs of those around us. It also got us thinking about how to serve our neighbors so we decided to reorganize our staff so that we were focused geographically on our area of the city.” However, hanging over that vision was also $11 million of building debt that needed to be retired to free funds to reach ministry goals.
Changing Expectations Required a Different Approach Seeing the cost of construction, Reynolda Church’s leadership decided to look for alternatives to accomplish its vision. It didn’t want to tie up large amounts of money in facilities that could be better spent reaching out. As the leaders prayed through the options, it became clear the multi-site approach was the most strategic and costs could be greatly reduced if existing structures―such as schools―were used. “The guys from RSI Stewardship originally asked us the question, ‘What would you do if you had $5 million?’” said Lawson. “We couldn’t answer. It caused us to really focus,
5
and through that process we settled on where we are now. Our vision became launching four new campuses over three years by investing $250,000 in each campus, with each of those campuses becoming financially solvent in 18 months. The goal of the capital campaign with RSI Stewardship became to raise $4 million, of which $1 million would go to launching four new campuses. With the clarity and the capital we were able to move forward with our first launch.” Venture Church’s leadership was concerned it may have missed its vision when it was obvious that it wasn’t going to raise the $6 million needed for the next building project. It raised half of that. “We thought we’d misunderstood what God wanted us to do,” Powell said. “We were reaching a lot of people for Christ who were unchurched; we really thought we were on the right track, but the plan changed dramatically.” A divine opportunity dropped in the church’s lap with the chance to purchase the Hunt Club, a massive building that housed a bowling alley and the largest―and most notorious―bar in Mississippi. City officials closed the bar after a series of high profile shootings. The property was valued at $9 million; the church purchased it for a fraction of that. “We went back to the people who’d given and asked if they had any issue redirecting the money they’d given for the development of that opportunity,” Powell said. “There became an enthusiastic response for seizing this chance to take something that had been so destructive in our community and making it a place where God’s grace will repair people’s lives. Our capital campaign became a people campaign.” Granger Community Church faced the challenge of accelerating the capital campaign to complete it in two years rather than three. “This took a ton of energy and focus,” Stevens said. “The RSI Stewardship guys believed we could accomplish those goals, so we forged ahead. We had a huge response with our top-end donors. They engaged in a bigger way than ever before.” Stevens said the vision consisted of completely restructuring the entire facility and the church’s ministries to be community friendly. The infusion of capital funds positioned the church to be more outreached focused.
6
Gateway Community Church wanted to pursue its community with the same intensity. Dishinger said a research project revealed 300,000 people in the Austin area who have no faith in Christ but who are open to exploring what that means. The project also revealed 48 percent of single moms with young kids struggle below the poverty line, and thousands of at-risk elementary school kids who can’t read and/or depend on school meals, but don’t eat all weekend. Also, there are also 5,000 refugees in Austin who receive no financial or medical support after eight months in the U.S. “It is an amazing opportunity to bring life and freedom to our neighbors,” Dishinger said. “It was time to resource the vision so that we could participate with Christ. We knew it would take every Christ follower relationally connected and intentionally growing, using our gifts to serve, and investing resources to fund this vision.”
Capital Campaigns Used to Fully Fund Ministry In each of the four churches, capital campaigns provided the funds necessary to position the church for greater ministry effectiveness. Reynolda Church is reducing existing debt, launched its first multi-site venue, and is using funding to staff the location. It has also been able to extend an already influential radio ministry and begin the process to develop a comprehensive wellness ministry. Venture Church’s Hunt Club location opens in 2014 and will be “seeded” with 550 people from the parent church. There has been some remorse over the possibility of a strong church fellowship experiencing such a “loss,” but Powell said that has been offset by the excitement of the congregation realizing they are playing a role in a much larger vision. He said the financial giving has enthusiastically followed understanding the vision for reaching such a large segment of Hattiesburg’s unchurched community. “I believe commitment to the vision by leadership was a big key,” he said. “Moving from downtown was a huge step for us and a leader has to have the courage to ‘do’ the vision. The people have caught it now and God has decided to put His hand on our church.” The capital campaign has significantly shifted Granger’s ministry strategy because of the available resources, Stevens said. Granger overhauled its emphasis on discipleship priorities, hired staff, and developed and initiated new programs to help people grow spiritually. The church also replaced an aging roof, positioned its Early Learning Center
7
so that it is self-sufficient, and launched an additional multi-site location. Granger also refocused its main campus toward the community and began using the facilities for community events. Gateway, too, has seen significant results in the wake of a capital campaign to advance ministry objectives. The additional funds have allowed the church to pay down over $1 million in remaining debt, hire a pastor for the Austin refugee community, mobilize a volunteer medical clinic for refugees and Austin ’s impoverished, mobilize 600 Gateway volunteers to respond to crisis needs in the community, provide training for 377 churches in Austin to reach their neighbors through ExploreGod.com, and accomplish a number of other key ministry goals. “You have to do the hard work to research what the leaders and people in your church
see as needs in the community around them,” Dishinger said. “It may seem easier to resource a brick-and-mortar project, but people will resource a strong, compelling vision. RSI Stewardship guided us through the process of getting our vision from ‘concept’ to a solid plan that people can engage with. RSI Stewardship then got us to simplify it so people would understand and be moved to take action.”
Conclusion It is true that every growing organization needs infrastructure development, but raising capital isn’t reserved exclusively for infrastructure. Capital campaigns can also provide churches with the necessary capital to accomplish key ministry objectives, even if those objectives take you beyond a building. The four churches featured in this case study discovered that capital campaigns are fully funded when ministry opportunity and needs are clearly articulated. They learned that their congregations were eager to accomplish ministry and were less concerned whether or not that ministry happened exclusively on the main church campus property. This type of thinking frees leaders and believers alike to strive together for impact, outreach, and life change in traditional and non-traditional ways.
RSI Stewardship specializes in helping churches and Kingdom-minded organizations
take the next step in accomplishing their mission and vision through strategic coaching, capital and annual fund campaigns, and effective communication and technology-based solutions. Get regular updates by subscribing to their blog and monthly e-newsletter . You can also follow RSI on Twitter and Facebook .
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