Bill Hybels on Capital Campaigns

Leadership Straight from Bill Hybels Bill Hybels on Capital Campaigns Most of the time a well-run capital campaign will unify your church and deepen the spiritual roots of members who properly enter the campaign. If you are going to raise a lot of money, everyone will have to galvanize around a vision. That is a good thing for a church. It is a good thing for believers to take all of their resources and surrender them again to God occasionally. One of our regional campuses just launched a $15 million capital campaign. Recently, I had the opportunity to challenge 50 of their largest donors. Here is what I said to them, "Once you become a Christian and you are leading a comfortable Christian life, what will make you go into a deep analysis determining if you are the best kingdom steward of your finances?" Under normal circumstances, nothing will make you do that. But if your church needs $15 million dollars and if you love your church and you love God and God is whispering to you that you may need to play a role in this." It is an external pressure that will allow you to do something that the absence of that pressure would never cause you to do. I said to these affluent people who were gathered, "This is what I am asking you to do. Put all of your assets, everything you own on a piece of paper. I am asking you to talk to your accountant, your lawyer... I am asking you to take that piece of paper and put it on your kitchen table. Back away from the table. Acknowledge that all of those things came from the hand of God. Every good and perfect gift comes from God, as Scripture says. I am asking you to back away from the table, remind yourself it all came from God. Then I am asking you to surrender it again and to say to God, 'Whatever of this you gave me and entrusting me to manage, whatever of this you want to slide into this capital campaign I am willing to do. If you speak I will obey.' Then you have to listen to what the Holy Spirit wants you to do. A lot, a little, or maybe nothing. Then when He tells you, you need to obey it. That is how complicated this process is. Surrender. Listen. Obey. That process is really healthy for every Christian, who ever experiences it. Because some of us own things that means so much to us we do not want to surrender it. Some of you have things you do not care about. That easily goes on the table. But your camera. Your motocycle. Your dream house you just moved in to two years ago? You think, 'Can I really part with that if God asked me?' It is a spiritual victory to surrender your things again. Also, it is a spiritual victory to hear God's voice. What part of this do you want put into the capital campaign? You have to go through many things to hear God's voice and to process it to know that He has spoken to you clearly. Then it takes courage to obey." When you lead a church through a campaign that way, if we are building for the right reasons and taking people through the right spiritual process, you are going to on the other end of the campaign and say, "That was a beautiful experience. Nobody lost. Everybody won. God was honored. Everybody grew." Do not be afraid of an old-fashioned capital campaign. It is good for a leader. Nothing tests the "metal" of a senior pastor more than leading a congregation through a fundraising campaign. The leader has to ask, "Is it the right campaign, amount, time, and reason?" Those are all purifying. It is good what the leader is asking the congregation to experience.