Explore innovative church fundraising ideas in this inspiring episode of the Pivot Podcast. Hosts Dwight Zscheile and Terri Elton sit down with Grace Pomroy, director of the Stewardship Leaders Program at Luther Seminary and author of "Funding Forward," and Pastor Christina Ennin from First Presbyterian Church in Gulf Shores, Alabama. Discover how churches can transform underutilized assets into sustainable income sources while deepening community connections.

Grace and Christina share practical insights on aligning church finances with mission, fostering community partnerships, and navigating the challenges of implementing new fundraising strategies. From business centers to ecumenical collaborations, learn how churches are pivoting towards financial sustainability that serves both their congregations and their broader communities. Whether you're struggling with church finances or looking to diversify your income streams, this episode offers creative solutions and inspiring examples for churches of all sizes.

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• Book: "Funding Forward: A Pathway to More Sustainable Models for Ministry" by Grace Pomroy
• Book: "We Aren't Broke" by Mark Elsdon
• Program: Good Futures Accelerator by Rooted Good

Grace Pomroy: And I would say the one pitfall that I'm seeing as I look towards the future is now that we're getting to a place where more examples are coming out, I feel like I see a new example of a church living into this new reality every single day. Where they are doing something creative is there's a bit of copying and pasting going on. That is really disconcerting to me. I think it can be easy to hear Chrisy's amazing story and say, yep, we're called to start a business center too, because we're in the same town or we're also in a small town, so maybe we should do that. And I would encourage you to take a breath, to be inspired by the beautiful things that Chrissy has shared, but to not shortcut that beginning work of listening to God, listening to neighbor, listening in your congregation. Yes, it means it's going to take a little bit longer, but it's worth the time so that you are cluing in to what God is calling you to do in this specific time and Place.

Dwight Zscheile: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Pivot podcast, where we explore how the church can faithfully navigate a changing world. One of the challenges and opportunities many congregations face today is adapting their business model, as the inherited approach based on member offerings becomes less viable in many places. How might congregations discern and implement alternative business models that not only provide greater sustainability, but also deepen their connections with neighbors and their participation in God's mission? I'm Dwight Zscheile, and I'm joined today by my co-host Terri Elton.

Terri Elton: And we are so excited today to welcome Grace Pomeroy and Pastor Christina Ennen to the show today. Grace is the director of the Stewardship Leaders Program at Luther Seminary and author of a new book, shout out to your new book, Grace on Funding Foreword A Pathway to More Sustainable Models for Ministry. Chrisy is a minister of Word and Sacrament at First Presbyterian Church in Gulf Shores, Alabama, and she has been implementing some innovative funding models within her congregation. Grace and Chrisy, welcome to the Pivot podcast.

Grace Pomroy: It's so exciting to be here. Thanks for having me back, Terri and Dwight.

Chrisy Ennen: So happy to be here.

Terri Elton: Grace, we're going to start with you. Can you tell us a little bit about what it was that got you to write this book, Funding Forward, and specifically what inspired you to tackle this challenging topic?

Grace Pomroy: Well, it's particularly funny that you had asked me that question on this podcast, Terri, because the person who prompted me to write this book is right here in the room with us, Dwight Zscheile, but in all seriousness, outside of Dwight's prompting, which was so helpful and actually getting me to make the move to write the book. It was all of the congregations that I talked to every single week who are struggling financially, but even more than that, are struggling to discern their mission and how to connect with neighbors in the midst of all of the changes that are happening in the church today. So as I thought about what this book was going to be like, I wanted to write something that was practical for them, where they could see specific steps that they could take and begin to imagine the new future that God had prepared for them, and wanted to tell as many stories as possible. Because one of the things that I've seen in this era of the church's life is that we've somehow lost our imagination in the midst of this season of perceived scarcity on so many different levels, we can't even begin to imagine what this could look like in terms of what this promised future that God has for us is, which is why we wanted to talk to as many congregations as possible, and we're able to engage about 101 in our research project total, but really go deep with 12, one of whom, of course, is with us today.

Dwight Zscheile: Well, Chrisy, let's hear a little bit about your story. Tell us about your ministry context and how did you get involved in implementing some alternative business models for ministry?

Chrisy Ennen: Well, I came here to Gulf Shores about four years ago. And yes, that puts it right in the middle of the pandemic because, you know, everyone should get up and change their whole life when you can't meet anyone new. And but what I knew for sure about the church, I knew very little. I couldn't seem to get my hands on financials before I got here. I knew they had enough money in a separate account to pay me for two years. Um, and that there was some question about, uh, exactly what was going on with the finances. So when I got here and I could finally get my hands on all of that stuff. Uh, note, I have an MBA, and so I have a business minded thing going on anyway. Um, we were in big trouble, and so I literally sat down with a core group of people and said, what are we going to do here? And obviously this was a process. This didn't happen overnight. We had to do some work leading up to it because, you know, a lot of churches say we want to do things, but then they don't really want to do anything. But I actually have a crew that was ready to try new things. And just here in my office, if I look over here on the wall, I can see the list of things that we wrote down, ideas to try. What could we do? And what we really found were there were two places that were high need in this area. One is affordable office space for small business and the other was child care. We really weren't ready to jump on the child care thing, because that can be pretty risky and not very financially feasible. And so we decided that as a ministry, we would embark on opening a business center where we would offer small businesses, um, space for office space at reasonable rates below market value, but not so far below that we're hurting anyone else. But that gave us some extra income and also provided space for a number. I mean, we've got ten different offices in that former Christian education space that wasn't being utilized. Um, and so now we've got nine businesses in those ten offices, and we've had one business who grew so much they had to move out. So. And that's that's what we want. We want to support the small businesses and the community. Since then, other things have happened, and we have begun sharing space with a United Methodist church. Uh, you know, they've got gone through a little split in that church, and these were the people that left those churches that chose to leave the denomination and started a new church and didn't have a place. And so we said, hey, why don't you come share our space? Uh, which again brings us a little income, but really, it's a it's a place of ministry where we can work together. Ecumenical and funny story. Just this month, we started another business, came in and started a daycare in our space. So guess what? Now we are filling both of those needs by sharing our space with other small businesses, and I just feel like that was just such a gift from God. It's like, seriously, you're going to let us do both? So I get goosebumps when I think about it, but it's just been it's just been a wonderful journey.

Terri Elton: You talk about knowing the needs of the community. How did you find that out?

Chrisy Ennen: Well, we asked a lot of questions. Um, we used some of the rooted good oikos accelerator to help us kind of think through some things as we were going through this process. And so some of our people were out walking, talking to people. I was engaging with people in different avenues on social media and in person, just asking questions. What do you see as the needs in our area? And those were the top two that just kept coming up over and over and over again.

Dwight Zscheile: So Grace, in your book, you talk about how sustainable ministry models can be more than just transactional, and I would love for you to speak to that. And then for Chrisy, for you to share a little bit about how these having these businesses and other organizations in your space, church space has led perhaps to some deeper relationships, not just a business transaction, but Grace, why don't you lead us off on that?

Grace Pomroy: I think so often congregations who come to this process, and I think you hear that in First Presbyterian Church of Gulf Shores story as well, is that there's a financial issue. And so I think it's easy for people to come in and say, what is the one quick fix that I can get to make this change? But what we found through our research is that when finances were the only motivation, people could smell that on you. Nobody wants to be a part of that conversation in the neighborhood, in any sort of partnerships that you're in, when it feels very one sided. We need you to save us because we are a church. We do not live in an era in the church's history where that is enough of a reason. And to be honest, I feel like Christ's presence in the world and in and through us should always be our primary reason, not saving our church buildings or our church spaces. One of the things that surprised us most in the research project is that we asked people specifically, as they were looking at these different income sources, were they creating relationships in the neighborhood? And we heard again and again and again and again that they were creating relationships. In fact, people couldn't shut up about it. We had an open space where people could tell us those stories, and people wrote a lot in there telling us that they were a black box in their community, that no one knew who they were. And yet all of a sudden, people knew who they were. They were engaging with them in entirely new ways, and folks who would have never darkened their doors are now presence there, ways that they were interacting with people in the public square that didn't always bring people back to the church, which I think is a really exciting and interesting lens for us traditional church folks. To begin to see our relationships is not always happening within our church spaces, but it's so much more. I think what we tended to find is that the motivation really had to be based in three different components in an underutilized asset, which you hear very well in the story that Chrisy has shared, the building for them was an underutilized asset. The mission that God is guiding your congregation to and then that community need. And when those three things came together, there tended to be a little bit more success, and it really moved them towards having more of a relationship. We found that partnerships were the foundation of all of the work that happened here. So it's so exciting to see the way that that unfolds in individual places. But Chrisy, you've got so many good stories about this. I'm going to invite you to share.

Chrisy Ennen: When we first started talking about this, the first thing that happened was I started building relationships with the Chamber of Commerce and with a couple of other entities in this area to just ask questions and to try and figure out what's the best way to go about this. How could we work on this together? And then once people started renting this space that we have back here, we have been very purposeful. And about once a quarter we do a potluck lunch with all of our business owners so that they can tell us what's happening in their businesses. If there's any issues with the space, you know, that we can kind of work with and just have fun. What's really funny is just this week, as I was running into target for something, I ran into our artist that has her gallery space here, and she was talking about the fact that she just felt like she needed to give back to us for all that we have done for her. And so she just one day decided she was going to trim hedges. And so she started trimming hedges. And it was a God thing because later that day we were having a blood drive here, and a gal walked around the corner after leaving the blood drive and she fell. Had the hedges not been trimmed, the guy sitting in the parking lot would not have seen her fall and would not have been able to get her help. And so there's just these little things that God is doing randomly, it seems. And yet there's a purpose. Um, the things we've been able to do with the United Methodist Church have been phenomenal. Really phenomenal. We had, we've done choral concerts together. We did Ash Wednesday together. Um, at the end of September, they will have been here a little over a year. So we're going to do a combined worship service and meal. We are planning to do a cancer support group together. There's just so many opportunities that we can use these relationships to build. And, you know, I've got the Chamber of Commerce using our fellowship hall for their lunch and learns. And so people are coming into this space feeling welcomed. And it's just been really wonderful.

Terri Elton: That's awesome. Grace, you talked about the importance of this whatever kind of funding aligning with the church's mission. So I invite you to say a little bit more about that. And then, Chrisy, if you would talk about how did. What was that process of discernment like for your congregation?

Grace Pomroy: Yeah. And before I get to that, Terri, I just want to add on to what Chrisy has shared in that transactional piece, kind of closing that up, that I think these experiments that churches are engaging in not only change the people that we are called to serve, they change us. They change those of us inside of the church, those of us who are lay and those of us who are clergy. And I think you hear that really well in the stories that Chrisy has shared. But I can think of countless stories where people went into this trying to do something for someone else, and we are changed in the process. And how similar is that to what is going on in the biblical narrative again and again and again? And I think if we have just that financial posture, we're going to lose that. So leaning back into mission, what I often find is that when congregations come to me, the presenting issue is financial or the presenting issue may be we really feel called to serve this part of our community. I think of one of the congregations we spent time with really felt called to serve the Spanish speaking immigrants in the area that they are in. However, as we take a step back, there's usually more to it in terms of what their connection is with their mission. It's usually a mission problem and less of a money issue. Often we don't know what we're called to do other than keeping the doors open and the lights on. I think I share that in just about every conversation that I have, but it's amazing to me the responses that I receive from people. Everyone laughs because we all know that for a lot of our churches, that is the presenting mission statement. We may not say it out loud, but that is preservation is our mission. And so one of the things that I've encouraged people to do is really take the time to spend time in discernment to say, what is God calling us to do? What are some of those Bible verses that have been important to us? What are some of those statements that matter to us? But also what is God calling us to do in this time and place? I love what Mark Dumas talks about in his book disruption, that we cannot necessarily change the entire world, but we might be able to change one community, one apartment complex, one zip code. So specifically, we if we take some of these beautiful verses from the Gospels as our mission statement, what does that look like in our context? And I think, Chrisy, you guys have done an exceptional job in Gulf Shores at defining where is that space that God is calling you to serve, and it's so exciting to see the way that's expanding to this new daycare piece, too.

Chrisy Ennen: So there were a couple of key pieces in our discernment process. And the first one, it's really it's really interesting when you talk about something over and over again and you say, but whatever we do, this can't be about the money. This has to be about the ministry. The ministry has to be primary. And then, you know, down the road a month or 2 or 3, someone else in the circle says, this can't be about the money. This has to be about the ministry. And so between just framing all of our conversations like that, um, looking at our mission statement, I mean, we looked at it and there's a line in our mission statement that I'll just read to you, and it says that our mission is to perpetuate hope for our community and our world by being consistently mindful of the indescribable gifts God has bestowed upon us, and to express gratitude for such. The gift that we have that we can give to our community is our building, our property. So how can we use that to be showing gratitude and helping and perpetuating hope in our community? Um, I also put together a whole prospectus about what this space could look like. Um, and it was based a lot on the Jeremiah passage that talks about how the community goes is how we go. And so we have to be working for the good of the community that we're in and Small business is the backbone of the community. Um, and so we want to see that thrive. And that is what we have done as we worked through that process.

Terri Elton: I love that you went to your mission, right. Something that was we do that at Luther Seminary frequently, something that's sturdy that that isn't going to change quickly. It's going to be there for a long time. But also you put it in the in the biblical narrative, right? This conversation, I think I have appreciated congregations over time saying, you know what? What season of our life are we in? And how does that fit with seasons of God's people before us? Because it's not that we're not so alone, right? So I'm guessing, Chrisy, there might be some challenges that came up along the way. So I'm wondering if you could just talk kind of specifically or about some incidences where you really faced some, some people, maybe resistance somewhere. And what is it that you did to overcome those challenges? Because I think we can easily make the story too clean to everything just went well. So when others hit hard times, they think, well, we're not supposed to do this. Well, I'm not sure that's how it always works, right?

Chrisy Ennen: Well, you know, really the biggest, the biggest challenge we had from the start was we had all these rooms and they were filled to the brim with stuff.

Terri Elton: I can only imagine a Christian education wing, what that stuff might include.

Chrisy Ennen: And so we had to get people to help us go through it. What do we need to keep? What do we need to get, get rid of? And it's actually led to purging of the whole facility, not just that space. And it's taken a lot of time like we are just Us now. Almost done getting rid of things, but we got that cleared and moved it to a different space. And then you get that cleared and move some stuff to a different space. So that was a huge challenge in the beginning. You know, another challenge we have faced is there's a variety of businesses in that space. So we have a massage therapist, but we also have a speech therapist for preschool children. Can you see where there might be a problem of noise? So we've had to work through how do we do this thing so that everybody gets what they need without hard feelings? And, you know, sometimes that takes a little pastoral care. Talking with each person, trying to help them talk to one another instead of triangulating, there were questions about who's going to lock the doors, who's going to turn off the lights, who's going to, you know, all of those practical things. And, you know, our artist hangs her art in the hallway to display it. But we also need to make sure that we're a secure location so that someone just can't walk in and take something down. And so we've had to find creative ways to make sure that those doors get locked, but that then our people don't get locked out of the building if they step out. Um, you know, we've we've had to find some money to put cameras up and to, you know, just those little things that you have to figure out and you don't know until you get there, um, how that's going to work, invoicing and paying, you know, how people pay. And if they pay online, how do you charge a fee so that you're not paying the fee? You know, all these little things you you don't. You don't realize it until it's happening. Oh, well, we need to go back and talk about this. So those are just a few of the examples. Um, the daycare was even more of a challenge because they have so many more regulations. And, um, between the fire department and the city code enforcement and it it stretched us to help her because she was, you know, she had to do most of this herself financially because this was her thing. But she's doing it our building. And so we kind of had to, you know, work in the agreement, how that how that was going to play out. Like she put flooring in one of the rooms. So we wrote into the agreement, if we terminate the agreement within this much time, then we will pay a certain percentage of that flooring.

Dwight Zscheile: So as I listened to you, Chrisy, I'm aware of you having an MBA. It sounds like you've made it. You've made a lot of use of it in this process. Now, some of our listeners and and viewers won't necessarily have that kind of business background. And maybe listening to this and wondering, well, how do I get started? Or how do we get started and how if maybe if I'm trained more in theology than in, you know, contracts and, you know, business models and things like that? Um, is this something I can even do? How would you both speak to that? And maybe Grace, do you want to lead off?

Grace Pomroy: Ask for help, ask for help. I guarantee you that the folks on your church finance team, your church treasurer, anyone who's looking over your church's financial life has probably been really eager to have this conversation with someone and has some skills that they can bring to the table. Now, this person may lean more towards the money than towards the mission, and that's where your gifts as a theologically trained leader come in. So helpful. How can this be a partnership where you are speaking together about this? One of the key resources I often point people to is Mark Alston's Money and Mission matrix. It's in his book We Aren't Broke. You can also find a variety of other places, but money and mission go together in this conversation, and something that often surprises people is they assume that only the financially generating income categories are the things that people should be considering. But in fact, what Mark would say is it's all of the things that are connected to our mission that we should be considering, and there's going to be things that generate income, things that are self-sustaining, and things that cost money, and that is okay. So the best place to start, I would say, is gathering a small group of people who can think about this with you, some who might be a little more financially minded, some who are a little more mission minded, and hopefully some who can speak across that gap together and begin to have conversation. I find it's best to start with what assets has God entrusted to our care. Because in this moment, especially if you're feeling a crunch financially, you may think we don't have anything good enough to offer. And I can certainly see in the First Presbyterian Church of Gulf Shores story that it would have been easy to say, yeah, we have a great building, but it's completely stuffed with stuff. So clearly that's not what God is calling us to use. And in fact, that's exactly what God called you to do. So I always encourage people to look at a variety of assets, both the physical assets and the financial ones, but also time assets, skill assets, and particularly network assets, which we don't talk enough about as a congregation. And I think.

Chrisy Ennen: That's where, you know, the the Chamber of Commerce and the Small Business Development Center and make building relationships with them helped me ask some questions. I asked, there was a there's another church in our presbytery who rents out space to artists, and he is a former lawyer. The pastor is a former lawyer as well. And so he and I had a number of conversations. And, you know, I did Mark Eggleston's books and the Rooted Good stuff. You know, just doing that research is how we learn, but it's also how we connect with people that can answer those questions. We don't have to do it alone. Isn't that the point of community that we we talk to one another? We ask. We lean into someone else's strengths in our weak areas. And I you know, that's what I did when we gathered this particular. We called it the moving Forward team. And we gathered this team of people that were just from different walks of life, different expertise, and started brainstorming and started going, okay, well, if we do it this way, what would that take? Okay. You go look into that. Okay. What would you look into? And you just ask for help. And I know that's hard for a lot of us pastors, especially small churches who are financially struggling and are you're the only person there. But there are people that are willing and ready to help you find new ways.

Terri Elton: So thanks for that. I think that's a good reminder on all kinds of challenges that we face, but certainly in this area, because there's a lot of gifts that are needed that you both highlighted. So as you both look ahead to the church and what might be emerging, or what are trends that you see, I'd love for you to talk about that. And I'd love to start with Chrisy as a pastor. Right. You're talking about networks and different people you're networking with. What are you seeing? And then grace, you you chime in.

Chrisy Ennen: You know, I really I'm hopeful that more and more churches are going to start taking a hard look at what they're doing day in and day out, how they really are engaging the community if they are engaging the community and how they can change that if they're not. I'm hoping, I'm hopeful that more and more churches will say, you know what? We've got this asset. Whatever that is, we have this person who is a really good cook. Maybe she could cater events here in our space. We've got this facility that we don't need anymore. How could we maybe utilize that in a new way to engage the community? I'm just I'm hopeful. And the more people I talk to about these ideas and people who are doing some of these things, the more excited I get that maybe we are moving in the right direction. Um, you know, there are some times that people are like, you're doing what? And it seems so strange to them. And then when they start to hear about it, they get really excited. Our artist is being featured at Big Beach actually on Sunday, which happens to be the first Sunday of the month, where we go to Big Beach after communion and worship to continue our table fellowship so we can go support her where we were going anyway. And as she's been talking to them, they're like, they're doing what over there at the church. And so then they get excited because they want to come see what we're doing. And I'm hoping that the more people hear about this kind of thing, the more churches will go, huh? Maybe there's something different for us to do, because we all know that the historical church model is failing, so we've got to do something different.

Grace Pomroy: I just keep hearing that this is going to be a mixed ecology going forward. I know that's been talked about so often on the pivot podcast, but just to say it again, that there's going to be so many different ways this this work can be done. I've often talked with about it as walking into a French patisserie, where there's so many different beautiful goods and the things that connect them together. There are some ingredients that we all share, but the main thing is the yeast of God's Spirit at work. And I would say the one pitfall that I'm seeing as I look towards the future is now that we're getting to a place where more examples are coming out, I feel like I see a new example of a church living into this new reality every single day. Where they are doing something creative is there's a bit of copying and pasting going on. That is really disconcerting to me. I think it can be easy to hear Chrisy's amazing story and say, yep, we're called to start a business center too, because we're in the same town or we're also in a small town, so maybe we should do that. And I would encourage you to take a breath, to be inspired by the beautiful things that Chrissy has shared, but to not shortcut that beginning work of listening to God, listening to neighbor, listening in your congregation. Yes. It means it's going to take a little bit longer, but it's worth the time so that you are cluing in to what God is calling you to do in this specific time and place.

Dwight Zscheile: Well, that's, I think, a really wonderful place for us to draw the conversation to a close, because this whole journey that you've described, both of you, is really about deepening your connections with God and your neighbors and finding a new, um, you know, way to to carry forward the legacy of, of a ministry, even in changing times, which is what the church has always done. You know, when it's flourished. And so, um, so this is inspiring. Um, thank you both for being with us today, for sharing your insights and experiences. For our listeners who want to dive deeper into these ideas, we have a special offer. You can download a free chapter of Grace's brand new book, Funding Forward, using the link in our show notes and.

Terri Elton: To our audience, to our listeners, thank you once again for joining us for another episode of The Pivot podcast. You can help us by spreading the word. If you are watching this on YouTube, please subscribe. If you're listening on any of the podcast platforms, please leave us a review. It certainly helps us connect with you and have others learn about us.

Dwight Zscheile: Finally, the best compliment you can give us is to share. Pivot with a friend. Until next time. This is Dwight Zscheile and Terri Elton signing off. See you next week.

Faith+Lead voiceover: The Pivot Podcast is a production of Luther Seminary's Faith+Lead. Faith+Lead is an ecosystem of theological resources and training designed to equip Christian disciples and leaders to follow God into a faithful future. Learn more at faithlead.org.