Generous Church is a multi-faceted ministry aiming to unleash generous disciples. They’ve come up with a fantastic model to gauge spiritual maturity in the area of finances, and they call it “The Generosity Ladder”. It’s an eight-level model identifying “non-generous” givers all the way to “kingdom-view” givers, and all the steps in between. If you serve in any form of church leadership, you should check it out.
As we examine the Generosity Ladder, we see that a giver’s heart becomes more generous over time. Someone who begins giving because it makes them feel good (rung 3) will eventually mature into a sacrificial giver (rung 7), but that process takes time...and it can’t be rushed.
So while givers take the necessary amount of time to climb the ladder, church leaders should be setting them up for success. There are many aspects to setting up for success but one part is having the appropriate technology to make sure getting started is as simple as possible.
That’s where the heart behind Smart Giving comes from. We wanted to make it as seamless as possible for people to get started in generosity in a way that is simple and relevant. Asking a young person to give by a check is like asking your grandparent to give with a smartphone, it doesn’t make sense.
Kingdom-View givers (rung 8) won’t let a single obstacle stand in their way of giving. But the Generosity Ladder shows us that we shouldn’t expect everyone to function at that level of tenacious generosity --- at least not all at once.
So until we’re all hanging out on the 8th rung of the ladder, we want to make getting on that ladder as simple as possible for everyone in your church.
