Ahhh, autumn … football games, maybe leaves changing colors, a break from summer’s heat, and gearing up for your church’s Fall Stewardship Campaign.

While the Presbyterian Foundation often advises churches to keep stewardship in mind and discussed year-round, the reality is that most congregations prepare for a push each fall, so we’re writing today with that in mind.

Stewardship season can be stressful without a roadmap, which is what we’ll talk about here. While some of these points may not apply, depending on your church’s size and organizational capacity, these tips should provide a checklist to keep things focused. September is the right time to start.

My overriding point is this: remember the annual campaign, and when it comes time for fulfilling those pledges, make it easy to give. Let your members write a check or pay online. You can ask the Presbyterian Foundation to help your church set up an online payment portal. You can also find a variety of resources in the Foundation’s free Stewardship Navigator website here; this includes templates for materials and a year-round calendar for stewardship.

But above all, make it simple, and try to find a theme or hook that will resonate with your church community.

Here’s a checklist to get you started:

1. Meet with your Stewardship and Finance committees, along with your pastor, to review church needs, wants, and dreams for 2027. Consider capital needs from both your long-term plan (new sidewalks on the campus, new signage by the road, new roof) as well as infrastructure replacements (hot water heaters, AC/heat pumps, flooring).

The “wants” part of the campaign can be the hook, because this element usually connects more directly with people. Think of community needs and how your church can partner with a housing organization like Habitat for Humanity, support an overnight shelter or a food pantry; think of after-school tutoring programs for lower-income families. What does your community need that your church can support?

2. With “the list” as a starting point, talk with the pastor and church leaders about a fitting spiritual theme to lead the campaign. The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12), also known as the Sermon on the Mount, may seem a simplistic tag, but they carry a central theme of the blessings from taking care of others – a core to most stewardship campaigns. Your pastor or others may have verses that connect more directly to major items on your list.

3. Look at your church and community calendar and choose a Pledge Sunday, avoiding as many conflicts as possible (such as major weekend festivals, or big out of town college football games). With that date in mind, work backward to create a timeline for your fall campaign.

Key elements in the timeline include:

• Determine who might speak from the pulpit to tell their story related to your campaign theme, choose those dates and then confirm with the speakers,
• Early on, create a visual look for the campaign. This can be as simple as finding two strong colors for the pledge cards and campaign materials, or as complex as creating a special logo for the fall campaign that will anchor everything related to the campaign.
• When to launch the campaign and on what platforms: The church bulletin, a newsletter, email, on the church website and social media, with wall posters and information sheets in the narthex, with text messages? Depending on your membership, people may want access to the information in a variety of ways, including traditional front/back rack cards that provide bullet points about what the campaign will fund and why that matters in the life of your church.

4. Finally, make sure you have plenty of ways for people to pledge or pay. Ensure you have plenty of pledge cards in the pews and information sheets in the narthex or other gathering places. And promote all the different ways people can pledge and pay – through the church website, through payment apps and portals, with a check in the offering or giving basket, etc.

Matthew 6:21 tells us, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Let’s make this Stewardship season a time to remember our treasures and our giving hearts.