The Money Series (Part 4)
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Do you wish your church could have more financial margin for ministry? Are your people struggling with debt and low giving? In this episode of The Unstuck Church Podcast, Sean interviews George Kamel from Ramsey Solutions about how Financial Peace University is helping churches break free from financial stress.
We’re shooting straight in this conversation. Why are so few churchgoers tithing regularly? How is debt truly impacting healthy church growth, and what are practical ways church leaders can start transforming their church’s financial health today? George shares some remarkable statistics about how FPU is increasing per-donor giving in churches and helping congregations get serious about biblical stewardship. If money was one of Jesus’ most discussed topics, it should probably tell us something.
If you’re tired of avoiding money conversations in your church, this episode is for you.
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Transcript
Sean:
Well, hey podcast listeners. Before we start today’s episode, let me tell you about our podcast sponsor Planning Center. Are you struggling to keep your church organized and connected? Planning Center is the all-in-one church management software that solves your administrative challenges. You can effortlessly track first-time guests, manage volunteer schedules, and create easy ways for your congregation to get involved, all from a single platform. Whether you need a check-in system, event signups, or an online giving solution, Planning Center helps you nurture your community and keep people connected. Visit planningcenter.com to get started for free.
Well, welcome back to The Unstuck Church Podcast. I’m Sean, your host here again with my friend and teammate, Amy Anderson. Amy, it’s interesting. I mean, I talk to people. I talk to churches who listen to our podcast. They’re always interested in what you are up to. And I think it’s because we talk about what you’re up to a lot of times. But, so I’m gonna ask you now, what have you been up to?
Amy:
What have I been up to? That’s a good question. Actually, it’s been great. I’ve been off the road for a couple of weeks. Every once in a while, in the course of a year, I get two to three weeks at home. And this year it just happened to work out that way. So it’s been great because when that happens, I have time to work on some of the content that we’re pulling together. And I also, well, you were with me. We were able to conclude our cohorts that kicked off last summer, last June. We just had our final fourth quarter calls. And for me, again, you know, when I’m working with churches, I love doing it. But my payday is hearing the fruit of their work and the things that they’re applying and learning not just from Unstuck, but honestly from one another and sharing ideas. So our multi-site group, we just ended what a great group of multi-site churches.
Sean:
Yeah, it is.
Amy:
Wasn’t it fun just to hear their stories about.
Sean:
It was amazing.
Amy:
You know, a couple of ’em have launched new campuses in the course of this year. They’re getting traction and again, they’re sharing what they learned and they’re getting better at multi-site every time they do it. And I don’t know, I think that was a call where the student ministry, our friends up in Canada, do you remember what they did with their students?
Sean:
So they had a student event where they had 400 plus students. And I know why they got so many students there, Amy, it’s because the event was themed around Costco.
Amy:
Isn’t that hilarious?
Sean:
It’s awesome. So they had like the Costco concession, like the hot dog, you could get the pizza and all of that. And the theme was just Costco related, which I thought was brilliant. I’ve never even thought of that before. But that was genius. So that’s how you get 400 plus students to an event go, go Costco.
Amy:
No kidding. And it reminded me of back, at least in my day, we used to do so many fun, creative things like that on the weekend. And I hope our listeners, you’re continuously digging out what can we do that can surprise people, and anyways, I’m excited because we start to kick off our 2025 cohorts in May. And so I’m excited to start with a new batch of leaders.
Sean:
You know, one of the things that stood out to me during that cohort call, that last cohort call, is as they described what was happening in their churches I was thinking these are the types of churches that this is the type of ministry that every pastor wants to lead, right? The health, the growth. All the things that were happening within their churches. It’s just really exciting time to lead in those areas. And, we have another multi-site cohort that kicks off this fall. It’s a few months away, but if any pastors or leaders out there are interested in that, you can find more information about that on our website: theunstuckgroup.com
Amy:
Yeah. I think we spent 15 minutes talking about service times and you know, we’re just all comparing notes. ’cause they’re running two services, three services, four services.
Sean:
We did. Four services.
Amy:
What are the best times? And yeah, I guess those are good problems, but they’re problems.
Sean:
They’re challenges, but the challenges that we’d rather have, right?
Amy:
That’s right.
Sean:
Well, Amy, I’m excited to share the interview for today as we continue our series. I mean, one of the things we discussed last week on last week’s episode when we talked about how to not hate preaching about money is that many pastors feel unqualified to talk about money. They’re not money experts. And approaching the subject of money can feel intimidating to them. Because of that, it can be incredibly helpful to have a practical tool to help your congregation with money and finances that moves the need of being a financial expert from the staff to the tool that you’re using.
And thousands of churches have found that practical tool in Financial Peace University or what we call FPU. So we invited George Kamel, one of the financial experts at Ramsey Solutions onto our podcast to share more about how FPU is helping churches and people get outta debt, live more generously and be more intentional with their money. So I think you’ll find this conversation with George really helpful. Let’s dive into it now.
Well, George, people are familiar with FPU and how it helps individuals get out of debt, save money and give more also. But how is it helping the church?
George:
Well, you know, we’ve seen that when churches are financially healthy, it creates more margin for their ministry. I’ve never seen a church that is debt free and thriving going, Hey, we really need some debt to make this all work. It’s the churches that are saddled with debt with money problems. And that usually bleeds into the congregation because that congregation also has money problems. And so it’s really hard to move the needle in your ministry when the church is struggling with money and when your congregation is struggling with money. And what we’ve seen is that the churches that actually do this kind of church-wide, when you think about the actual church’s debt, grace Fellowship in Minnesota, they had a million dollar mortgage and they decided, you know, what, what could we do with that $30,000 we’re sending to a lender every month if it was freed up? And they were able to reinstate some of the things they had to cut from their budget, including their mission work, which was super important to them. Once they paid off that million-dollar mortgage; they got their congregation involved. And it’s powerful. A lot of churches think, no, the congregation doesn’t need to know about our finances. They don’t need to know about our debt. But when you bring them in and you’re vulnerable and say, Hey, listen, here’s what we’re currently doing with our money. We don’t want it to be going to the lender. We want it to go to these ministries. Will you partner with us and help us? The congregation actually gets really excited because they love seeing that money used for good.
Sean:
Yeah. That’s very good. From your perspective, how does debt impact healthy church growth?
George:
Well, you know, just seeing the words debt and healthy, they just cannot coexist together. And so a lot of churches, they’ve carried debt for a long time, and so it’s normal to them. It’s normal to the pastor. The pastor has debt in their personal life. They have debt on the church mortgage or whatever else they’re using it for. And so what we found is that the more debt you have, the less healthy your church is and you might be able to survive for a time. But there’s even a study from Christian Standard that shows once your debt level reaches a certain threshold, the additional weight, it actually hurts your ability to grow. It hurts church attendance; it reduces the baptism ratio. And so this will eventually cause you to suffer. Even if you think, well, this is what we need to do right now in this season, it’s going to come back to bite you.
Sean:
Yeah. George, I’m curious, what impact does FPU and knowing and understanding biblical money principles have on tithing and giving in churches, and then have you seen an increase in tithing and just overall generosity in churches that have embraced FPU?
George:
This was one of the most fascinating pieces of data that we were able to gather because we know that Financial Peace University, it helps the individuals become debt free, have more margin, get on a budget, invest for the future. And we had a feeling that a byproduct would be that they’re gonna be able to give more because they have the margin. If you ask most people that are churchgoers, Hey, why aren’t you giving more, they would say, I don’t have anything to give, man. We’re paycheck to paycheck. That’s most Americans. And so what we found is that only five to 10% of churchgoers are even tithing at all. That number shocked me. That’s one out of 10 people if you’re lucky or even tithing. And so we did a study through Tithely, and what they found was that there was an increase of 5% on average for people that were tithing if they did FPU. So if a church offered just one FPU class, they would see an increase of 5% in average volume per donor.
But here’s what the interesting thing, the more classes, the more that number increase. So if a church offered 10 or more FPU classes, we saw that number climb to 13%, a 13% increase for average volume per donor. And I think it’s just a byproduct of people going, I have the margin now. I’m out of debt. That payment I was sending to Sally May and to my car lender, I can now give faithfully to my church or to other nonprofits that I’m passionate about. And so it’s a really cool byproduct of getting your own money in order. You’re able to look up instead of inward because you’re sort of, you’re selfless versus selfish going, I got my own problems, now I can look out and solve other people’s problems.
Sean:
Yeah. That’s really good. We experienced this at my church. We used FPU. We asked actually coupled FPU with a series we did usually every February focused on finances. And you know, February is that time where we start to see that credit card bill from Christmas season. Right? And we would kind of come off the heels in that going into tax season and do a run of FPU. And it was incredibly helpful to the people of our church. You’ve kinda touched on this already a little bit, George, but what kind of impact does paying off debt have on a church’s ministry and outreach?
George:
Well, we found that when there is no margin, there is no ministry. And when you get rid of that debt and the budget, however big or small, it’s there to completely serve your church and your community for the kingdom. And that’s been the most fun stories we’ve seen. Even in my own church, they inherited $7 million of debt as they merged with another church. And they looked up, they said, we’re sending a million dollars to a lender every single year. What if we could free that up? And so again, they got the congregation involved, they were very transparent about what the goal was, and all of a sudden people were excited about this. And within a year, they paid off $7 million. And as I’m talking to you today, they are under construction on a whole new ministry center focused on providing reliable transportation for single parents, for mental health and suicide prevention. For foster care, a wraparound ministry to provide the needs for foster parents. And these are all the things they couldn’t do before because they were sending that money to a lender. And so it really is inspiring when you look at what you can accomplish as a congregation, when you get your personal finances in order and you’re able to give that way.
Sean:
That’s great. That’s great. So on the heels of that, how does FPU help churches who are struggling with outreach?
George:
This is an interesting one. For years, we have hosted Financial Peace University classes largely inside of churches. And so even if you don’t go to that church, you might just be in someone logging in, going, Hey, where’s the nearest class? Okay. It’s at Grace Fellowship. Great. I’ll go show up at Grace Fellowship on a Tuesday night. And we found that there are people and families listening to the Ramsey Show who tune in. They don’t even go to church, and yet they’ll come into your church building for this once-a-week class for nine weeks straight. And they end up meeting Jesus that way. They go, oh my goodness, I didn’t know this building was here. The staff here has been amazing. They’ve been so kind. I wanna learn more about this. I’m gonna show up on Sunday now. So that’s been a really cool impact coming from a random money class that they all of a sudden would enter your doors in a situation they would’ve never otherwise.
Sean:
Right. Yeah. We actually had a number of FPU groups in our classes that continued on as small groups after that within our church, which was a really interesting. A great outcome for us.
George:
I guess there’s a special bond that is formed, nine weeks, you’re sharing your deepest, darkest money, mistakes and problems and wins. There’s just something really cool that happens when you’re kneecap to kneecap with that transformation. And you do end up creating some lifelong friends outta there, some great cheerleaders. And I love to hear that it’s continuing on even past the class.
Sean:
Yeah, absolutely. You know, some pastors might think we’ll always have a mortgage. That’s just part of church life. Right? What would you say to a church leader who sees debt as normal or sometimes even necessary?
George:
Ooh. Well, number one, it does not have to be this way. And just because it’s normal doesn’t mean it’s of the kingdom. Right? We are called to be different, to be set apart. And the Bible’s clear on this. I, you know, Proverbs, they speak in tweets from King Solomon, but it says the rich rule over the poor, the borrower is slave to the lender. I can’t read that any other way. It’s not a sin, but you’re not thriving when you have a master and the lender will be the master. And that in this case, it’s the mortgage company the church owes the debt to. They don’t care about your mission. They care about the interest they’re making off of you. And so once you’ve freed that up and you can really truly live in the spirit of the mission that you have been called to, it changes everything. And so you’ve gotta have a different mindset. And I love that pastor Joe Boyd of Grace Fellowship, put it this way. They were paying that $30,000 a month for the brick and mortar, and they said, Hey, think of what we could do for the kingdom when we pay off this mortgage. And it frees up all that money to use on missions and planting churches and the widows and the orphans. And so you’ve gotta think bigger than, well, we’ll always have a mortgage. Debt is normal. Think about the opportunity cost of you keeping that debt around instead of what it could do for your congregation. And that’s what really inspires a lot of pastors to go, all right, I’m in.
Sean:
That’s good. You know, we’ve been talking about during our podcast series here that some church leaders, pastors hesitate to talk about money because they don’t wanna sound like they’re just asking for donations from the church. So how does financial peace help churches to talk about money? How do you help them kind of change the narrative about finances and money?
George:
This is an interesting one because a lot of churches have a hard time talking about money because when they do, the congregation can sniff it out. They go, well, they’re building another building. They mention the word stewardship. Let’s skip this service. Right? That’s really what’s going on inside. And so the way that we’ve seen it really work is when the pastor’s life has been radically transformed financially, and they open up about their own money problems, and they go through Financial Peace University themselves. That’s when it really hits. And they go, oh, that’s real passion there. That’s not pastor just saying, we need to get our money. He’s saying, Hey, listen, I went through this class. Here’s some things that I learned. I think this is really gonna benefit all of you out there who wanna get better with your money, whether you’re in crippling debt or you just know you could be making more of an impact with your giving. Right?
There’s a large spectrum of, of churchgoers, but we know also that seven outta 10 Americans leave paycheck to paycheck. And that represents a lot of the congregations out there. And so pastors, you gotta have that transformation first. It’s awkward to talk about how you need to get outta debt as a congregation when the pastors are also struggling with this. And so we have a big heart for pastors, and because of that, we are offer Financial Peace University to pastors completely free because we want them to see the transformation before they go deliver that information to the congregation.
And so that’s been a really cool process to see pastors go through it themselves to then talk about it in a very different way. Instead of, Hey, the church needs your money. It’s, Hey, I struggle with this money stuff, and I’ve gotten a lot better through this course, Financial Peace University. I wanna make it available to all of you out there so that you can get your money right. So that we can do this amazing thing that we all said was the most important thing to the church. Right? This mission, this project. And so I think talking about it in that way removes it from this ask for money, and instead you’re adding value to their life. To every single member out there going, Hey, we all could get better. Here’s a course that’s gonna do it for us.
It’s been proven, you know, we’ve had 50,000 churches now experience that transformation and 10 million people have gone through this. We’ve been doing this for 30 years. This stuff works. And so it’s really just a, a matter of are you willing to invest in your congregation so that you get all these byproducts of, Hey, our mission’s gonna be stronger, are church is gonna be healthier, we’re gonna be able to hire and expand the way we want to, the way that God intended it to. And this debt is only stifling us as a church and as a congregation. Are you guys on board? And we’ve seen time and time again, the pastors that do it right, that have that life change, it works. And the results have been really astounding and aspiring.
Sean:
That’s so good. I love that. We had a pastor on this series just to talk a little bit about preaching about money. And that’s one of the things that he said kind of held pastors back, is just the confidence in how to approach the subject so that that offer that you have for pastors to go through FPU for free is pretty in incredible and generous. If a church leader is listening right now and they want to see this kind of financial transformation happen in their church, what’s the first thing they should do, George?
George:
Well, again, experiencing it for yourself, that’s the first step. And so we created a website just for pastors listening out there. If you go to fpu.com/pastor, you’ll get access to Financial Peace University for free. So you can sign up today, see what it’s all about. And that way when you talk about it, you have that confidence. You have that knowledge base to go, I understand exactly what this is. It’s this many classes. Once a week, experience it. Here’s the lessons. We do all the teaching. You know, Dave Ramsey, Rachel Cruz, myself, Dr. John Delony. So the weight is off of the pastors.
And another thing is the pastor goes, we don’t have time for this. The schedule is all booked up. There are people in your congregation right now who would be jumping at the chance to lead a Financial Peace University class. All it takes is setting up some chairs and pushing play. And you are there as a friendly, encouraging face, but you don’t have to do all the teaching. You don’t have to be a financial expert. You just have to be willing to allow this to take place in a room in your church and then invite others in and see what happens.
And, you know, if things are worse for you financially six months from now, fine. Never do it again. But if things are better and you find that there’s fruit being, you know, birthed out of this course, out of the congregation, you’re gonna find that it’s really starts to spiral, starts to kind of snowball where other people get excited, oh, I gotta get on that next class. I gotta get on this one. And the coordinators leading it. They are so jazzed to do it. And maybe that is a pastor. Maybe it is a volunteer from the church. But either way, you’ve gotta get started if you wanna see this fruit happen, if you wanna see the byproduct. And so pastors, I encourage you guys, it’s our gift to you. Go to fpu.com/pastor and check it out for yourself.
Sean:
I love that. George, I think one of the reasons that churches struggle with this is just a lot of pastors don’t know of a practical way to approach finances within their church. And you’ve given us that today. So really appreciate your time and expertise and your insight into this topic.
George:
Thank you so much, Sean. Appreciate you.
Amy:
Wow, Sean, that was a great interview. The whole time I was listening, I’m thinking this is what me and my husband did back in the mid-nineties, and it turned the whole trajectory of our financial future around. So, I mean, we didn’t do Financial Peace ’cause it wasn’t there. I think it was Master Your Money by Ron Blue, but the same principles. And we regularly brought FPU into our church, and just saw hundreds if not thousands of people’s lives change. I can see why they have been such a help to so many churches.
Sean:
Absolutely. Yeah. I thought Amy, the research that George mentioned, that only 10% of churchgoers are giving right now. That means the average one in 10 people in your church are tithing regularly. That was fascinating to hear. I’d never heard that stat before. And to me, you know, this is just as much a discipleship issue as it is a financial issue for the church. If people don’t understand why they should be giving and growing in generosity as a follower of Jesus, I think we have to look at ourselves as church leaders and ask if we have a responsibility in that. And this goes back to again, part of what we talked about last week. Are we talking about finances often enough and in a way that helps our congregation grow their faith in generosity? And that thought, Amy, too, it takes me back to the scripture that we started the series with the second Corinthians nine, six through 15. If we are faithful stewards of God’s resources, then he will generously provide all we need to accomplish this mission. And Amy, my opinion would be that faithful stewards also means stewarding our people. And their responsibility with God’s resources as well.
Amy:
Yeah, I agree. You know, one thing that stood out to me was when he said, quote, “When there’s no margin, there’s no ministry.” We’ve seen this play out not just in church finances, but when a church is overstaffed. There’s no margin to empower volunteers and volunteer leaders. And when a church is over programmed, of course, then there’s no margin for clear communication and evaluation of ministry strategies. So it makes sense to me that when there’s no financial margins, our key ministry strategies, they’re gonna struggle. And George said, it’s hard to move the needle in ministry when the church is struggling financially and when the people are struggling financially.
Sean:
Right. Yeah.
Amy:
So we see this lack of financial margin show up often in churches that are spending way too much of their ministry budget on personnel, and it just leaves such less resource for investment in our key ministry areas.
Sean:
That’s really good. Amy. One last thing that stood out to me. I appreciate that George gave pastors a very practical next step as well. He talked specifically about how pastors can lead the way in financial stewardship, and he offered FPU to pastors for free, which was incredible.
Amy:
Our listeners like that.
Sean:
Everybody likes free, right?
Amy:
That’s right.
Sean:
If you go to fpu.com/pastor, so fpu.com/pastor, you can get access to FPU completely for free. And, by doing that, you can experience what the people in your church would experience if you choose to offer the class. So, get some practical wisdom for yourself and your personal finances. Go through FPU, borrow some of those ideas to help you address the topic more confidently in your church.
You know, George said that there, research showed that there was an increase of 5% of volume per donor for people who went through FPU and even more than that for churches who offered multiple classes. So who were offering FPU multiple times. So Financial Peace might be the tool to help individuals in your church gain financial margin. And as George said, that often leads to increased giving in your church.
Amy:
Such great words, especially in this season right now. Sean, any final thoughts you have today before we wrap up today’s message?
Sean:
Yeah, you know, one thing, one other thing that stood out to me in the conversation with George, he said, “It’s not a sin to have debt, but you’re not thriving.” And I think that that’s one of the areas that our missions align, The Unstuck Group and Financial Peace and Ramsey Solutions. We really want churches to thrive. So, if this subject is something you’d like to dig deeper on, you can use our free PDF called Funding Ministry in Uncertain Economic Times. That’s included for our podcast subscribers in the show notes that we send out each week. If you’re not subscribing right now, you can go to theunstuckgroup.com/podcast and subscribe there in order to get that resource to use. And also come back next week. We’re gonna finish out this series with a conversation on funding your ministry strategy. So until then, everyone have a great week.
