“We were aware of the need in our church to cultivate the idea of planned giving and to encourage our people to remember the church in their wills and trusts,” said Pastor Hance Dilbeck, Quail Springs Baptist Church.
Quail Springs is one of 19 Oklahoma congregations that have entered into a partnership with the Foundation to have a Legacy Church Ministry.
A Legacy Church Ministry is a church’s concentrated effort in partnership with the Foundation to promote planned giving in the congregation. The Foundation assists the church in setting up the structure for educating its members about giving and helps the church create and manage an endowment trust to receive gifts.
“We have a lot of people who have been faithful through the generations and who needed just a little more information about planned giving,” Pastor Dilbeck said, whose congregation began their partnership in 2005.
Legacy Partnerships allow a church to use the Foundation’s planned giving resources to help guide their congregation in gift decisions, said Dan Allen, Foundation Senior Vice President for Donor Services.
The Foundation assists by providing staff to counsel church members about their giving plans, helps prepare wills and other estate planning documents; provides resources, computations, and illustrations to prospective donors; and conducts seminars and workshops on planned giving when the church requests.
“Most churches do not have the resources to educate their congregation on the variety of ways that they can make a gift to support the ministries they love,” Allen said. “Only nine percent of the average church family’s financial resources are in the form of cash. The other 91 percent is in other assets, such as real estate; investments; businesses and retirement plans, that require special planning to make a gift to ministry from these assets.”
Quail Springs found that their partnership was a way to heighten and teach the congregation about Christian stewardship, Pastor Dilbeck said.
"It's a way to focus on how we manage the Lord's resources."
Posted on
Monday, June 22, 2009
by BFOK