If you follow this blog or are on our email list, you probably heard about our year-end fundraising campaign. To end the year 2020, we were looking to raise $25,000 for our Compassion Grant Fund, which directly supports churches who need the services that VitalChurch provides, but are unable to afford the full cost of those services. In the past, Compassion Grants have been given to churches to help them pay for diagnostic assessments, as well as our interim pastor services.
We established our Compassion Grant Fund because we never want to turn away any church that needs our help because of their inability to pay. Some of the churches that contact us are in really difficult financial positions. They may have gone through a sudden crisis or have seen a steady decline in giving over the years. Whatever the reason, they just don’t have the money to get the help they need.
We didn’t quite meet the goal of our fundraising campaign, but we were able to raise a substantial amount toward our goal. With the money we did receive, we plan on helping as many churches as possible this year. In fact, even though it’s still early in the year, we already have two churches lined up to receive Compassion Grants. Both churches will be using their grants to bring in VitalChurch’s diagnostic team to perform assessments.
While we believe any church can benefit from a diagnostic analysis from VitalChurch, these assessments are especially important for churches that are struggling. In the cases of the two churches that will be receiving Compassion Grants, there are issues like declining church attendance, lack of trust in leadership, and lack of spiritual growth in the congregation that the churches want to get to the bottom of. By going through a thorough diagnostic analysis, these churches will get an honest assessment of their current reality, so they can face their true issues and begin the process of addressing them.
Financial need isn’t the only consideration when we decide which churches will receive Compassion Grants. We also want the grants to go to churches that we believe have a sincere desire to change. Just like there are dysfunctional individuals in the world who have no desire to make much-needed changes in their lives, there are churches with some serious issues that they just aren’t willing to address. It could be that church leadership doesn’t want to address the problems, or it may be that the congregation is stuck in their ways. Whatever the case may be, if there isn’t buy-in from the church as a whole, there is very little that the VitalChurch team can do to help.
The two churches that will be receiving the first Compassion Grants of 2021 have both expressed a great desire to change. They know they need help and are willing to put in the work that’s needed. They also have the backing of their respective denominations. In both cases, the denominations will be contributing to the cost of the diagnostic assessments, on top of the Compassion Grant money they will be receiving. It’s a true collaborative investment in these churches, and we are confident that the investment will result in great benefits for the individual churches, as well as for the Kingdom!
Throughout this next year, we look forward to sharing stories with you of churches that have been impacted by the generosity of our donors who contributed toward our Compassion Grant Fund. If you didn’t have a chance to give during the year-end fundraising campaign, but would still like to donate to our Compassion Grant Fund, it’s not too late!
If you are part of a church that is in need of help and would like to learn more about our diagnostic assessments or our intentional interim pastor services, contact us today.