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Here’s a project I did six years ago for my church, St. Andrew Methodist Church in Plano, Texas. This was my first big project after joining staff. Like many local congregations, St. Andrew runs an annual campaign to encourage giving as an expression of faith, and also to gather financial information which helps set ministry budgets for the coming fiscal year. We called it a Stewardship campaign; some churches call it a Generosity campaign.

We broadened the message to include not just giving, but the entire spectrum of what it means to be a faithful disciple of Jesus – for us, that includes a four part strategy of Worship, Connect, Serve and Give.

This four part strategy is embedded in the story of Jesus calling Simon Peter the fisherman on the shore in Luke 5. We used this story as the basis for the campaign, which ran for four Sundays. Here’s a description of the series from the Creative Brief I wrote:

When you take all factors into consideration, all costs and all benefits, what is the bottom line or the final impact?

It’s a common question in business. But what if we apply the same question to life?

Jesus offers a vision of the end result of a life spent following him when he asked Simon the fisherman to let down his nets one more time. Simon had failed all night to catch a single fish. What Jesus suggested seemed to counter conventional wisdom, but when Simon submitted, the net effect was an abundance of fish that overwhelmed not just one boat, but two.

When we listen to what Jesus says, the net effect is a life of overwhelming abundance, a life lived to the fullest.

On the fourth and last week of the series, on Giving, we showed the above video. We created the animation from an article we discovered in Relevant Magazine. I wrote the script and my friend Chase Franklin did the animation wizardry.

Feel free to use the concept The Net Effect for your future church Stewardship Campaign. If you’re interested in using the video, contact me here.