Raising Money from Millennials at Church

This was the largest capital campaign in our church's history, so my wife and I were asked to meet face-to-face with key leaders. As Karen and I drove to Caribou Coffee to meet a twentysomething couple in our church, I thought, This meeting may not be easy. Mark and Debbie care so passionately about social justice, they moved into the lowest-income apartment complex in our area, and they have the bedbug bites to prove their commitment. Now we'd be asking them to give, when much of their gift would build a new sanctuary for our suburban congregation.

We warmed up by asking what Mark and Debbie thought about Sunday's sermon, when our senior pastor kicked off the public phase of the campaign with a passionate message about God's call to Abram to "Go."

Mark was direct: "C'mon, just because God told Abram to go to a new land, doesn't mean God is telling our ...