04 Drew Depler | Unlocking Generosity in Your Church

Andrew Estes (00:09)

welcome everybody to the Nexus Church Planting podcast where we help equip pastors and leaders to multiply disciple making communities. I'm your host, Andrew Estes, and today we're diving into a topic that sometimes gets overlooked in spiritual conversations, discipling people in their giving.

challenges pastors face when it comes to money. From personal debt as to the fear of preaching on the topic of money and how casting clear vision...

can unlock sacrificial generosity in your church. I'm really looking forward to today's conversation with my good friend, Drew Depler. Drew is a seasoned pastor, a capital campaign strategist, and now is part of the team at Christian Financial Resources, a partner of Nexus, where he helps churches unlock generosity through vision. With years of ministry experience and a heart for the church,

Drew brings wisdom around stewardship, donor development, and generosity. Drew, so thankful to have you with us today,

Drew Depler (01:06)

Yeah, thanks, man. Thanks for the invite. It's great to be with you. Always love chatting with you, Andrew.

Andrew Estes (01:11)

Absolutely, man. So I've known Drew for a little while and he lives in God's country here in Colorado. And so we just live about 30 minutes away from each other. He's down in Longmont, Colorado, as I live up in Loveland, Colorado. And so we don't get to see each other as often as we'd like, but usually at a lot of church events and different things. And CFR has been a significant partner for

our crew at Nexus for many years, many, many years. And we're so grateful for all you guys do. But Drew, for those that are unfamiliar with who you are and then eventually leading into what CFR is, I'd love to just get a little bit of a backstory of some of your stories, some of your path and ministry and kind of what you're doing today.

Drew Depler (01:54)

Sure, yeah, that's great. ⁓ My path is kind of a crazy one, really. Everybody's got a unique story, but my grandfather was a pastor. My dad was a pastor. Both of them were church planners. And after growing up in the church, I was pretty sure I didn't wanna be a pastor. ⁓ I didn't see enough. And so I decided I would actually pursue a business degree. And so I ⁓ started at...

up in Greeley in Colorado here and did my first year of a business program on a great scholarship was not my best year in life. I didn't make any life altering decisions, but I made some poor decisions. ⁓ just through a series of events, God kind of got a hold of my heart in a different way. And I knew I needed Christian community in a much stronger sense than I had. And so at that point then I transferred.

I was a transfer student to Milligan University, at that time Milligan College in Johnson City, Tennessee, which is a Christian liberal arts education. And I'm super thankful for the community that provided the growth. And so I continue to pursue business, but I loved still taking all of the electives around theology and Bible. And so it's crazy. If I would have just declared it, I could have had a second major.

in Bible. I never did, but I took every elective class with all the Bible professors and loved it and learned. But graduated with a business degree. I had a minor in computer science, and so I started working in technology. ⁓ I worked in Boulder, Colorado for Boulder County. I did county government for about 10 years. I was the assistant CIO there and was able just to help people. I love technology, but really what I love is helping people.

And so God continued to work in that all the while. ⁓ Found my wife at Milligan. Jennifer agreed to marry me, so I was over the moon. ⁓ Definitely scored on that one. And then ⁓ we moved back to Longmont, made our home here. We attended Life Bridge Christian Church forever. was my home church and that was amazing just to grow and develop there. I had the chance to ⁓ serve in lots of different ways and lots of different ministries, whether it would be

students or young adults or young marriage, teaching, all sorts of things. And ⁓ they invited me to be an elder at a very young age, which I thought was maybe reckless on their part. They thought it was exciting on theirs. ⁓ And ⁓ so then I served as an elder at Life Bridge for many years. ⁓ Shortly thereafter, after the progression of that, the church approached me and said, hey, would you consider coming on staff and leading one of our campuses?

And so that was a huge season of prayer, trying to figure out what that would look like, ⁓ just seeking the Lord in that, ⁓ and really confronting some of my fears about being in ministry, to be fair. ⁓ So through all that, I was ready to leave where I was at and we jumped in. And so we led a campus for about six years here in Colorado. That was fantastic. Super fun time, able to grow that, develop that. ⁓ It's challenging. ⁓

you know, doing church in a school, doing set up and tear down. For those of us who know, we know that's where the real effort, the real work, ⁓ all those sort of things are. ⁓ And so through that just grew from that campus. They asked me to come and lead in a bigger capacity at Life Bridge, lots of different ministries. And then ultimately, as the executive pastor of ministries at Life Bridge, where I led all of the adult students, ⁓ everything that we had for ministry.

and then also was able to use some of my business background in that as well. So that was my ⁓ ministry experience. ⁓ As God just kind of prompted, ⁓ our lead pastor was retiring Rick Russo, and Rick and I are great friends. We had a great lead pastor coming in, Matt Hessel. And as we sorted kind of what that would look like, I just felt that God was releasing me from that season. And so I stepped aside.

at LifeBridge and ⁓ let some others have the leadership await. That actually turned out to be January of 2020 when I stepped away from LifeBridge just before COVID. So I had no idea what I was handing off, the weight of what would come. But also right after I just was seeking the Lord for what would you have me do next and what does that look like for our family?

Andrew Estes (06:11)

Just a great time to start looking for a job, right?

Drew Depler (06:26)

And so Christian financials, Christian financial resources reached out and said, hey, we would love to talk to you. So I had some long conversations with them, really excited about what they were, what they've been doing. And so I jumped in in 2020 with CFR and I serve as the regional vice president for the Western United States. I love it. It's fantastic. I really like the model. I really like the ability to not only do local church ministry,

But now I get to actually see what God's doing in ministries all over the country. So it's been rich for me personally, just to see what God's doing in the ocean. Because sometimes we get focused on our fishbowl. And you can kind of get hyper-focused about where the scuba diver is or what color the rocks are in your fishbowl. But when you start to see the ocean, it reminds you of what God's doing all over for fish. It's amazing.

Andrew Estes (07:20)

Yeah, absolutely, No, it's definitely a privilege to be able to serve churches nationally and just to get a different perspective on a lot of different fronts, whether that's in church planting or established churches and everything in between. It's been wonderful to just to gain a lot of that experience and perspective as you step away from that. When you were at LifeBridge,

in kind of that executive role and specifically as we kind of like transition into just the conversation around generosity and developing other people and things of that nature. What did your role look like there in that executive role as it relates to helping people develop in their ability to give or in their generosity and the vision casting that you would do?

Drew Depler (08:04)

Yeah, I think one of the things that was interesting in that ⁓ was really just trying to help people. We did all the basic things that a lot of churches were doing, everything from helping people with financial peace. So we ran several of the financial peace courses, helped a lot of folks move out of debt. We did some legacy planning seminars where we would bring in some folks to help people think about their generosity at the...

end of their life as well as provide opportunities for them to actually think about maybe they ought to have some end of life documents to care for their most valuable possessions like their kids. So a lot of young families don't really think about that. And I think the stats nationally are something around only 30 % of families have an end of life document. ⁓ And so that can be a really challenging thing. And so I think the church can serve people in our churches very well by helping them learn

about the challenges of debt and how to actually become debt free and then also how they can plan for a future. You we did lots of sermon series on giving, know, did the typical January, gonna go ahead and hit that, try to get it out of the way early. I don't think we always did that really well. I think we did that fairly well. We did really talk about generosity, but it wasn't something that I would say we were killing it on. I think we were doing okay on.

I think something that we did do well was we cultivated some relationships with key stakeholders in our church and began to invite them further in. And some of the conversations that we did through discipleship work really became opportunities for further conversations. Things that you might not say in the big room when you have a thousand people sitting in the room and visitors coming, but when you have more of a core group of a couple hundred folks.

in a room, you can speak a little bit differently and it's received a little bit more because they're bought further in to the mission and the vision of the organization. So that was some of the things that we tried to do. I don't know that we got it right. I think we were trying like everybody else to figure that out.

Andrew Estes (10:14)

Yeah, absolutely. With a lot of the experience that you have now with like CFR and being able to engage with so many different churches, I was really just kind of struck, you know, with even some of our recent conversations that we've had over the ability to invest personally in those relationships and being able to develop some of that within your own people. But then I even had a conversation more recently with another friend of mine who's a pastor in Florida who hasn't talked about giving in

years, you know, and then kind of contrast that with church planters who are just desperate for any and all dollars possible. You know, we've lost all shame and asking anybody for anything and you're just like, okay, just tone it down just a little bit. You know, there's some medium ground to be able to recognize that we have a responsibility in being able to develop and more than just develop people in the gift of generosity is that you're inviting people in the mission, in the vision together.

Drew Depler (10:53)

you

Andrew Estes (11:13)

And I'd love to hear you just kind of speak into just the role that the vision of the organization, of the church, of that body of believers, what does that role play in those conversations?

Drew Depler (11:26)

Yeah, I think, you know, there's a lot of different ways ⁓ to talk about giving. And generally, we kind of want to talk about tithing. So oftentimes we start at that sort of Old Testament that Jesus took and talked about. Hey, that's a starting point, not an ending point. We tend to try to figure that out. But we also recognize that people feel like the church talks about money all the time, right? And so I think that's the connection that really is important is

is the vision and the mission of the church versus just the needs. So people do give to needs and there are legitimate needs. We need to pay the electric bill and we need to have a facility to meet in. But for the most part, our hearts don't get engaged with needs. Our hearts get engaged with vision. And so I think when we think about the idea of not just giving, we can have a giving series, but when we talk about stewardship, what it means and our framework for that.

⁓ Really what we're talking about, and you and I have talked about this previously, but is discipleship. And the church has really grown, I would say, in the last 15 to 20 years with more of a focus on discipleship. So we still are doing evangelism, and that was something that we were really good at of evangelizing. And even as church planners, we want to evangelize. We want new people to come to know Christ. That's absolutely there. But we can't leave them... ⁓

kind of wet after the baptistry and not begin to walk with them and disciple them. So there's that idea of they're unbelievers that become believers, but they need to become followers and then disciplers. And so where in that do we begin to say that part of that, the vision and mission is that others would know, then that changes everything. And so I kind of like CFR, have things we say about that, but if God owns everything,

which most Christians would say, yes, God does own everything. He's the Alpha, He's the Omega, He's the beginning and the end. He's the creator of all. He owns a cattle on a thousand hills, right? ⁓ Well, that sort of mindset then, God owns everything. It's all God's. So then I have to bring that into my own world. And whether that's at our church or whether that's in my own finances in my own life,

I drive an F-150, God owns that F-150. I actually have the title for it, but it's God's. And so everything is God's. My marriage is God's, my kids are God's, all those sort of things. And so then when I start to really become a steward of what God has entrusted to me to manage, then that's a much different picture than just saying, a portion. So maybe I told you this already, but when my kids were little,

I did one of those banks, know, it's a little plastic bank you could get and had three little things. There was a church building attached to a bank attached to like a shopping store. And it was like the fun store over here and the bank looked real serious and the church looked kind of traditional. But I would give my kids their dimes. I mean, give their allowance in dimes. And so when they first started getting allowance, they got 10 dimes. I got a whole dollar for their allowance, right? And that was for me to teach them to put one dime.

Andrew Estes (14:22)

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Drew Depler (14:43)

in the church and one dime in the bank and eight dimes they could decide and their other spending little shopping thing they could spend whatever. Well, it was funny with my son because like he's got 10 dimes, right? So he puts one in, does it? But he's got eight dimes. You know what he uses his eight dimes for is to go buy like gummy snacks, like loads and loads of gummy snacks with red dye and sugar and Sour Patch Kids and all the other. He doesn't need that stuff. He doesn't need that at all.

Andrew Estes (15:06)

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Drew Depler (15:12)

And my son has a great heart for the Lord, for ministry, for mission. He got that early and it was great to see. But I didn't teach him that all 10 times, all 10 dimes were God's and he could put those 10 dimes wherever he wanted to put them. Those 10 dimes weren't some sort of written in that this is how he should do it and go spend this much on sugar and candy and all that stuff. I needed to teach better and so I've since revisited with my kids.

in their adult like, hey, it's all God's. So that's sort of the thing that says, okay, how do I want to utilize this? And those eight dimes that are in the little shopping ⁓ container, those still are God's dimes. And so how we steward those dimes really matters. So I think it's important on a very high level to think about vision and mission connected to stewardship, and then seeing stewardship as connected to discipleship.

So very specifically, how are we discipling people in their faith? And part of that is in the lordship, in the ownership, and the fact that God owns everything is really critical. So now if God owns everything and there's this vision and mission that I see that he's on, now everything gets put under that instead of just this portion that we're trying to teach people some sort of ritual or thing. And so,

People give out of lots of pockets. It's a common illustration. sometimes they're given out of the pocket that's got their change in it. That's a little change pocket on your jeans there. It's like, OK, I can give some change, right? Sometimes they're given out of their cash pocket. And nobody really carries much cash. You might have $20 in the back of your phone. But sometimes they're given that because that's out of obligation or tipping. And then sometimes they're given out of a commitment, right? So that's the credit card.

It's the other thing we pull out and they're like, well, I'll set up that push pay or I'll set up that other thing that's regular. And that it's more of a discipline that they're doing, but it's more of a self-discipline, not a spiritual discipline. And so trying to train that and shift that to begin to say, are they giving to the vision and mission of the church? Are they engaged with what God's doing? So we oftentimes will say stuff like, tell me the length of your personal quiet time with God and I'll tell you the extent of your faith.

I don't believe that's true, but at times people will say then, we don't say that about giving. And I think it's important to begin to say, what does generosity look like and how are all of my resources aligned with what God's doing? So that can be my investments. know, at CFR, we offer investments in the kingdom. That's what we do. It's really our whole thing is, as a nonprofit ministry,

Andrew Estes (17:58)

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Drew Depler (18:02)

is that when people set up an investment account with us, a savings or a time certificate or even a giving fund, we talk more about it, but in that, what they essentially are doing is saying, I'm gonna put those resources in the kingdom and let those be used for the kingdom. I'm gonna get a fair competitive rate of return on that. So I'm still gonna receive growth in that, but I'm actually putting that into the kingdom. And so whether that's with CFR or another church extension fund, it's now a kingdom investment.

And so a lot of times we can keep a lot of things out of the kingdom and not before what God's doing, mission and vision all over. We just think I'm just giving a portion of what I have versus it's all God and I want to invest in what God's doing. So that's kind of big picture for me is how do we shift our mindset? And I think a lot of times churches, unfortunately, it's individuals,

We end up having this scarcity mindset. So we only think about what we have and we want to protect that. It's kind of like a. Was it Lord of the Rings? Smog is the dragon. I think where he's sitting on that pile of gold and he's breathing fire and smoke and vicious. It seems like smog wasn't always a fire breathing dragon. It's just as his pile of gold got bigger, so did his his fierceness and his protection of that.

And so he thought it was his gold, right? So I think for us, the big picture is that not a scarcity mindset that we have to just keep amassing, but an abundance mindset that says, if everything's God's, then God will determine where those resources go. And I don't need to fear. I don't need to have anxiety. I just need to be a part of what God's doing.

Andrew Estes (19:53)

Yeah, yeah, no, that's good. I remember being on staff at a church and just living in this tension of just some of the lack of vision and being able to, you know, hear sometimes from the stage where it's just like, yeah, you know, we need to make budget so that we can, you know, pay for our mortgage or, you know, keep the lights on or, you know, if we wanted to add like a turn lane off the road into our parking lot, like that would be on us. And you're just like,

It could not be less inspiring to be able to add dollars to the plate, but being able to share stories, to really have a God-sized dream of like, what are we ultimately doing and why is it so important? Why do we have to keep the lights on? What happens when the lights are on in our facility? And being able to go through that level of deep connection to why we're asking people to be a part of our mission and our vision is

is so crucial. There's so many different tensions and so many different fears around how to give, what to know, how to talk about giving, shying away from talking about giving. Can you address just some of the fears that pastors often have and maybe just leave them trapped in why they don't actually discuss giving very much?

Drew Depler (21:14)

Yeah, think backing up just a little bit on it is I think for pastors a lot of times, you know, we have a scarcity mindset. And so we're just trying to, you we don't have two nickels to rub together as they say, right? So we're not just rolling in the funds. We often feel that pressure in our own homes, in our own lives, right? And so we feel this pressure of finances and we don't live in a sense of freedom around money. We tend to live in a sense of fear around money.

And I think that's the first thing. The next thing I think is for a lot of pastors, the challenge to talk about giving is because they either feel like their giving is insignificant or they don't feel like they have credibility around financial things. And that's really hard to get up and to take people, ask people to go somewhere that you've not gone.

And so you feel this internal sense of maybe shame about where your giving is at or what you're not able to do. You feel this maybe a sense of guilt and it's really hard to speak to this idea that God owns everything. And we've got this great vision. But I think for a lot of church planners, we were recently together at a Nexus event and for a lot of folks, they've put everything on the line, right? To be a pastor.

If they can step back and say, yes, I've tried to put everything on the line. This is all God's. And if they can really understand and begin to say, yes, I've been willing to sacrifice and I'm trusting in God in this. There's a lot of faith in there. There really is. When we step into ministry in that way, there's a lot of faith that God will guide that, provide that, endure that, the legacy of that, that that will be worthy, that we will be faithful.

But I think at the end of that, for a lot of pastors to get up and speak about it, they feel like sometimes they lack a sense of credibility. And so that's a hard thing a lot of times for many people to get up and say, okay, what am I challenging people to? Second thing is a lot of times they feel like they're speaking to people that maybe have different income levels and do they have a sophistication around that? Do they understand how to speak? And so the main thing I would say is for a lot of pastors is just beginning to do some reading around that.

There's some phenomenal resources out there to work through and to begin to read and explore and to grow in their understanding of how to disciple and grow as a disciple. Because a lot of people haven't had that. They can be in a lead pastor role, but they haven't had that growth in their own life. And so you often can't take people to a place you've not been.

And so you have to go to that place and you have to begin to grow in that before you can often share that. so finances is a place that I think a lot of pastors feel like is a necessary evil, not a place where they feel that they're leaning into, God, I want to grow in this, in my relationship with you. God, want to I want to have a better understanding and I want to take our our church, our community further in this so they understand. so, you know, that's kind of starts with

Andrew Estes (24:01)

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Drew Depler (24:25)

a person having an individual vision for how they are going to be fully sold out for Christ, right? How they are going to be living into that and their resources will be the Lord's and they'll sort that out. And so I think that's a personal thing first, Andrew, for pastors to go through for them and their family. I think that journey of working through that is so powerful. And then

know, oftentimes, like you said, stories are important

Andrew Estes (24:52)

you

Drew Depler (24:53)

when people are giving. ⁓ As pastors, we can often use illustrations, you know, from our own families or from experiences. And I think sometimes we need to also be willing to be authentic in the giving journey as well. And that can be a hard thing to kind of begin to find those connections to say, hey, this was hard for me when I got started.

Hey, when we began to go down this road, there was a lot of fear. ⁓ Here's the things I experienced. But jumping back to that, then when you begin to connect those pieces to mission, to vision, to the why, ⁓ it starts to become clear that you're growing as a disciple in a fresh way. We talk a lot about a lot of the gifts that are in scripture, right? That people have a gift and we'll publicly celebrate.

somebody who has a phenomenal ability to lead worship. And we'll come out and say, man, wasn't that amazing? That was so great. And so we'll recognize. And then we've done a VBS or a kids event, some sort of outreach. And we'll ask everybody to stand up that's served. And we'll say, awesome, that's great. But we are really uncomfortable with saying, if you're somebody who is bought into the vision and mission and financially partnered here in this community, would you stand up and let's just thank

those people that have the gift of generosity. Like we struggle with how to talk about that. We struggle with how to do that. so, know, churches are beginning, I see in a lot of places, to figure out how to gather some of their key generous folks, people who have that gift and bring them together and still celebrate. Maybe we don't have to do that in the Sunday morning service in that way, but a way where we actually acknowledge and celebrate people who are growing in their faith through their giving.

and that we encourage them and share with them what the vision is, what some of the next steps are. And so churches are doing vision nights where they invite people to come and hear about the vision, where they can talk more about the resources needed to make that vision happen. And that can be something that's done just once month. It can be something done once a year.

but a vision night where people begin to buy in and see, there's something that we're leaning in. And maybe you'll still do a portion of that in the Sunday morning service or your weekend service, but what does it look like to bring some of those people together and begin to say thank you for that growth, to acknowledge and encourage that growth, and then invite partnership in that moving forward? I just think it's so important as a discipleship tool.

to not just ask, but also to encourage and to thank and to invite and to work towards that. You know, whether you're doing a big capital campaign or whether you're just trying to advance the vision and mission of the church, people love that when they're when they're actually stakeholders in terms of their financial commitment and their financial partnership to be seen and to be recognized and thanked.

on a personal level. Churches do a pretty good job with that of sending notes often to new givers saying thank you for your gift, thanks for jumping in. We tend to send out some sort of statement electronically or however we're doing that with a little letter that says we appreciate you, those sort of things. But sometimes we forget to actually set up a list of meetings and actually go and sit down with those people and continue to say, how's God working in your life? ⁓

here's what God's doing in the church and what's going on. And so those coffees or those lunches or breakfasts that we can do as pastors can be incredibly powerful as people grow in that, that have giftedness in those areas. And as we help them to grow in their faith as disciples of what God's done.

Andrew Estes (28:47)

it's so good. There's a couple of things I just made note of as you're talking about that is that one of the things, know, especially in like the church planting conversation, which might be a Claycomb reason, like, you know, just even for a church planting podcast to talk about the tension of talking about money, where church planters are desperate for anything and everything, and so they don't have a problem asking about money. But one of the things that often shifts is that once they get on the ground,

And once things start to happen and once things get to that self-sustaining point that we kind of get maybe even comfortable and live in that danger. And one of the things that our director Phil Claycomb says in different ways is just the tension of like stopping being a planter just to become a pastor. And not that being a pastor is bad, but it's just that planting mentality often pushes us to take risks.

to be bold, be faith-filled, to be vision-centric, all of those things where it's just, if sometimes the complacency that kind of creeps in sometimes in that pastorhood is just manage what exists already. And we miss some of that risk-taking, some of that bold visionary aspects of that. And so there's often that tension for...

planters that have been on the ground for a while, things start to get comfortable and then we maybe get complacent when it comes to talking about stewardship and starting to do some of those things. I remember one of our church planters in Oklahoma went and did like a whole second round of fundraising nationally with friends, family, other churches to be able to do like a capital campaign in that way because they knew that locally they didn't have enough people to do that. So they were able to go back out and do a second round of fundraising.

and was very successful in that so that they could move into start building a building and grow. And that was just a phenomenal story. I love that story. The other thing that you kind of mentioned was some of the idea about, I want to say just it's almost as overcoming shame where when we're talking about topics that we don't feel like we're experts in, or we're talking about topics where maybe other people in the room are way better than us.

whether that's in our prayer life, whether that's in evangelism, whether that's in missions, whether that's in giving or being able to create wealth in any number of ways. That was one of those things that I think that a lot of pastors maybe struggle with. And know, obviously there's the debt piece where local pastors are, we don't get into ministry to make a ton of money. Maybe some people did.

Drew Depler (31:30)

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Andrew Estes (31:31)

But most church planters probably did not and just struggling through the tension of like, living paycheck to paycheck. And so how do I get up and talk to these people? Can you just talk a little bit more to just kind of overcoming that of just being able to have real conversations, scriptural conversations with real people who are way more knowledgeable about maybe certain aspects of the faith or in generosity specifically. as a pastor, if I'm, you

poor pastor sitting across from a ⁓ massive donor, how do I sit there in confidence and know that God's put me in this place to be able to call them to even greater things?

Drew Depler (32:12)

I think most of that ⁓

you know, it's an interesting place we find ourselves in and feeling less than capable at times, less than equal. And so spiritually, a lot of times we feel like we are, we might know more of the scripture, we might have had some training and some good experience in that, but we disconnect this idea of what's spiritual and what's physical. And I think that's one of the things that...

⁓ in ministry is a danger, right? Is that it's all spiritual. It's all connected, right? So we kind of end up creating this dichotomy of two worlds, the business, finance, expertise, tax code, all this other stuff. And over here is the spiritual. And it's the same thing that disconnects Sunday from the other six days of the week, right? And so I think in those conversations, it's not so much about

pastors becoming experts in financial acumen. I don't think that's really that they need to have this sort of like be more of an expert. But I think they have to overcome a mindset that says, okay, vision and mission and inviting people into that and asking people not so much to ask them to give, but to ask them to seek the Lord about that, to see what God's doing in their life. ⁓

You know, one of the things we did at LifeBridge was we actually offered a one-year guarantee that said, try giving. And if at the end of the year, you don't feel like God has blessed your life and shown up and grown your faith, ⁓ we'll refund your money. We'll actually give it all back to you. So it's kind of, you know, I think there are some ways to essentially begin to invite people to go on a spiritual journey that affects their finances.

versus just ask them to consider a financial gift. It's different. And as a church planner, most of listeners would know that really when you're asking somebody to partner with you in church planning, you're asking them to be a part of that vision and mission. The challenge becomes, that's the front end fundraising. And then we kind of go into the maintenance like you talked about, where we kind of get focused on the bills.

And then the people that have come often aren't far enough in their faith, far enough along that we're able to really be discipling them in that. And sometimes that's on our part, like a failure to make that part of the conversation earlier, to actually talk about that. It isn't just about, we want to see you get into community. It isn't just about, want to see you come to know Christ. It's not just, it's not what we want from them.

It's what we want for them. And I think those are some really big things that kind of how you start is how you continue. In youth group time, you always say like, as a youth minister, you always say like, if you win them with pizza, you got to keep serving them pizza, right? Because that's what they came for in the first place. And so I think part of that is we can water down what it looks like to be a follower and say that we just want them to be a believer.

And I think that's something where it really is. What does it mean to make this decision as a believer? A believer is a follower, is just the beginning stage of a follower. But sometimes we just kind of want them to get in a small group or we want to make sure they've been through some sort of, you know.

entry-level study to understand how to read scripture. ⁓ You know, we're trying to cover so much, but I think integrating that early is really important in the conversation, but inviting that, inviting that financial partnership, not as a compulsion, not as a requirement, but as an invitation that we want this for you. We don't need something from you. We know that God is going to meet our needs.

And yet I don't want you to miss out on an opportunity to see how God can do that in your own life, like he's done in mine. So I don't know if that addresses exactly where you're going, but I think sometimes in it, tend to raise funds to the capacity of the vision that we have. And so if we have this vision and then we get to this spot, the vision is to plant a church, as Phil says, right? The vision is to plant a church. Once the church is planted, then we're like, well,

Andrew Estes (36:39)

you ⁓

you

Drew Depler (36:53)

Success, we did it, right? We planted a church, awesome. Now what's the vision? And the tendency, because of fatigue, is typically to just maintain what we planted. It's a lot of work to plant a church. It's a lot of work to get that church to actually have a core, to have that sort of feel. I see this with churches where we help provide loans and churches get into their building and they become complacent. They begin to just try to manage that.

versus minister through that. And so yes, a turn lane isn't just a turn lane into the facility that costs a quarter million dollars to get the turn lane in. A turn lane is gonna result in 100 to 200 more people coming to our church because they can actually get in from that direction of our community now that was a challenge for them and required them.

this circuitous path to come to our facility. And now we're gonna reach the West side like we've reached the East side because we've done that. And that's our vision. Our vision is not a turn lane. Our vision is to reach the West side and to grow in that and to see more people come to know and come to trust God with all of their resources, not just their life, but with everything that he's given them. So those are some things I tend to see as we do that. And I think really it comes down to authenticity and credibility.

My encouragement for lot of pastors is just begin to lean in. Take a few steps. For some of us, we're reluctant to say, I ⁓ actually probably should do financial peace. I'm not sure we're managing our credit cards very well. And then for others, like to say, do I even have an emergency fund? What do I do with that? Is that emergency fund, as it's growing, do we have discipline around that? Are we working to do those sort of things? And are we giving?

Are we actually saying we trust God and we're gonna be a part of that? We coach a lot of churches, they're doing stewardship campaigns or generosity initiatives. And one of the things I always tell pastors right up front is you can't take people where you're not willing to go.

So if you get up and ask people to make commitments and you've not been willing to sacrifice yourself, yes, you've sacrificed your time and you've sacrificed other things and maybe opportunity costs. But ⁓ a lot of pastors push back and say, well, I don't have that much. What could I sacrifice? Well, I worked with a church recently and the pastor kind of had collected five or six motorcycles and he liked fixing motorcycles. And I asked him, I said, hey, how many of those motorcycles would you be willing to sell towards this stewardship initiative?

I know you love these things." And he's like, whoa.

Whoa, like kind of a pushback a little bit. And over the course of that, he ended up selling like six motorcycles. I found out he had three more that were like, you know, special parts kind of bikes and different things. And he was able to make a significant commitment to the stewardship initiative that they were doing and able to have a story. You guys know I love motorcycles. You guys know this is what and this is what I want to do as I lean into this and the congregation that the community then gets to hear.

Andrew Estes (39:36)

you

Drew Depler (40:02)

hey, this pastor is totally bought in and willing to be able to not. I've had pastors who've said, hey, our family was saving for a trip to Disney World. We're gonna put that off. We're not gonna do that. And so we're gonna sacrifice that as part of this. And so I think sometimes just having personal stories of your growth and your authenticity will lend a great credibility. But I think the conversation and the relationship that we see it not as financial work, but as spiritual work, Andrew.

is so critical. Like if we don't frame it that way as spiritual work, then we think of it as just trying to figure out how to pay the bills. And that's not great for a pastor to be in that spot. ⁓

Andrew Estes (40:46)

Right,

Yeah, I feel a little bit like a left turn, but I would love to kind of get your thoughts on ⁓ the like how much a pastor should know. Like there's just that financial conversation around like just the pastor's involvement around finances, who gives what, some of those details, because I mean, I've seen like polar opposite views on this where some pastors want to know literally everything.

for the purpose of doing some of what we've been talking about of being able to know and to develop some of their key donors, the people that have that gift of stewardship and giving, the people that have the gift of creating wealth and just being able to walk with them. Maybe there's some of the selfish reasons as well of the dark side of wanting to know literally everything. But then on the opposite side, some pastors just want to be 100 % hands-off.

I don't want to know literally anything. I don't want to treat anybody differently. I don't want people to think that I know this or that for any reason and that they could bend my ear any differently than anybody else in the church. Could you just kind of talk to just some of that tension and maybe where you land personally or if there's kind of a happy medium between some of the two.

Drew Depler (42:05)

think most pastors would love to know how much their congregation is praying. Most pastors would love to know, and they often do know, how often their congregation is attending. Most pastors would love to know so many aspects of the spiritual life of their church, right? And finances can be a danger, but I do think that we tend to, what I encounter is most of the folks that I talk to have a

I don't want to know I'm going to be as hands-off as I can be. That's more common than the, rarely have I come across a pastor that says, I know how much every single person gives, right? So in church planting upfront, have, know, if you have good structure like Nexus offers and others where you have a management team and you can see stuff, you can know how you're doing financially, but you don't always know who is doing what financially. ⁓

I tend to think it's important to know ⁓ in an established church, I think it's important to know who are your partners. And I think that's as you establish a church, knowing who your partners are is really important. Who's partnered with what you're doing in real dollars. I'm always careful because I think there ⁓ is a point where it could become manipulative, it could become... ⁓

a different situation to say, know that Andrew gives this amount versus I know that Drew doesn't give this amount, right? Like it could be that I'll take a lunch with Andrew differently than I'll take a lunch with Drew when there's something going on in their life. And I think pastors are smart to be aware of that, right? I think that's a good quality, but I think we sometimes take a good quality of trying to love people.

and we then use it as an excuse to not know our community, to not understand what God's doing. ⁓ We're happy to create people who are a prayer team around people who just love to pray, but we're reluctant to create a generosity team around people who just love to give, right? That even sounds hard, like, you're part of the generosity team, right? So there's ⁓ this weird thing. Typically what I see is,

Healthy balance for that is for pastors essentially to know who are the top givers. So sometimes that can be in a larger church, that can be, what's our top 100 list? And I know that they're in the top 100. I don't know how much they give in that top 100. And they might have a bookkeeper or whatever, the finance director that's managing that sort of stuff that can kind of keep that from becoming too much.

but they know that they are a stakeholder, and that's a term I use a lot, they know that they are a stakeholder, someone who is actually holding up the tent and is holding that stake in a position and is bought in. That kind of helps you know in the old language, what's the difference between the community and the core, right, in the circles when you're thinking about that. You've got a congregation, you've got a community, but what's the core? And those are people that are bought in that are growing. And those are financial leaders.

They might also be spiritual leaders. Hopefully that's equal, but it's a place that I think is healthy. So generally I always encourage churches to pay attention. It might be for a smaller church of a couple hundred that you might have 20 people on that list that are core, and you know that those are the 20 top givers. You have to figure out what that is. I don't think you need to know what each one of them gives. I don't think that's necessarily like the best place to land.

⁓ I do think you can track, is our core growing? So that's a good measure. Did our core grow in their giving in the last year? Compare 24 to 25. Did our top 20 grow in that? Or our top 100 or whatever, scale it to the size of your church. But I think that's a core thing to say, okay, are we growing?

Then another thing is to say, did we add new givers, right? So tracking, a lot of churches already do that when we add a new giver, how do we track? That's usually a step that somebody is making a new spiritual commitment financially and is linking arms with the community in a special way. And so tracking some of that and knowing. I think that's a huge step that pastors can miss on to say, I don't know what you give, but I know that you've started giving. I don't know the amount you give.

but I know that you are giving. And Andrew, I just wanna say thanks for jumping in with the vision and mission here in this church, in this place with what God's doing. ⁓ Man, I'm so excited. And if I can be of help spiritually to you and encouraging those sort of things, let me know. But we're thankful that you're here. Cause sometimes we don't even do that to encourage and recognize, hey, you're giving. We recognize that. Man.

I can't wait to see what God's gonna do in your life through your generosity and through your partnership and being on mission with Him. I'm so excited for you. Like we don't know how to coach and do those sort of things. So it comes back to that. think the balance is really, if that is a spiritual exercise is giving, then we should know when people are actually engaged in that spiritually. Now, do we need to know the amount?

I don't know that that's always as important. Sometimes it's good to gather your folks together. And if you're going through a stewardship initiative, that can be really helpful. If you're looking for a vision night, you might invite everybody, but you might send an invitation specifically that ⁓ might be a handwritten invitation that says, hope you can join us to your top 50 givers and specifically invite them where you might've done a larger invite to everybody. It doesn't exclude. think sometimes,

That's the big thing is we're worried about creating a subset in the church. And I just, think that's not, you can be delicate, you can be careful, you can be ⁓ fully about character and integrity when you do that without avoiding just a conversation and just hoping that it happens. That kind of becomes an ignoring thing that we just hope gets better versus an active thing that we lean in spiritually into and invite.

Andrew Estes (48:17)

you

Drew Depler (48:35)

⁓ Churches are starting to really get an idea around legacy seminars, legacy giving as you get a church kind of moving, ⁓ moving forward. Okay, well, there's people that have resources and they're not gonna need those resources when they get promoted to heaven. And so what can they do with those resources? And something for them to consider is how they might actually might bless a place that has blessed them, how they might be a part of the legacy that they've been a part of.

in actually leaving gifts that could be catalytic, not just for, hey, we wanna buy better coffee, which all churches do need better coffee, but that's a whole nother thing as a coffee drinker here. I think at the end of the day, it's for the vision. And so if you have a sense of vision of where God's leading the church, and as people are thinking, hey, I got this inheritance and I don't need all this inheritance, what should I do with it? If people are thinking, hey, I have some resources and if I should,

Andrew Estes (49:14)

.

Drew Depler (49:33)

expire quicker than that. I'd love for this chunk of what my resources look like to go to fund this place that is filling me, blessing me, is essential to my life. Why wouldn't I want to? And so having those conversations, when pastors go through this, I just had a pastor share about what he was doing in front of a room full of hundred people about what he and his wife were doing with their estate at the end of their life and how they were going to split that.

Andrew Estes (49:45)

Yeah.

Drew Depler (50:01)

A third would go to one child, a third would go to the other child, and a third was gonna go to the church. And that was what their plan for their estate was and what they were wanting to do. And this looking for that and just was transparent as he shared for encouraging people to think about ⁓ what God has blessed them with and how they would use it. lots of different, those sort of things. And I think you can lead a group of people that have the gift of generosity as a core, as stakeholders and develop them.

whether that's once a quarter or twice a year, where you're gathering them for a bit of a celebration of what God's doing, how God's growing, what the vision, and you're telling, like you said, telling those stories of transformation that's happening. Many churches just struggle to do an offering, Andrew. mean, a lot of churches get up and just come to that time and they feel awkward about even just doing an offering time. Like, how do we do an offering meditation? ⁓

And they say, hey, if you feel like, you know, they close out their service and at the end of the service, essentially, they kind of like, hey, thanks for being here. You know, if you want to be a part of our ministry, we've got some black boxes in the back of the dark room that you could drop a few quarters into, know, like they're not even sure how to share that. And so there's coaching out there. I have several friends that actually do coaching around that of how to have a actual.

generosity like mindset, what that looks like to integrate a plan into how we're doing that. But how do you utilize that, what we used to call the offeratory, but how do you utilize that time as a time of worship? ⁓ Maybe just once a month, you're gonna either record a video or you're gonna actually have a share a story of how transformation has happened through the community as a result of the ministry that God's doing and the giving that is flowing into that.

so that people feel a part of that, that here's a transformation, here's Andrea's story, let me tell you that today. There's been this, you know, and that way people hear that. Maybe it's a story from ⁓ a student retreat or maybe it's a story from something that was going on in a discipleship training that you had, or maybe it is a missions thing this month that some, but like finding ways to specifically connect the mission and vision to giving, I think is so critical for churches.

Andrew Estes (52:17)

Yeah, that's beautiful, man. I appreciate just a lot of the advice, a lot of the tips and tricks that a lot of churches are going through, whether it's being able to have those larger gatherings of stakeholders, as you would call them, being able to thank them, being able to cast vision to them, being able to invite them on the journey. There's a lot of different things that you can do to develop a culture of generosity, a culture of

of sacrifice towards that vision. you know, I appreciate some of those tips and tricks and even the, the, the long mountain thing where you said like, Hey, we do it for a year. See if, see if it's good, you know, and we'll refund your money. Like just little things like that, just to, move some fears away and just help people realize that this is, this is a significant part of your faith journey. dude, I'm so thankful for, for your time. I would love to just kind of give you opportunity to share like,

one or two minutes about CFR, how people might be able to get in touch with you, just a little bit more for anybody who's unfamiliar, even just a little bit more about what you guys do there.

Drew Depler (53:25)

Sure, yeah, CFR has been around about 45 years. So we help churches fund projects. It's pretty amazing. We get to ⁓ make loans, but the only way we can do those loans is through investment. so kingdom-minded people like you and I invest their emergency fund or their savings, or maybe it's an IRA or lots of different things, and they can then be invested in the kingdom. They're going to get a really good rate, better than you'd find at most banks.

and they're gonna know that their money is actually working for an eternal impact, a kingdom impact, not just helping to fund more car loans and nail salons. Those are all needed, but this way we know that our money is actually pooled together like in the early church to do God's work. And so we, at this point now, have been able to loan out more than a billion and a half in 45 years. We've loaned out 1.5 billion.

We currently have about 900 million ⁓ in assets under management. We've got thousands of church loans. We've got thousands and thousands of partners that are investors with us. It's beautiful. So that's a big aspect of what we do, both loans and investments. We also help people with their giving. We've created something called a giving fund, which is a donor advice fund in a nonprofit capacity with no fees. It allows people to streamline their giving, open one of those for as little as $1,000, kind of

make it consistent so you can set reoccurring gifts. And then ultimately we help churches with campaigns. So vision initiatives and also legacy consulting. So if they're looking at doing some legacy giving and want to bring that in, we can help. But yeah, they can get ahold of me easily. I'm just drew at CFRministry.org is my email. You can find us on the website, it's website, CFRministry.org.

Andrew Estes (55:16)

good stuff man. Drew, thank you so much for your time man. So good to be able to talk with you about this.

Drew Depler (55:22)

Thanks, Andrew. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. And blessings to all of you. Just prayers as you continue to be faithful in what you do. I just pray that God would meet you where you are and would pull you and compel you further and farther than you thought you could go.

Andrew Estes (55:36)

Awesome. Appreciate you bro. Thanks.