What leading a Generosity Initiative Does to a Leader

Have you ever thought about the intersection of leadership and generosity?

After years of serving in ministry leadership, I’ve noticed something remarkable: a focused season of leading a generosity initiative doesn’t just grow the generosity of your church or organization.

It grows you.

Every leader experiences seasons when growth seems to happen at an accelerated rate. Often, those seasons come through some version of feast or famine.

Your organization is flourishing, and suddenly your leadership has to expand to steward new opportunities, new people, and new complexity.

Or your organization is struggling, and your leadership has to expand as you make difficult decisions, have courageous conversations, and find a new way forward.

Generosity initiatives can create a similar kind of accelerated leadership growth.

When a church, school, or nonprofit gets serious about generosity, leaders are stretched in ways they may not expect. And honestly, this is one of my favorite parts of the work we do at Generis. We certainly love seeing generosity increase and God-inspired vision funded. But we also get a front-row seat to watching leaders grow.

Generosity Requires Better Leadership

In order to lead through a generosity initiative, great leadership is required.

You have to communicate with greater clarity. You have to take ideas, plans, and priorities that may feel crystal clear in your own mind and make them understandable to everyone else.

You have to manage your time differently. Generosity work rarely replaces everything else on your calendar. It gets added to it. Suddenly, prioritization and delegation become even more important.

You have to become more comfortable with courageous conversations. You talk about money. You talk about giving. You talk with people who have significant resources. You ask people to pray about taking a step of faith.

You have to build trust. People want to know where the organization is going, why it matters, how resources will be stewarded, and whether the leaders asking them to sacrifice are willing to sacrifice too.

And you have to cast vision. You have to help people see beyond the building, project, or budget to the ministry impact their generosity can make possible.

Those are generosity skills.

But they are also leadership skills.

And once developed, they don't disappear when the generosity initiative ends.

But Something Even More Important Happens

As much as I love watching leaders grow in communication, courage, trust, and vision, there is another kind of growth I love even more.

The leader often becomes more generous.

In a generosity initiative, we spend intentional time studying what Scripture says about generosity. We pray together. We share stories of generosity. We talk about stewardship, sacrifice, contentment, trust, and the eternal impact of the resources God has placed in our hands.

And somewhere along the way, the conversation stops being only about their generosity.

It becomes about ours.

Leaders begin asking the same questions they are inviting everyone else to ask.

What has God entrusted to me?

Where is He asking me to trust Him more?

What would it look like for generosity to become an even greater part of my discipleship?

Is God asking me to take a step that feels uncomfortable?

That is when generosity work becomes something much bigger than fundraising.

It becomes formation.

Leaders Go First

There is a leadership principle most of us know instinctively: leaders go first.

We model the behavior, heart, trust, and sacrifice we hope to see in the people we lead.

That is especially true with generosity.

You cannot lead people somewhere you are unwilling to go yourself.

When leaders personally embrace generosity, something changes. They communicate differently because they aren't simply delivering a message. They're living it.

Their confidence grows because the invitation is no longer theoretical.

Their stories become personal.

Their leadership becomes more authentic.

And people can tell the difference.

What Might God Want to Grow in You?

If you're preparing to lead a generosity initiative, perhaps the first question isn't, “How much could our church raise?”

Maybe it isn't even, “How much could generosity grow?”

Perhaps there is an earlier question worth asking:

What does God want to grow in me through this season?

Maybe it is your courage.

Maybe it is your ability to communicate vision.

Maybe it is your trust in the people around you.

Maybe it is your willingness to have conversations you've avoided.

Or maybe God wants to grow your own generosity.

Because the best generosity initiatives don't simply produce more generous churches, schools, and ministries.

They produce more generous leaders.

And when the leader grows, everyone they lead has the opportunity to grow with them.

If you'd like more edifying content, here's more for you: Next Sunday Podcast Summer Session and All Givers Are Equal, But Not Every Gift Is Equal

About the Author

Joelle Hassler is a Generosity Strategist for Generis as well as a Pastor in Minnesota. Throughout her ministry career, Joelle has led teams and congregations through seasons of growth, change, and generosity. She’s seen God use strategic generosity to launch new campuses, feed the hungry, house the unhoused, and fund mission-critical ministry roles. Her heart is to help every church discover what’s possible when generosity becomes part of its discipleship DNA.