Church Capital Campaign: The Biblical Basis

I occasionally run across folks that think that a church capital campaign for a building program is a bad idea. Some have even called it unscriptural, but in in my opinion, its just the opposite. Perhaps people get caught up in the terminology, but a capital campaign is really just a name for designated offering to the church building program.

A capital stewardship campaign is a purposeful giving effort for the purpose of buying land or building a building. While more structured in the process than in Old Testament times, church capital campaigns have as a biblical basis the example of building of the tent of the tabernacle. In Exodus 35, we read that Moses went to the people to take up a special offering for the building of the tent and all that went inside of it. The first principal that we learn is that God called (and continues to call) His people to sacrifice their time, treasures and talents in order to accomplish His work.

Capital campaigns also draw upon the example in the 29th chapter of 1 Chronicles of where we find King David preparing to build the temple. In this example we learn two important principles.

• First is that he prepared in advance. Even thought the Lord had told David that he could not build the temple, God did not say he could not prepare, so we see him taking up an offering for the work.
  
• The second important principal we learn from this text is one of leading by example. In verse 26, we see a "top down" approach to giving as the leaders gave first as a model to the people.

The three capital campaign principals you should take away from this post are; God calls His people to sacrifice for His work; start saving before you need to build; and lastly, giving should be modeled by the leadership of the church. Best wishes to you for your church's capital campaign.