Terms like recession, bear market, and inflation matter to your ministry—and your community. Those economic conditions mean pain for the people your church serves. Families whose finances were solid a year ago are struggling today. Those who were struggling are now buried in a financial catastrophe.

But your church can help. A downturn in the economy means new ministry opportunities for your congregation. No one-size-fits-all approach will work, though.

Advanced research tools can help you identify the right opportunities. With these tools, you’ll learn more about your community so you know specific ways you can help during economic downturns. Our new FREE guide helps you use this technology to better serve your community.

In How Your Church Can Best Serve Your Community During an Economic Downturn, you’ll discover:

• A clear understanding of what terms like inflation, bear market, and recession mean and why they matter for your church.
• Easy strategies your church can put in place quickly to help struggling neighbors.
•  Step-by-step instructions about how to use MissionInsite to find and serve those in your community most harmed by economic downturns.

Economic downturns leave no neighborhood unscathed. This free guide helps any church leverage innovative research tools to serve their communities.

When a capital campaign isn’t successful, it usually comes back to a handful of common mistakes that organizations make. Not preparing adequately is at the top of the list.

Churches, especially, often rush into and launch a campaign too quickly. It’s understandable, but there are systems and processes to put in place to be sure you don’t miss the mark or kick off a campaign with a goal you can’t achieve.

When we consider how to best prepare our church for a campaign and the key components that help ensure success, we need to specifically look at how we treat our donors and prospects through the fundamentals of acknowledgements. Find the right posture and acknowledgment processes for your donors with these practical tips from a seasoned ministry fundraiser.

Most churches don’t have a comprehensive missions strategy. They may have a few missionaries they support, a budget line item, and maybe even a dusty document filling up a desk drawer somewhere. That is not good enough.

Your church has a holy mission—one that God has uniquely and sufficiently equipped you to fulfill.

Because ACST believes in your church and its potential to make a difference in the world, we’ve created a FREE ebook to help you get started in building your comprehensive missions strategy.

After reading God’s Mandate for The Church: What it Takes to Become a Missions Minded Church Today, you’ll:

• Understand the biblical basis for missions.
• Learn about the good missions accomplishes in the world today.
• Discover five ways your church can join in God’s mission today.

So don’t wait any longer! Get your copy of God’s Mandate for The Church, and start fulfilling God’s mission in the world.

Most of us don’t like to ask people for money. 

But to be faithful to pursue God’s mission in the world, we’ll want to invite others to take part in that mission. Praying for you and giving to your work is an important way others can do that.

To help you with this very important yet stressful work, we’ve developed a free digital guide to raising funds for mission trips. Based on years of experience mobilizing financial partners for mission trips, this new guide will teach you how to:

• Become an expert on the destination of your mission trip so you can better engage others in your work.
• Make a list of people who can support your work through prayer and giving.
• Create compelling support letters that share your mission in a way that gets others involved in your trip.
• Develop a follow-up process that nurtures potential givers as they consider being a part of your mission trip.
• Complete the fundraising circle by sending a thank-you note that helps your givers understand the unique part of your mission they are playing and leaves them ready to join your effort next time.

Asking for funds doesn’t have to be a drag. It’s a great opportunity to help others get more involved in God’s work in your community and around the world.

Your Church Management System is likely costing you ministry opportunities.

Ministry in today’s complex environment requires a ChMS that’s powerful, people-focused, and flexible.

That’s MinistryPlatform, the most powerful ministry platform in existence.

You don’t want to drop the ball on your next mission trip. Summer mission trips give your congregation a unique opportunity to serve others as you grow spiritually as a team.

But they can also be a disaster. A poorly planned, poorly executed summer mission trip won’t just set your mission team back. More importantly, it will make it more difficult to help people who really need your service.

Our ACST team wants to help your next summer mission trip be your best yet. That’s why we put together this new guide detailing ten best summer mission trip practices.

Many capital campaigns fail, typically due to the lack of preparation.

In this article, discover the key components of the silent phase of a capital campaign. This is the phase that allows us to “stay under the radar” and do the critical assessments of our campaign readiness.

Learn about the steps in the quiet phase – from timing to developing a compelling ask – that will help you ensure your church is well-positioned to publicly launch a successful campaign.

Your church’s mission is anything but normal. You’ve been called to reach the lost, feed the hungry, and make disciples. You can’t leave that to just any tech partner. 

You need not normal. 

At ACST, we’ve kicked normal to the curb. Because most of us have experience serving on a local church staff, we get you. We’re passionate about helping churches like you do what God has called you to do.

In our new ministry guide we’ll break down exactly how ACST does this–and what makes us unique.

Capital campaigns fail. Avoid the common mistakes and ensure your church’s campaign success by preparing adequately.

This article provides the phases and tools you’ll need to fully prepare your church staff, key volunteers and donors for all that a campaign will entail. Discover the key steps you’ll need to undertake to be certain your church is well-positioned to launch a campaign that will meet its goal.

Unfortunately, givers to other charitable causes or organizations are often treated and thanked more effectively by them than by their own churches. 

No matter where you find yourself as a church in this season – from planning a capital campaign to thanking annual pledge donors –  the hands-on, simple  tools in this article will help you and your staff effectively acknowledge and engage your best givers.