Church Development summarizes the three common worldviews, how each group perceives giving, and final thoughts on each.
As covered over the last couple of weeks, there are three dominant psychographic worldviews (“psychographics” is the fancy word for studying all the variables that can make up a common viewpoint, including personality, values, attitude, interests, and lifestyles).
In order of prominence:
- Consumers (47% of the population): Spenders, rare tithers, more comfortable being in debt, likely to give based on how much they liked the church service.
- Traditionalists (29% of the population): Savers, rare tithers, will respond to (visual) emergencies, likely to give to avoid consequences.
- Stewards (24% of the population): Reject consumerism and the common fears of traditionalists, likeliest to tithe, views things as gifts from God.
As these numbers add up to 100%, demographer Paul Ray would loosely place everyone in one of these three categories.* While we’d all like stewards to make up a larger percentage, no one is surprised that consumers are so common in today’s world. Additionally, as more than three-quarters of the population don’t naturally have this mindset, we continually need to strive to cultivate a culture of generosity.
Finally, not all stewards are created equal, so even if people are in the “right” category, we all have room to grow as givers.
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*Source: Ray, Paul. The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World. 2001.
Denis Greene is the Founder and President of Church Development. He is the author of The Stewardship System, Stewardship-Based Capital Campaigns, and How To Ask For Donations as well as numerous articles on stewardship. Denis has helped over 200 churches across the USA raise more than $200,000,000.
A complete list of Church Development’s services (including capital campaign management and consultation, feasibility studies, and year-round stewardship ministry programming) is available here.